Creative Writing with AI

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I thought I could share my writing process with ChatGPT to dispel some fantasies people have about AI doing great writing without a writer that at least has an idea of where he is going and whether he is able to tell good writing from bad.

Let’s start at the end, I once heard Dr. Jordan Peterson say, “If you are working at a text for a while, writing and rewriting it, and you come to a moment where you don’t know if what you last wrote is any better than what you erased, you have come to the limit of your writing skill.”

The more times you come to that frontier, the more your skill stretches, and you grow as a writer. And if you do it with AI before you know how to write, you will not learn to be a good writer as long as you use AI.

The beginning of writing

You need an itch that pushes you to write. Something that compels you to scratch to pacify – in order to start writing. That uncomfortable experience you need to put behind you… and life is full of them. Writing chose me, not I writing. Eventually, I chose to discipline myself to writing because it had taught me what a wonder it is for dissolving emotional cysts or existential tumors – and life has a good share of those.

I believe I was 17 when I read the Greek mythological tale, "Eros and Psyche" and it sent my imagination flying. I tried to make a poem about it and sketch pictures in an appointment book I had that became my sketchbook.

At 20 I was on probation at the university, because the English requirements were more than I could deliver, and my grade point average dropped below 2.0. I began to meet with a speech therapist to help me develop study habits; but very soon she realized that it wasn’t a language impediment that was my obstacle, and I began to attend therapy weekly. She asked me to write letters to both of my parents to express my feelings – and from then on, writing became the scratch to soothe the itch to understand what was beneath my uncomfortable feelings. And I wrote whole notebooks scratching away!

Volume helps, but nothing substitutes aim

This premise is good for working with AI as with anything in life. Something happens when you have a clear aim, even if your aim is not completely focused – something guides you to round up around the bullseye, until you hit it. You just need to be purposely aiming, and also to be persistent.

I overachieve in volume in my everyday life; I’ve always kept my aim on uncovering what was beneath the uncomfortable feeling.

Four years ago, in the midst of spring I was asked to leave the home I was building with my wife for 15 years. I had done my best to be a good husband and father of two wonderful girls. My best wasn’t well oriented as it seemed, and I was lost in the most devastating and complex emotional turmoil I had experienced. I had to figure it out fast, because my daughters should not be tainted by my confusion. So, I fell on the spell of writing again – and thank God for it – they weren’t touched.

I hope that up to now the reader has realized the importance of aim, and the more demanding the itch, the greater the motivation. If you think you have none, look again; you just might not want to poke into it – but through my experience in life, there is always something to untangle.

I write to uncover my past and so it doesn’t stay hidden in my present, because hidden emotional entanglements are like predators ready to devour all our intentions.

How did AI cripped into my writing

I began writing almost 3 years ago this weekly column. Started in English and had to find a corrector to revise my writing, I had no confidence that I could output a 100% error-free article. You see, I have dyslexia, and it creeps in all the time. Six months later, I realized I needed to write to my fellow Venezuelans; at first, I looked for a proofreader to revise my Spanish writing, but it didn`t work. So, I went through each article 15 to 18 times, and sometimes I found syntax errors after publishing them. All that helped me develop my writing skills.

In January I began to write about AI and decided to translate the articles with AI. Revising syntax and grammar before the translation became a good tool, but still I was reviewing the articles some 12 to 15 times before running it through ChatGPT and then translating them. After six months it takes me half the time to put out an article than it did 2 years ago and that includes the translation.

I don’t allow AI to crip into my writing

The Large Language Models (LLM), that is, all the models we use like Copilot, Gemini, Claude, X.ai, etc., are trained to be “helpful”. But let me be blunt, they can be as helpful as a castrating mother that doesn’t want her child to have any obstacles and so she helps him to become a useless and bored child.

If your aim is paramount, you must discern it to push forward. AI models will attempt to “help” you in a way that obstructs your aiming per se.

Some 3 months back, I attempted to write outside my comfort zone and used ChatGPT for the first time to revise the logical and structural cohesion of the article. I would write and revise my writing, even before the conclusion. I would prompt IAgo (the name of my ChatGPT) to please revise the logical and structural cohesion of the article and make sure I had no loose ends or dead ends. You see, I was revising some real case studies from the book for my article Weapons of Math Destruction and I didn’t want to misrepresent the author’s position. Since then, I have ventured into dangerous territory, allowing my curiosity to undertake topics that were not in my comfort zone. I had IAgo to assist me and not let me derail from my aim.

He has helped me to reorganize my writing process and focus on what is most relevant: the argument, my intention to uncover the emotional blockage that impedes our advancements and the discernment of what is most relevant in whatever theme I am investigating. Because I write to discover and recover what is relevant and treasurable – and for that, AI is being a good companion.

If you want to integrate AI into your creative or reflective writing, here’s a simple path I discovered: (1) write from the itch, raw and true; (2) revise with clarity and direction — ask yourself what your aim is; (3) let AI help you find structure or fill logical gaps, but never, NEVER let it take the pen from your hand.

I name my assistant IAgo. Iago was the captain that brought about the fall of Othello. Later critics have regarded Iago as one of Shakespeare’s most chilling, masterfully crafted villains. So IAgo was a fitting name for my companion, as a reminder of who is in charge and has the power of decision-making, to remind myself who is telling the story.