I’d Rather See the Mess

Periodically a client asks, “Should I run my draft through AI before I send it to you?”

I understand the impulse. It’s the same instinct that makes people tidy up before the cleaning service arrives. You want to be polite. You want to make the professional’s job easier.

But in writing, that instinct is backwards ... I’d much rather see the mess.

Give me the scattered notes. The half-sentences. The paragraph that starts with one idea and wanders into three others like a dog that just spotted a squirrel. That stuff is gold. It’s where the real thinking lives.

When people run their writing through AI, what I get back is something … smoother. Straighter. Like someone ran a steamroller over a dirt path.

Yes, it’s technically cleaner, but the footprints are gone.

And the footprints are the interesting part.

Raw writing tells me how someone thinks. I can see where they hesitated, where they got excited, where they doubled back. Sometimes a throwaway line in a messy draft is the best idea in the whole piece. AI tends to sand those off, the way ocean water rounds a jagged rock until it looks like every other rock on the beach.

Perfectly nice rock, but completely forgettable.

The other problem is that AI writes like it’s trying to win a politeness contest. Everything is balanced and reasonable and mildly enthusiastic. It’s the literary equivalent of elevator music. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing alive in it either.

Human drafts, on the other hand, are gloriously uneven. A great line followed by a clunky sentence. A sharp insight next to a weird metaphor that probably shouldn’t work but somehow does.

That’s the good stuff.

My job when writing or editing isn’t to start with perfection. It’s to find the spark in the pile of kindling and build a fire around it.

AI, bless its algorithmic heart, is very good at arranging the logs neatly, but it’s less interested in the spark. Which often makes editing AI-polished writing is harder. When something has already been smoothed into generic competence, you spend half your time trying to figure out what the writer originally meant before the machine turned it into something safe and beige.

It’s like restoring an old painting after someone painted over it with house paint. Possible, but annoying, and chances are some good bit are gonna get missed.

So if you’re working with a writer or editor, send the raw material. Send the notes that look like they were written during mild turbulence. Send the paragraph that ends with “I’m not sure where this is going.”

That’s OK. Writing isn’t supposed to start polished. It starts strange, lopsided, and a little chaotic … like most worthwhile ideas.

The Future of AI Might Depend on a Very Human Skill

Watching marketers, writers, and founders celebrating the fact that with AI they can generate 47 pieces of content before their coffee gets cold feels like handing someone a Swiss Army knife and watching them only use the toothpick.

AI has made information absurdly easy to access. One prompt and suddenly you’ve got ideas, summaries, campaign drafts, competitive analysis, a mildly inspirational quote about disruption, and 3 taglines that sound suspiciously like they came from a 2016 startup pitch deck.

It’s impressive. But it’s also revealing that the real difference isn’t the tool … it’s the thinking behind the prompt.

Two teams can use the exact same AI model. One asks it to “write a social post.” The other asks what emotional triggers actually move the audience, what language patterns dominate the category, what competitors keep saying that everyone has stopped noticing.

One gets filler. The other gets insight. Same machine. Different curiosity.

That’s why the idea of AI as marketing autopilot always makes me laugh. AI isn’t autopilot. It’s more like a telescope. It lets you see a lot farther than you could before. It can pull in huge amounts of information, connect patterns, surface ideas faster than any intern or agency brainstorm ever could.

But you still have to decide where to point it.

And that’s where things get interesting. Because curiosity, real curiosity, the slightly annoying kind that keeps asking “why does this actually work?” turns out to be the one skill technology can’t automate very well.

And curiosity is messy. It wanders. It asks the slightly inconvenient question after everyone else has already moved on to the slide deck.

It’s also the difference between using AI like a vending machine and using it like a thinking partner.

The brands getting the most out of these tools aren’t the ones with the most dashboards or the most prompt templates. They’re the ones treating AI less like a shortcut and more like a giant, slightly caffeinated research assistant.

They poke it, challenge it, and ask better questions until the output gets weird in a good way. New angles. Unexpected connections. Ideas that actually move something instead of just filling content calendars.

Which brings us to the slightly uncomfortable truth about this whole AI wave.

Soon, everyone will have access to the same tools. The novelty will wear off. The productivity charts will flatten. The “AI-powered” label will become about as meaningful as “internet-enabled.”

At that point, the only real advantage left will be how people think. Not how fast they generate answers, but how curious they are about the question.

After all the hype about artificial intelligence reshaping marketing, we may end up rediscovering something embarrassingly human: The people who win will just be the ones who never stopped asking better questions.

Start with the Struggle, Not the Solution

 

Ever notice how the best weight loss marketers don’t start with abs?

They start with pain. The before shot. The “I can’t button my jeans” moment.

They talk about the person before the transformation. They ask questions that make you nod and go, “Yeah… that’s me.”

Then, only then, do they drop the before-and-after photo.

And by that point, you’re not looking at them anymore. You’re looking at you.

So if you’re out there selling your magic beans, your killer service, your big bold solution, stop shouting about the AFTER. Start telling the story of the BEFORE.

That’s where your people live. That’s where they recognize themselves. That’s where your audience leans in.

Why Clients Hire Me (and How You Can Show Them You’re Worth Hiring Too)

 

Nobody hires me because I know where the commas go.

They hire me because I know where the work needs to go.

And if you’re a marketing writer trying to win over clients, here’s the secret. And it’s not just about turning clever phrases. It’s about showing that you can do 4 things most copywriters either can’t do, don’t do, or don’t bother to prove they can do.

1. Zoom Out Before You Zoom In

Anyone can write a sentence. Not everyone can step back far enough to see the business, the brand, the market, and the moment in time … and then figure out where the sentence fits. The “zoom out” is what lets you write words that aren’t just pretty, but profitable.

Show it: Ask questions that scare small thinkers … questions about the market, about the why, about what happens in six months if this campaign works. Clients will notice.

2. Speak More Than One Business Language

I’ve written for teams that looked like Noah’s Ark: two of everything: designers, engineers, product managers, brand strategists, and that one mysterious person who “handles the numbers.” My job? Be fluent in all of their dialects.

Show it: In meetings, translate your thinking into terms each team understands. Talk benefits with marketing. Talk conversion rates with sales. Talk technical feasibility with dev. You become the bridge they didn’t know they needed.

3. Tie It to the Bigger Prize

Every line of copy has a job to do, and that job rolls up to a bigger product goal, which rolls up to a bigger company vision. If you can trace the line from headline to quarterly revenue target without breaking a sweat, you’re already in the top 10% of writers clients will trust (and C-suite will love).

Show it: Map your deliverables back to product or business metrics in your pitch decks and project updates. Make it impossible for them to see your work as “just words.”

4. Bring Empathy to the Mess

Products are messy. Teams are messy. Projects, especially the big, high-stakes ones, are basically chaos in a 3-piece suit. Empathy is what lets you navigate that without losing your cool (or your deadlines).

Show it: When things go sideways, focus on understanding the “why” behind the mess instead of pointing fingers. This isn’t about being nice … it’s about solving a problem faster because you actually understand the people and the problem.

 

Bottom line: If you can prove you’re more than a typist with taste, you stop competing with “writers” and start competing with strategists. And strategists get hired, re-hired, and referred.