My Co-Writer Is a Machine (But My Best Ideas Still Bleed Biro)
On speed, friction, and why I refuse to outsource my thinking.
I used to believe that writing had to hurt a little.
Not in a tortured-artist way. I’ve never been one for staring moodily out of windows. But I did believe that good writing required friction — the scratch of pen on paper, the crossing out of sentences, the quiet humiliation of a paragraph that simply refused to land.
Then AI arrived.
And like most people who make a living from words, I had a moment of mild existential vertigo.
The First Time It Felt Like Cheating
The first time I used AI to help draft something serious, I felt like I was smuggling notes into an exam hall.
I typed in a prompt. It produced something coherent. Structured. Disturbingly competent.
Not brilliant. Not cutting. But… competent.
The part that unsettled me wasn’t that it could write. It was that it could remove the inertia.
The blank page — that old adversary — suddenly lost its power.
I’ve spent years writing in high-stakes environments. Political campaigns. Corporate crises. Op-eds designed to land a punch without throwing one. In those spaces, the hardest part is often starting. Once you’re moving, you can sharpen. But starting requires a kind of mental ignition.
AI hands you a spark.
And sparks are addictive.
It Has Made Me Faster. Brutally Faster.
I won’t pretend otherwise: AI has changed the mechanics of my workflow.
It helps me pressure-test an argument.
It gives me alternative phrasings when a sentence feels flabby.
It can restructure something I’ve written into a tighter frame.
It can tell me where I’m rambling (which, as you know, I sometimes do).
It is an excellent second brain.
In strategy and communications — where I live professionally — speed matters. Iteration matters. Being able to turn a concept three different ways in ten minutes is powerful.
AI has made me faster. Sharper in early drafts. Less precious.
It has also made me slightly more ruthless. When you can generate ten options in ten seconds, you become less attached to any one of them.
That’s a gift.
But it’s also a warning.
What AI Can’t Replicate (Yet)
Here’s the part that’s harder to articulate without sounding sentimental.
When I write with pen and paper — actual pen, actual paper — something different happens neurologically. The pace slows. My thoughts lengthen. I’m less performative. Less optimised.
When I write digitally, especially with AI nearby, I can feel a subtle pressure to be efficient. To land the hook. To sharpen the line. To compress.
When I write longhand, I wander.
And wandering is where some of the best thinking lives.
There is a particular kind of clarity that only arrives after you’ve written something badly by hand. After you’ve physically crossed it out. After you’ve felt the weight of a word that doesn’t belong.
AI can refine a thought. It can’t give you the lived experience of discovering it.
At least not yet.
The Illusion of Originality
One of the more uncomfortable realisations of the AI era is this: much of what we considered “original” was actually recombination.
AI is very good at recombination.
It can absorb tone. Mimic cadence. Rearrange arguments in familiar shapes. It can write in the style of a broadsheet columnist, a LinkedIn thought leader, or — mildly horrifyingly — me.
That forces an uncomfortable question: if a machine can replicate the surface of your voice, what is your voice actually made of?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
I don’t think voice is vocabulary. Or rhythm. Or structure.
I think voice is judgment.
It’s the decision about what not to say.
It’s the restraint.
It’s the risk you’re willing to take.
It’s the sentence you keep, even though it’s slightly dangerous.
AI can offer options. It cannot bear consequences.
And in political and corporate advisory work, consequences are the whole game.
The Real Shift Isn’t About Writing
The bigger shift AI has triggered for me isn’t mechanical. It’s philosophical.
It’s made me more aware of the difference between producing content and forming ideas.
AI is extraordinary at production.
But thinking — real thinking — is slower, quieter, and occasionally inconvenient.
If I outsource too much of the drafting process, I risk outsourcing the thinking that should precede it.
That’s the line I’m careful about.
I use AI to stretch an idea. Stress-test it. Explore its edges.
But the core premise — the provocation, the instinct, the judgment call — still has to come from me. Ideally, scribbled somewhere in a notebook with ink smudged along the side of my hand.
Until Something Better Comes Along
Will this always be true?
Probably not.
Technology has a habit of making romantics look naive.
Perhaps in ten years the distinction between “my thinking” and “machine-assisted thinking” will feel artificial. Perhaps neural interfaces will make this entire essay look quaint.
I’m not doctrinaire about it.
If something better comes along — something that deepens thinking rather than accelerates production — I’ll use it.
But for now, the pen wins.
Not because AI is a threat.
Not because I’m nostalgic.
But because the friction of handwriting on a page still feels like proof that the thought is mine.
And in an age of infinite generation, that might be the only luxury left.
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If you’re reading this on Substack, chances are you care about words too. I’m curious: has AI changed the way you write? Or just the speed at which you publish?
Reply and tell me. I promise I’ll read it — probably with a pen and paper at the ready.