Last week I wrote a text. One that didn’t work. I deleted it and started over. Three times.
In the end the text was half as long as planned, said something different from what I’d intended and was better than anything I’d set out to write. This is how I write, generally.
I write this way because writing is how I think. I don’t know beforehand what I want to say. I figure it out while I struggle with the sentences. And in the process I see myself more clearly than in any conversation.
The promise
More people now describe AI as a creative partner. It generates content and optimises it. The promise is less effort and a better result.
AI may keep that promise. It probably produces smoother text, faster than I do and with fewer wrong turns.
But there are days I don’t want a better result. I want to see myself. A text that leaves my questions open matters more to me than a polished answer.
What a creative partner actually is
A view out of a window that sets off a thought. An article, half read and then put down, because reading it started a thought of my own. What these moments share: they deliver nothing finished. They give a nudge, and I have to process it myself.
AI works differently. It delivers a finished result, fast and usable. What it removes is the part that matters most to me: the struggle over the thought, the moment when I don’t know what I think and only find out by writing.
The word “partner”
I object quietly each time I hear AI called a creative partner. The word carries a claim: both sides contribute something. AI contributes speed and pattern. If the result arrives finished, I no longer know what I am contributing.
Maybe I am too particular about this. Most people may not need this process at all. They may care about the result, and if the result is right, the path is beside the point. That would simply be a different way of working.
Mine stays what it has been this past week: unproductive, still trying to understand.