Why I Will Never, Ever Use GenAI to Help Me Write

Not even a little bit.

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but I feel I must. There it is, in the front matter of my forthcoming novel The Riven Crown. A disclaimer.

I did not use GenAI to write the novel. At all. Not to brainstorm ideas, not to research, not to solve the many frustrating problems I encountered along the way, not to make up a name for a new character, and certainly not to write prose.

I feel I must point it out. Just to go on the record.

I will go further, right here in the public forum of my newsletter/blog, for the audience of my readers (hello and thank you). I would like to solemnly swear that I will never, ever use GenAI to help me write. Ever, at all.

And there’s only one reason for this.

When GenAI broke into public consciousness back in late 2022, I must confess it caused me some angst. With a few keystrokes one could easily produce entire slabs of prose. Or receive outlines and ideas for short stories, novels, plays, anything you asked for.

Of course, the quality seemed pretty naff, but I still felt a type of dread watching these things work. What was the point? If a computer could whip up a short story in the style of Ernest Hemingway in a few seconds, what was left to writers?

I had the awful feeling that the craft I’d spent a lifetime developing was about to become meaningless.

It didn’t take me long to realise that this technology would lead to a tsunami of content. Kind of like the whole shrimp-Jesus phenomenon that’s threatening to sink Facebook, but on the digital bookshelves of the world. It’s hard enough to stand out in a field of thousands of fellow humans, let alone in a desert of AI bots churning out spam novels.

I don’t care if other people want to use AI to help them write. I don’t think you’re a bad person if you use GenAI in your writing. That’s your choice.

But in my view, the more material a writer gets from prompting, the less of the finished product they can call your own. It’s the same as throwing out an idea for an improv troupe and then claiming you wrote the sketch.

However, a disdain for folding spam writing into my own work isn’t what motivates me to swear off ever typing a prompt into ChatGPT.

The reason why I will never, ever use GenAI to help me write is because I don’t want any help.

I can write my own goddamn novels, thank you very much.

Writing, good writing is an act of human expression. It’s born of the human condition, and is a reflection of it. The best writing glows with humanity.

That’s why I don’t want help from a computer algorithm. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it. I want to express myself, my individuality, my worldview, my humanity. I know it’s hard to do this well, and that’s the whole point. It’s hard to be a human.

But it’s also awesome.

As is the feeling of having written, entirely on my own and without any software assistance, the second novel in a fantasy series. I loved writing The Riven Crown, and am proud of it. Why would I pass up that opportunity to express myself, just for the sake of a shortcut or two?

Enough said on that. The Riven Crown is launching in less than two months. The proof copy is in the mail, so hopefully I’ll have a sneak peek of that soon!

(This blog post was written without assistance from GenAI)