I often see talented writers and creatives push back on these tools, claiming that their storytelling or voice outshines any AI. When writers know a topic well, that can be true.
But here’s the thing: the power of these tools isn’t about replacing human craft. It’s about supporting it, supercharging it, and enabling writers to work faster and smarter.
Sure, a carpenter can still use a hand saw and chisel to create custom crown moulding for a house from scratch. Or they can apply their expertise to the job by using CAD design and outsourced production of finished moulding for the home they are creating.
If you’re a writer of any kind—author, journalist, freelancer, ghostwriter, marketer—there’s never been a better time to rethink your workflow. AI is more than a robotic substitute for “writing.”
Used wisely, it can become your research assistant, editor, brainstorming partner, headline writer, fact checker, interview assistant, and organizational wizard.
One of the most profound advances is the idea of “walled garden” models, AI tools trained exclusively on your content, not some vast soup of the internet.
For example, you can now spin up your own writing partner that draws from your entire content archive, in my case two decades’ worth of blog posts, articles, speech transcripts, and books. The underlying large language model knows how to write, while your personal corpus teaches it how to write like you.
The result? When it generates draft content, it echoes your voice and even remembers your go-to stories. It really does feel a little like extending your own mind onto the screen.
As I announced several weeks ago, I am using this approach to write a new book called The Fandom Playbook.
There’s a misconception that the best or only way to use AI is to have it spit out finished essays or stories.
However, the real opportunity is in the supporting roles:.
The benefit is that it clears the deck to focus on what only a good writer, with experience and discernment, can offer, elements like perspective, nuance, and an interesting story.
We’ve seen these inflection points before, whether it was the leap from candlelight to electricity or the revolution of typewriters to computers. The tools changed, but storytelling remained.
Writers who cling to nostalgia for the way they’ve always done things, whether that’s a manual typewriter or a reluctance to adapt AI into their workflow, risk falling behind.
The people who win in creative fields today aren’t the ones who declare war on AI, they’re the ones who figure out how to co-author with it.
AI isn’t the competition; it’s the accelerant for those brave enough to make it part of their process. Writers who lean in, experiment, and build these tools into their routines will outpace and outlast those who spend their energy insisting that technology “isn’t good enough" or they "are a better writer than AI".
Just as using electricity didn’t diminish candlelit dinners, AI won’t diminish your unique voice. If anything, it’ll help you share that voice more widely, more efficiently, and perhaps even more creatively, than you ever thought possible.
The future for writers isn’t about winning a contest against machines. It’s about using the best tools available to tell more stories, say more of what matters, and build thriving creative careers, with a little help from some very smart AI assistants.
AI statements:
The first draft of this blog post was created with my proprietary AI tool created by Cone and trained on my own content including all my blog posts going back more than 20 years. I submitted a very detailed prompt which included my email response to a writer friend who asked me about AI.
The image was created by ChatGPT with a detailed prompt including parts of this post.