I’m not sure if every writer plans to make a statement about AI, but I feel like I need to.

Recently, I was sitting in a café in Tbilisi, and a German man was sitting beside me. I had my laptop out and was working on a chapter of a new novel using my normal Scrivener writing app. He glanced over and asked me what I was working on. I told him the brief synopsis of the story, and we settled into a nice long chat about writing. He also is a writer and had started writing more recently than I have, and in his own words, he wanted to use his writing to inspire people. He was in the non-fictional inspirational business, while I was deep in the literary fiction world. AI came up, and he went on to describe how AI has helped his writing a lot. He uses it to organize his thoughts, create structure where there is none, and to help him speed the process. He said he had never written in the past and AI has been tremendously helpful to him. Then he asked me about my view of AI in writing.

My reply was simple. In my view, AI in writing feels like the crushing of my soul. I don’t write to make money, though I don’t refuse it if it comes in. I don’t write to become renown. I write because I have to. The creativity that I have is an extension of my very being. The stories that flow out of me are mine and mine alone. Using AI to write a story or structure my thoughts would no longer, in my view, be creative writing.

I read an article recently about AI and writing, and one phrase really stuck out to me. AI only has the ability to look backwards. It cannot create and look forward into the future. It is based on everything that has come before it. This makes complete sense to me. Creative writing springs forward into the future. It creates things using that which we have built within ourselves over the course of many years. AI may know what I have written, but it will never know what I will write. Recently, my writing went on a tangent, and it made me pause for a second. AI could never have known I was going to go this direction. I didn’t even know it until I did. The organic nature of writing is its most important aspect. I often tell people I write to discover and to find out what the ending is. An AI generated outline would be depressing, stale, confining, and completely unhuman.

A similar point, which came up in the article, was that AI can plop down a plot and make digital decisions in a split second, but creative writing comes in stops and starts, and this is where the gold is. An author should wrestle with thoughts, write and rewrite, throw away and start again. It’s the thinking that is ultimately human and is the essence of the creative spirit. Without the struggle, without the back and forth, writing become nothing more than a bunch of regurgitative exercises, showing off the impressive skills of an algorithm, which reorganizes all of what has come before. AI writing is soulless.

My writing may be many things, but it will never be soulless, because I know it will come from me and me alone.

An indie writer like myself may find AI to be useful in design work or promotional materials, and I have dabbled a little with it in both of these areas. Its potential advantages are real when used in a measured sense in some of the work of a writer, but not the creative work. Not the most important work. Not the story. Not the dialogue. Not the words on the page.

I will never use AI in any of my creative writing endeavors. Every word, good or bad, will be mine. I couldn’t proceed if it was any other way.

Other writers may use AI differently from me. I’m not here to judge anyone. My creative process is mine, and mine alone, just as theirs belongs to them.

One final addendum. Before the German man left the café that day, he said one more thing to me. It was his attempt to indeed inspire me. He challenged me to quit my job and write full time. Let’s just see what his inspiration can lead to one day.

What are your thoughts on AI in creative writing?

Finally, here are pictures I took today of what I ate during two different writing sessions. You may think these photos have nothing to do with AI. I beg to differ. Here is my challenge question. Has AI ever been inspired by such sights? It has not, because AI cannot smell and cannot taste. These beauties upped my writing game.