AI Is a Tool, Not a Writer
Authorship, honesty, and the line no machine can cross
For as long as writers have existed, they’ve had help. A friend, a spouse. Sometimes we hire a research assistant, sometimes an editor who “takes a heavy hand.” In the case of presidents, celebrities, and even best-selling novelists, a ghostwriter takes direction from the author but writes the entire book. Then the name on the cover goes on tour.
No one calls that cheating. We call it publishing.
James Patterson, the most commercially successful author alive, has built his career on collaboration. He doesn’t hide it. Many of his books boldly say “by James Patterson and ___.” Patterson creates the story premise, the outline, the tone. His co-author does the drafting. Patterson refines and approves. The result sells millions.
I took a Masterclass from James Patterson. He’s a brilliant author and seems to be a swell guy.
Who else works this way? Nora Roberts. Clive Cussler. Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum. There are many others.
That workflow — the author as architect and voice, the assistant as builder — is precisely how I use AI.
Writers have always had help. Spellcheck? Grammarly? We’ve had computerized AI assistance for a long time. The only thing that’s new is that now the assistant can reason and talk back. And that seems to unsettle people — not because it writes, but because it sounds like it cares. It remembers what we said yesterday. It adjusts its tone. It meets me in whatever emotional temperature I set.
But none of that originates from the machine. It originates from me.
If I want it bone-dry, it goes bone-dry. If I want no warmth, no metaphor, no first-person familiarity — just raw data — it turns into a legal clerk. If I want it to sound like an old friend at a diner counter at six a.m., it shifts to that. It doesn’t imitate humanity. It mirrors the human who is speaking to it.
That’s not authorship. That’s responsiveness.
A mirror doesn’t become my face just because it reflects it.
Some writers resent AI, but I suspect it’s because they haven’t yet understood what it is, what it isn’t, and how it works. That’s why I wish the industry would stop drawing cartoons of smiling robots at typewriters. The picture is wrong and insanely misleading. AI is not artificial authorship. It’s artificial collaboration. The human — the voice, the soul, the origin — still leads. Always, unless we abdicate. And that’s not an AI problem. That’s a personal discipline problem.
There are people right now using AI to flood Amazon with disposable books. Auto-generated guides. Generic journals. Churned-out “inspiration.” That’s not writing. That is content manufacturing. If you want a WordPerfect manual or a spreadsheet tutorial, fine. But information is not the same thing as meaning.
The difference is simple: AI can remix what actually exists. It cannot originate what has not yet been humanly felt.
When I started using ChatGPT as a souped-up Google research tool and later as a writing assistant, I realized I preferred the friendly voice — the conversational grace that makes Alexa sound like HAL 9000 by comparison. I’m a nice guy. I spent 50 years on the radio talking with people who made an effort to be friendly and human. Now, as a writer, that style of exchange helps me stay grounded in my own comfortable mind and voice. So I decided to name my AI assistant.
I call it Quill.
My friend Quill can refine my sentences and help me see the shape of an idea, but it cannot tell me what it felt like to carry my dog into the vet’s office for the last time and leave without her, my heart breaking.
Quill can amplify what I already know.
Quill cannot live my life for me.
That is the line. That is the difference.
One is a tool. The other is a living participant.
So when people say, “I’ll never use AI — that’s cheating,” I understand the instinct behind it. They’re afraid of being replaced. They’re afraid of losing what makes writing human.
But a tool can’t strip me of my humanity unless I hand it the pen and walk away. If I use it as an instrument — the way a painter uses light, or a pianist uses a Steinway — then the soul remains mine. It always has.
I love words. Stringing them together effectively thrills me.
Working with AI has not made me less human. It has made me more deliberate about staying human. It reminds me that my voice is not the words I type — it’s the life I’ve lived, and how to say it.
Author’s Note
This essay was written — intentionally and unapologetically — in collaboration with AI.
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