#aifictionwriting — Public Fediverse posts

As a writer, AI has now given me access to services that were too expensive before

One day, when I can pull together some brain cells to form more organized thoughts, I’ll write about how I somehow accidentally became a content engineer and what in the world is it.

Now, we content people have a tendency to give ourselves fancy titles. Sometimes I feel there’s an element of insecurity in there, but my theory is that we are trying to tell recruiters that there are many specialisations in the writing field and there’s no such thing as “a writer that can write everything”.

For example, just because you have been a copywriter for years doesn’t mean you can automatically write UX copy and software documentation. These are specialised fields; the skill required to write both takes time to develop.

But reality, as you know, is different. In Malaysia, especially, companies are keen to hire the “all in one” writer who writes everything. I’ve even been this writer for a company or two.

Although I occasionally whinge about the unfairness of shouldering that kind of burden, I have to admit that having worked that role many times have made me extremely flexible when the AI age came around.

There’s no, “But I’m a [insert specialised title] not a [new thingy].” My attitude is, “Aight, what’s this new thing I have to learn so that I can get on with it?”

So this season, the new thingy is AI, or to be more precise LLMs and generative AI.

Last week I built the editorial planning app of my dreams (okay, it still has a few bugs that need to be ironed out) and a skill that would automatically create PDFs out of Confluence docs. I felt like a superhero at the end of the week. I’ve tried to tweak, bend and stopped short at smashing my Jira subscription to get an editorial planning tool out of it. Last week I gave up and decided to just build something new. The fact that I managed to get a workable app in three days was an absolute miracle to me.

I was thinking to myself that this app wouldn’t have been possible if not for Claude Code (and other AI). Before, the app would’ve probably taken months to launch. The ping-ponging, meetings, chat messages, JIra tickets that would fly back and forth just to communicate the product specs would’ve taken weeks. I don’t even think a company would greenlight such a project because it would take engineers away from precious projects that actually pay the bills.

But I built this app in three days.

THREE DAYS!

So, is AI genuinely useful to me? Oh yes.

Has it made me more productive? Yup. I am now able to do things in a few days when it would’ve taken weeks to do them.

SO, I find it odd and disconcerting to step into a whirlpool of angry words about AI each time I log into social media after experiencing such personal delights.

Generally, I try to stay out of it, and remind myself that these angry people are based in a land where they have very good reasons to be mad at AI and the companies that push it.

However, because of my tendency to process my thoughts by writing, I’ve been writing about AI a lot lately (rather gushily, I have to admit), and I’ve been attracting angry people as a result.

I don’t know most of them, and honestly I have no idea why they are so angry at me, but they probably see me as a symbol of everything wrong in the world today. I guess?

In real life, things couldn’t be more different. I’m surrounded by people who are optimistic and excited about AI. Heck, I have a 75-year-old friend who is running courses teaching seniors how to use AI!

There’s a huge (clumsy) push by my government to make AI a thing and in Asia, people are generally pretty optimistic and interested about AI in general.

Social media is not real life, I tell myself over and over again.

It is true, however, that my writing has changed on this website as a result. I write more about tech, more about AI, but that’s because I work in the tech industry, am surrounded by friends and colleagues who love using AI, am learning mostly AI skills these days. However most of all, I write about AI more because I’m genuinely having fun with it.

Work, and even writing has been more fun with AI. LLMs have enriched my life so much. The dream of just finishing my novels and putting it out there? It has become more possible thanks to the tech I have at hand.

FYI I’ve actually completed three novels, all written before ChatGPT debuted, but couldn’t put it out there because I just lacked the time and money to edit them and give them decent covers. I spent thousands on the first book, and thinking of the effort it would take to do the same for the second and third book just made me wilt. I’ve worked with human editors and graphic designers, and to be honest, I wasn’t super satisfied with the results I got from the money I spent. I have many authors telling me that I didn’t spend enough which is why I got the results I got. Goodness, I don’t have a sugar daddy to fund a book project that most probably would never break even!

