For You Writers
Be wary of tools, especially AI tools
This started out as a reply to a post. I decided to instead turn it into an article. The post was about dumping all of your written work into an AI tool and asking it ‘what kind of writer am I?’
First off, I don’t think I want to dump two plus millions words (actually, it’s probably more like 3+ million? - I haven’t added it all up in a while) into an AI. Definitely not one that’s at all connected to the internet (I’m still waiting on my Anthropic settlement after they took 20 of my novels, and dumped them into THEIR AI - funny I still get pirated more than damn near anybody else, isn’t it?)
And to be honest, I’m not at all interested in what an LLM thinks of my writing. Are there things I’m doing that it’ll point out to me that I don’t already know? Not at this point.
As I have said, more than once in other places, I have an issue with people using tools, especially AI, when they’re new to writing in the fiction arena. The major issues are:
1st, you becoming dependent on the tool, because tools are limiting - it’s why you use them.
2nd, it stunts your growth and makes it harder for you to find your voice, your style.
Remember, you’re writing for people, not a machine, it doesn’t matter what the machine thinks, it’s what the readers think. The machine will pick what the machine will pick for reasons known only to the machine. It will not help you write better stories for people.
Readers will pick stories for reasons that they will tell you, and that you, as another person, another reader, a writer, will understand. You will connect with their observations because you can understand their observations. You can look at them and say ‘I agree with this’ or ‘I don’t agree with this’. You can say ‘this one gets what I’m saying’ or ‘this one doesn’t get it at all - how do I do a better job at reaching them?’
Their observations will also tell you what the things are that people notice. A machine notices everything. It comments on those things it’s been programmed to comment on. While a human being will notice those things that are important to human beings, and will comment on the things that people not machines find of interest or of value.
This is a part of learning your craft, of finding your voice, of becoming a writer. Learning how to connect with your audience, write for your audience. Everyone has their own journey along this road, and for all that each of us seems to make many of the same stops on that road, each of our paths along it is unique. Tools can stunt that. AI tools will strangle it dead. Because the AI tool is going to give everyone the same answer. Because that’s what tools do: uniformity.
Everyone likes AI tools because it makes their job ‘easier’. Well there is no path to being a craftsman that involves ‘easier’. Easier holds you back. Easier doesn’t let you grow. Easier doesn’t give you those intuitive jumps where you go ‘Ah HA! Now I get it!’ and you take that step that elevates your abilities.
It’s why I tell people not to use grammarly, which has a grammar level of a 6th grader, barely. It won’t make you a better writer; it’ll make you a more boring one.
The Map is not the Territory.
The Tool is not the Craftsman.
AI will not help you improve - it can’t, it doesn’t think and it’s not your audience.
Remember, you’re writing for people, and a machine will never be able to tell you how to do that.
Looking at my more recent numbers, it's more 6+ million words I've published.
Authors usually type. Computers are faster and more versitile than typewriters. I recall an authors' note by Piers Anthony about switching to a Dvorak key layout because he could produce more words per hour. Then computer vendors dropped that keymap and he had to refine an international language keymap to restore his tool. It was still his creative output, but the tool helped the process. One must be a craftsman to make a tool perform to its best. Letting the tool do the default work is buffering and isolating the creator from the product.