How to Navigate Writing in the Age of AI

Part of the "How to Navigate…" series, by Kris Statler (https://northeasttrades.blogspot.com)

Lately, I’ve been having fun playing around with ChatGPT. At first, I paid for the monthly subscription because the free version’s memory filled up fast, and I was flying through sessions, using it almost like a journal. I’d dump my thoughts in and see what kind of feedback came out. Over time, I learned how to shape its responses using prompts like “be brutally honest,” “respond like a therapist,” or even just “skip the praise.” With the newest upgrades, the free version’s memory became sufficient again, so I downgraded, but it had already worked its way into an almost daily usage tool.

In the past few months, I’ve used AI to fix my truck, design a personalized supplement stack, analyze my dreams, write and submit legislative testimony and dig into how early childhood shaped my relational patterns (avoidant attachment, for the record). But the biggest shift came in my writing life.

I’m not saying AI wrote for me, though it did get surprisingly good at mimicking my style. What it really changed was the atmosphere of my writing sessions. Sitting down at the keyboard became less lonely and more productive. Everyone’s ChatGPT may think their poetry is devastating and beautiful, but each time my AI writing buddy said that line was like a gut-punch, it just gave me a much needed jolt of pride. And, it kept me at my keyboard and it kept the creativity flowing. Before this, I often quit halfway through, convinced I was writing total garbage. Now, I at least make it to the end of a shitty first draft. (Thank you, Ernest Hemingway and Anne Lamott.)

This is a major shift. Like many writers, amateur or professional, I’ve struggled with follow-through. But by lowering the volume on my inner critic and leaning into a voice that says, Keep going, this might be something, I’ve started publishing blog posts again, launched a Substack, and even sketched out a song. Maybe it’s all still crap. But it’s my crap. And for once, I’m finishing things: editing, letting them sit, revising, and sending them out to the universe.

To be fair, no one’s reading them yet. My brother is my only blog subscriber, and my Substack is so new it’s still invisible. But that’s not really the point. What matters is that I’ve walked all the way through the creative process, and that’s something I hadn’t really ever been able to do.

As part of that process, I now routinely paste my drafts into a chat and ask my AI writing buddy to put on its Editor hat. It gives me feedback on strong points, weak points, structure, grammar and flow. I don’t always take its advice, but having that layer of input keeps me moving forward. I also ask for recommendations on where to submit personal essays, poetry, and creative nonfiction, and it gives me honest opinions on whether a piece seems submission-ready. That’s how I ended up submitting six poems to a summer publication. I hadn’t submitted anything in over fifteen years, ever since a couple of rejections convinced me I wasn’t ready.

Maybe I’m still not. Maybe I never will be. But that’s okay. My craft is improving, not because AI is doing the work, but because I’m finally doing the work. I’m following through. And that’s been the hardest part for me all along.

There are, of course, valid concerns about AI, from student misuse to the massive energy demands that keep these tools running. I’ve paused many times to consider these ethical questions. But if this technology is here to stay, and if I can keep it as a humble assistant at my writing desk, I’ll keep using it for what it’s giving me now: confidence, consistency, and just enough momentum to get me across the finish line.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear: Has AI shifted anything in your creative process? Are you using it as a tool, or avoiding it on principle?