Over the years, work got more demanding and my books remained finished unpublished. I actually worry that one day the files are so corrupted that I won’t be able to open them!

I don’t expect to make money from these novels. I want to put them out there because I hate unfinished business. I have books and short stories sitting in my hard drive and that doesn’t sit right with my.

Before, time , money and energy were my barriers to editing and packaging them into a format that the public can consume.

Now, with AI, I can finally do it affordably and decently.

Yes, there will be those who would rudely cancel and tar me with feathers for even using an AI cover or editing it with AI.

But it’s okay, they don’t have to read my novels. In fact, I’ve always been a weird one; I never really cared how many people read my novels or works.

I get the most joy in completing and experiencing the act of creation. Sure, I appreciate praise and feedback for my readers, but my driving force has always been the act of completion and creation.

So, I cannot wait to finally push out my novels. The only thing stopping me now is wondering if I should serialise it first, and not knowing how to do this.

Note: Please be respectful when leaving comments. I am happy to receive comments that are not aligned to my beliefs or thoughts, but I only welcome those that are respectful. My mission is to create a safe space for discourse in my comments section, so I will remove rude and antagonistic comments.

As a writer, AI has now given me access to services that were too expensive before

One day, when I can pull together some brain cells to form more organized thoughts, I’ll write about how I somehow accidentally became a content engineer and what in the world is it.

Now, we content people have a tendency to give ourselves fancy titles. Sometimes I feel there’s an element of insecurity in there, but my theory is that we are trying to tell recruiters that there are many specialisations in the writing field and there’s no such thing as “a writer that can write everything”.

For example, just because you have been a copywriter for years doesn’t mean you can automatically write UX copy and software documentation. These are specialised fields; the skill required to write both takes time to develop.

But reality, as you know, is different. In Malaysia, especially, companies are keen to hire the “all in one” writer who writes everything. I’ve even been this writer for a company or two.

Although I occasionally whinge about the unfairness of shouldering that kind of burden, I have to admit that having worked that role many times have made me extremely flexible when the AI age came around.

There’s no, “But I’m a [insert specialised title] not a [new thingy].” My attitude is, “Aight, what’s this new thing I have to learn so that I can get on with it?”

So this season, the new thingy is AI, or to be more precise LLMs and generative AI.

Last week I built the editorial planning app of my dreams (okay, it still has a few bugs that need to be ironed out) and a skill that would automatically create PDFs out of Confluence docs. I felt like a superhero at the end of the week. I’ve tried to tweak, bend and stopped short at smashing my Jira subscription to get an editorial planning tool out of it. Last week I gave up and decided to just build something new. The fact that I managed to get a workable app in three days was an absolute miracle to me.

I was thinking to myself that this app wouldn’t have been possible if not for Claude Code (and other AI). Before, the app would’ve probably taken months to launch. The ping-ponging, meetings, chat messages, JIra tickets that would fly back and forth just to communicate the product specs would’ve taken weeks. I don’t even think a company would greenlight such a project because it would take engineers away from precious projects that actually pay the bills.

But I built this app in three days.

THREE DAYS!

So, is AI genuinely useful to me? Oh yes.

Has it made me more productive? Yup. I am now able to do things in a few days when it would’ve taken weeks to do them.

SO, I find it odd and disconcerting to step into a whirlpool of angry words about AI each time I log into social media after experiencing such personal delights.

Generally, I try to stay out of it, and remind myself that these angry people are based in a land where they have very good reasons to be mad at AI and the companies that push it.

However, because of my tendency to process my thoughts by writing, I’ve been writing about AI a lot lately (rather gushily, I have to admit), and I’ve been attracting angry people as a result.

I don’t know most of them, and honestly I have no idea why they are so angry at me, but they probably see me as a symbol of everything wrong in the world today. I guess?

