How much should you use AI when writing? Write all of it? None of it? Somewhere in between?
The writing that has come out of LLMs has been described as brown by @JasonFried of @37signals. Brown, because it’s not a particular style, it’s a blend of all the styles. Just like when you combine all the colors, it’s a muddy, brown mess. I thought you got black when you combined all the colors? Regardless, the analogy plays.
As I try to navigate the use of LLMs to make me more productive, I am finding the same thing. I don’t want to get rid of them completely, but finding the right time and amount to introduce, especially into something like writing, can be a bit challenging. I use it all the time. Never for the final product though. How much I use it for writing is different every time.
One thing is for sure though: my rough draft or at least an outline of ideas is always written by my own hand for the first pass. What that looks like? Well, it could be paragraphs of thoughts just spewed onto the paper—line after line, few paragraphs. I worry about organization later. It could be me stumbling to find what I want to write about. I write two or three sentences and ask ChatGPT to help me brainstorm. It generally elaborates a bunch of hallucinations, but it gives me directions and ideas to go toward. It allows me to continue.
There isn’t a procedure I use that I follow every time, but there are patterns depending on the subject, my mood, how engaged I am, and how freely the words are flowing from my fingertips.
I will admit, at first I let AI rewrite my rough draft for me, and with small edits, I let it go forward. For the most part, it captured what I wanted to say. Though, over time, I noticed that it was missing my style. It was writing in a style that I didn’t want. Even though I had meticulously crafted the writing style through prompts, it’s still not completely right.
I’m constantly tweaking this relationship with AI and writing. Though, I find I’m getting more heavy-handed with the rewriting and leaving AI to do just the formatting.
It’s a struggle, because when ChatGPT or Grok rewrites something for me, it sounds cohesive with very little effort—albeit, bland. It’s missing something, and I think Jason Fried nailed it.
It’s missing personality.