Hello my lovely writers.
I have made the conscious decision to embrace AI, which you may or may not have seen me doing. I know some of you are reticent about using it, you may even be anti-AI and aggressive about not using it, but I wanted to give my argument as to why I think AI is beneficial to writers and is a tool we should all be embracing.
First of all, the biggest elephant in the room is that it’s here. It’s here to stay and, no matter what people are saying right now, it’s going to increasingly be part and parcel of the way we write and how we create our stories and put them out into the world. It’s going to be a more and more integral part of our authorpreneur journey.
AI is here to stay
AI is here, it’s there, it’s not going away. We have to accept it.
One of the things that made me decide to embrace AI is that I remember when Kindle came out and the first ebooks were available on Amazon. I distinctly remember being at my grandparents’ house and having this conversation with my parents and my grandparents about how – and this is my own snobbery here – I didn’t think ebooks would take off. E-publishing was for people who couldn’t get an agent and wasn’t real publishing.
Oh, how wrong I was. How, how wrong I was. Self-publishing is not a substitute for finding an agent and a traditional deal, it’s an alternative. Now here I am, going down that route myself. I was very slow on the uptake of self-publishing, I missed the golden years of that and now I’m playing catch-up, so I’ve made the conscious decision that I don’t want to make that same mistake with artificial intelligence. I want to be using it. It’s here to stay. It’s not going anywhere, it’s just going to get better and better and more and more used to the point where we can’t tell the difference if AI is being used or not.
Writing books using AI is a creative endeavour
I want to be part of that. I want to use that technology and those tools that can help me. AI is beneficial to writers and I would even argue that writing books using AI is a creative endeavour. It’s a form of creation. Those people may not be sitting down with a pen and paper and writing their first draft by hand but they are being the creative director of the story they’re putting out into the world.
They are coming up with the initial idea or they’re brainstorming with ChatGPT or Claude, or whoever it is they use. They’re brainstorming, they’re making decisions, they get to be the creative director on their project. They determine what’s going to be used, what’s not, which direction the story is going to take, how it’s going to be refined, how it’s going to be finessed, the types of characters they want to use, the types of stories they want to use, the tone and the voice they want the AI machine to use. All of that is going to be within their creative control and they’ll be the creative director of that book, rather than necessarily being the author of that book.
Where I love to use AI
I don’t necessarily want to go down that route. One of the things I love about writing is that hand-to-brain thing of writing my books, that’s what I enjoy. I enjoy that first drafting. However, where I do love to use AI and where I think AI is beneficial to writers is that I can take a plotline I’ve got, feed it into AI and ask, ‘What do you think? Where are the plot holes in this? Where can you see things that don’t match up in this?’ and it will bounce back to me, ‘I can see a plot hole here, here and here.’
Sometimes it will come back to me and say, ‘You’ve got something a bit obvious here as well. Maybe you need to think up something a bit more original,’ and if I can’t think of something, I can ask, ‘Can you help me out?’ and it will give me some ideas.
Sometimes the idea is in and of itself really good and I can incorporate it. Sometimes it’s a great trigger for an idea I can fit in the story. So, as a planning tool, something to plot a story with and see if that plan or that plot has major holes in it, I can use AI for that.
I’ve also fed my book into AI and said, ‘Can you tell me what tropes are used in this? Can you tell me the tone of this book?’ and asked it to give me feedback on the book I’ve written. That feedback I can then use in advertising and in my ad copy. I can use it in different ways like that as it gives me more insight into the work I’m doing.
AI is beneficial to writers
Blurbs are such a difficult thing for authors to write and so I use AI to help me with blurbs. There’s a multitude of ways in which you can use AI and I really encourage you not to cut your nose off to spite your face because you believe the old ways are the best. Be inquisitive about AI. You’re a writer, you’re an observer, you’re interested in the world and how it works so be inquisitive about it. You don’t have to incorporate any of these things, you don’t have to use them in your writing, but nor do you get to dismiss that other people are using these tools to help them in a way that works.
AI is not going away, it’s going to be here for the long haul, it’s going to increasingly be part of everything we do. Don’t miss the boat on this. Don’t get left behind. I know that often we don’t like change. I don’t like change very often and that was why I was reticent to get on board with Amazon but I don’t want to be so far behind the curve this time. I want to try and keep up this time. I want to see how AI can benefit me and how it can be useful to me and help me.
You know yourself that, with writing and being an authorpreneur, there are a lot of hats to wear. Not only are you the writer but you are the marketer, the business person and the CEO. With all of these things we have to do and all of these hats we have to wear, if I can use an AI tool to help me with some of those to help me along the way and use AI as a critique partner, a sounding board or as a way to brainstorm, I’m all for it. If AI is going to help me write a better story that readers will like and want to read, I’m going to go for it.
Using AI is not cheating
I know some of you are resistant and some of you are nervous about it but I do encourage you to be inquisitive about AI. Open your ears, have a listen, see what other people are saying and see what other people are doing. How could you use this tool to make your life better without feeling like you are cheating, without feeling you’re losing your integrity?
Remember, even if you choose to write your book using entirely AI, you’re still the creative director. It’s still your name on the page and it’s still your ideas that are coming to the forefront.
This is a fun new era. It’s going to change everything and that’s really exciting. We’re just going to write in different ways, tell our stories in different ways and use these new tools to help us do that.
I hope you can see where I’m coming from. I hope it’s going to give you a little bit of encouragement to be open to AI and see where it goes and see how you can maybe use AI to enhance your own authorpreneur life.
Emma xx
Emma Dhesi
Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.
She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.
Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.
Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!