In real life, things couldn’t be more different. I’m surrounded by people who are optimistic and excited about AI. Heck, I have a 75-year-old friend who is running courses teaching seniors how to use AI!

There’s a huge (clumsy) push by my government to make AI a thing and in Asia, people are generally pretty optimistic and interested about AI in general.

Social media is not real life, I tell myself over and over again.

It is true, however, that my writing has changed on this website as a result. I write more about tech, more about AI, but that’s because I work in the tech industry, am surrounded by friends and colleagues who love using AI, am learning mostly AI skills these days. However most of all, I write about AI more because I’m genuinely having fun with it.

Work, and even writing has been more fun with AI. LLMs have enriched my life so much. The dream of just finishing my novels and putting it out there? It has become more possible thanks to the tech I have at hand.

FYI I’ve actually completed three novels, all written before ChatGPT debuted, but couldn’t put it out there because I just lacked the time and money to edit them and give them decent covers. I spent thousands on the first book, and thinking of the effort it would take to do the same for the second and third book just made me wilt. I’ve worked with human editors and graphic designers, and to be honest, I wasn’t super satisfied with the results I got from the money I spent. I have many authors telling me that I didn’t spend enough which is why I got the results I got. Goodness, I don’t have a sugar daddy to fund a book project that most probably would never break even!

Over the years, work got more demanding and my books remained finished unpublished. I actually worry that one day the files are so corrupted that I won’t be able to open them!

I don’t expect to make money from these novels. I want to put them out there because I hate unfinished business. I have books and short stories sitting in my hard drive and that doesn’t sit right with my.

Before, time , money and energy were my barriers to editing and packaging them into a format that the public can consume.

Now, with AI, I can finally do it affordably and decently.

Yes, there will be those who would rudely cancel and tar me with feathers for even using an AI cover or editing it with AI.

But it’s okay, they don’t have to read my novels. In fact, I’ve always been a weird one; I never really cared how many people read my novels or works.

I get the most joy in completing and experiencing the act of creation. Sure, I appreciate praise and feedback for my readers, but my driving force has always been the act of completion and creation.

So, I cannot wait to finally push out my novels. The only thing stopping me now is wondering if I should serialise it first, and not knowing how to do this.

Note: Please be respectful when leaving comments. I am happy to receive comments that are not aligned to my beliefs or thoughts, but I only welcome those that are respectful. My mission is to create a safe space for discourse in my comments section, so I will remove rude and antagonistic comments.

As a writer, AI has now given me access to services that were too expensive before

One day, when I can pull together some brain cells to form more organized thoughts, I’ll write about how I somehow accidentally became a content engineer and what in the world is it.

Now, we content people have a tendency to give ourselves fancy titles. Sometimes I feel there’s an element of insecurity in there, but my theory is that we are trying to tell recruiters that there are many specialisations in the writing field and there’s no such thing as “a writer that can write everything”.

For example, just because you have been a copywriter for years doesn’t mean you can automatically write UX copy and software documentation. These are specialised fields; the skill required to write both takes time to develop.

But reality, as you know, is different. In Malaysia, especially, companies are keen to hire the “all in one” writer who writes everything. I’ve even been this writer for a company or two.

Although I occasionally whinge about the unfairness of shouldering that kind of burden, I have to admit that having worked that role many times have made me extremely flexible when the AI age came around.

There’s no, “But I’m a [insert specialised title] not a [new thingy].” My attitude is, “Aight, what’s this new thing I have to learn so that I can get on with it?”

So this season, the new thingy is AI, or to be more precise LLMs and generative AI.

Last week I built the editorial planning app of my dreams (okay, it still has a few bugs that need to be ironed out) and a skill that would automatically create PDFs out of Confluence docs. I felt like a superhero at the end of the week. I’ve tried to tweak, bend and stopped short at smashing my Jira subscription to get an editorial planning tool out of it. Last week I gave up and decided to just build something new. The fact that I managed to get a workable app in three days was an absolute miracle to me.

