I joined host Dave Miller and fellow Portland author Tracy Hoagland on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud talk show last Friday. We were discussing how creative writers are using AI tools.
Listen to the conversation here.
The conversation was short (about 15 minutes) but nuanced, and my main takeaway was this:
AI can do a lot of things for you, but it cannot create that which only you can create.
The creative work that only you can make is the most engaging. The most interesting. The most valuable.
It’s more difficult, of course—but that’s part of the point.
As Tracy said early on in the conversation, one of the most important parts of writing is the struggle. The struggle to understand what you think. To articulate it clearly. To polish it cleanly.
That time spent wrestling with the language isn’t wasted effort—it’s how you establish your ideas, your values. Everything that makes you unique.
(I talked a bit about the value of that struggle a few weeks ago in my most recent Substack post, “Magpie Mode.”)
I think AI is super useful for utility writing, like polishing up your marketing copy and turning it into a series of Facebook ads.
But even writing that marketing copy in the first place is a form of wrestling. It helps you see your book more clearly—which is why I often write a version of it before I start writing my books.
It can be useful for crafting drafts of things like emails or blog posts, when you’ve fed it with the ideas and frameworks and material you’ve already developed.
Though please please please edit those drafts into your own voice.
I’m tired of meeting someone who’s dynamic and amazing in person, only to get a watered-down, AI-ified version of them once I sign up for their newsletter.
I mean, if I wanted to hear mindset coaching tips from Claude, I’d go ask it. I’ve got my own subscription, thx.
I want to hear what you specifically have to say. I want to hear your own stories. I want you to tell them in your own voice.
Pretty please!
In the end, I view AI use less as a moral issue, and more as a marketing and legacy issue.
If you want your writing to matter, if you want it to last beyond you, if you want it to connect with your audience and change lives—then you can’t outsource your thinking and your writing to AI.
Why bother creating content that means nothing, that speaks to no one, that will last no longer than a breath?
Use your voice while you have it, friend.