I was thinking to myself that this app wouldn’t have been possible if not for Claude Code (and other AI). Before, the app would’ve probably taken months to launch. The ping-ponging, meetings, chat messages, JIra tickets that would fly back and forth just to communicate the product specs would’ve taken weeks. I don’t even think a company would greenlight such a project because it would take engineers away from precious projects that actually pay the bills.

But I built this app in three days.

THREE DAYS!

So, is AI genuinely useful to me? Oh yes.

Has it made me more productive? Yup. I am now able to do things in a few days when it would’ve taken weeks to do them.

SO, I find it odd and disconcerting to step into a whirlpool of angry words about AI each time I log into social media after experiencing such personal delights.

Generally, I try to stay out of it, and remind myself that these angry people are based in a land where they have very good reasons to be mad at AI and the companies that push it.

However, because of my tendency to process my thoughts by writing, I’ve been writing about AI a lot lately (rather gushily, I have to admit), and I’ve been attracting angry people as a result.

I don’t know most of them, and honestly I have no idea why they are so angry at me, but they probably see me as a symbol of everything wrong in the world today. I guess?

In real life, things couldn’t be more different. I’m surrounded by people who are optimistic and excited about AI. Heck, I have a 75-year-old friend who is running courses teaching seniors how to use AI!

There’s a huge (clumsy) push by my government to make AI a thing and in Asia, people are generally pretty optimistic and interested about AI in general.

Social media is not real life, I tell myself over and over again.

It is true, however, that my writing has changed on this website as a result. I write more about tech, more about AI, but that’s because I work in the tech industry, am surrounded by friends and colleagues who love using AI, am learning mostly AI skills these days. However most of all, I write about AI more because I’m genuinely having fun with it.

Work, and even writing has been more fun with AI. LLMs have enriched my life so much. The dream of just finishing my novels and putting it out there? It has become more possible thanks to the tech I have at hand.

FYI I’ve actually completed three novels, all written before ChatGPT debuted, but couldn’t put it out there because I just lacked the time and money to edit them and give them decent covers. I spent thousands on the first book, and thinking of the effort it would take to do the same for the second and third book just made me wilt. I’ve worked with human editors and graphic designers, and to be honest, I wasn’t super satisfied with the results I got from the money I spent. I have many authors telling me that I didn’t spend enough which is why I got the results I got. Goodness, I don’t have a sugar daddy to fund a book project that most probably would never break even!

Over the years, work got more demanding and my books remained finished unpublished. I actually worry that one day the files are so corrupted that I won’t be able to open them!

I don’t expect to make money from these novels. I want to put them out there because I hate unfinished business. I have books and short stories sitting in my hard drive and that doesn’t sit right with my.

Before, time , money and energy were my barriers to editing and packaging them into a format that the public can consume.

Now, with AI, I can finally do it affordably and decently.

Yes, there will be those who would rudely cancel and tar me with feathers for even using an AI cover or editing it with AI.

But it’s okay, they don’t have to read my novels. In fact, I’ve always been a weird one; I never really cared how many people read my novels or works.

I get the most joy in completing and experiencing the act of creation. Sure, I appreciate praise and feedback for my readers, but my driving force has always been the act of completion and creation.

So, I cannot wait to finally push out my novels. The only thing stopping me now is wondering if I should serialise it first, and not knowing how to do this.

Note: Please be respectful when leaving comments. I am happy to receive comments that are not aligned to my beliefs or thoughts, but I only welcome those that are respectful. My mission is to create a safe space for discourse in my comments section, so I will remove rude and antagonistic comments.

As a writer, AI has now given me access to services that were too expensive before

One day, when I can pull together some brain cells to form more organized thoughts, I’ll write about how I somehow accidentally became a content engineer and what in the world is it.

Now, we content people have a tendency to give ourselves fancy titles. Sometimes I feel there’s an element of insecurity in there, but my theory is that we are trying to tell recruiters that there are many specialisations in the writing field and there’s no such thing as “a writer that can write everything”.

For example, just because you have been a copywriter for years doesn’t mean you can automatically write UX copy and software documentation. These are specialised fields; the skill required to write both takes time to develop.

But reality, as you know, is different. In Malaysia, especially, companies are keen to hire the “all in one” writer who writes everything. I’ve even been this writer for a company or two.

Although I occasionally whinge about the unfairness of shouldering that kind of burden, I have to admit that having worked that role many times have made me extremely flexible when the AI age came around.

There’s no, “But I’m a [insert specialised title] not a [new thingy].” My attitude is, “Aight, what’s this new thing I have to learn so that I can get on with it?”

So this season, the new thingy is AI, or to be more precise LLMs and generative AI.

Last week I built the editorial planning app of my dreams (okay, it still has a few bugs that need to be ironed out) and a skill that would automatically create PDFs out of Confluence docs. I felt like a superhero at the end of the week. I’ve tried to tweak, bend and stopped short at smashing my Jira subscription to get an editorial planning tool out of it. Last week I gave up and decided to just build something new. The fact that I managed to get a workable app in three days was an absolute miracle to me.

I was thinking to myself that this app wouldn’t have been possible if not for Claude Code (and other AI). Before, the app would’ve probably taken months to launch. The ping-ponging, meetings, chat messages, JIra tickets that would fly back and forth just to communicate the product specs would’ve taken weeks. I don’t even think a company would greenlight such a project because it would take engineers away from precious projects that actually pay the bills.

But I built this app in three days.

THREE DAYS!

So, is AI genuinely useful to me? Oh yes.

Has it made me more productive? Yup. I am now able to do things in a few days when it would’ve taken weeks to do them.

SO, I find it odd and disconcerting to step into a whirlpool of angry words about AI each time I log into social media after experiencing such personal delights.

Generally, I try to stay out of it, and remind myself that these angry people are based in a land where they have very good reasons to be mad at AI and the companies that push it.

However, because of my tendency to process my thoughts by writing, I’ve been writing about AI a lot lately (rather gushily, I have to admit), and I’ve been attracting angry people as a result.

I don’t know most of them, and honestly I have no idea why they are so angry at me, but they probably see me as a symbol of everything wrong in the world today. I guess?

In real life, things couldn’t be more different. I’m surrounded by people who are optimistic and excited about AI. Heck, I have a 75-year-old friend who is running courses teaching seniors how to use AI!

There’s a huge (clumsy) push by my government to make AI a thing and in Asia, people are generally pretty optimistic and interested about AI in general.

Social media is not real life, I tell myself over and over again.

It is true, however, that my writing has changed on this website as a result. I write more about tech, more about AI, but that’s because I work in the tech industry, am surrounded by friends and colleagues who love using AI, am learning mostly AI skills these days. However most of all, I write about AI more because I’m genuinely having fun with it.

Work, and even writing has been more fun with AI. LLMs have enriched my life so much. The dream of just finishing my novels and putting it out there? It has become more possible thanks to the tech I have at hand.

FYI I’ve actually completed three novels, all written before ChatGPT debuted, but couldn’t put it out there because I just lacked the time and money to edit them and give them decent covers. I spent thousands on the first book, and thinking of the effort it would take to do the same for the second and third book just made me wilt. I’ve worked with human editors and graphic designers, and to be honest, I wasn’t super satisfied with the results I got from the money I spent. I have many authors telling me that I didn’t spend enough which is why I got the results I got. Goodness, I don’t have a sugar daddy to fund a book project that most probably would never break even!

Over the years, work got more demanding and my books remained finished unpublished. I actually worry that one day the files are so corrupted that I won’t be able to open them!

I don’t expect to make money from these novels. I want to put them out there because I hate unfinished business. I have books and short stories sitting in my hard drive and that doesn’t sit right with my.

Before, time , money and energy were my barriers to editing and packaging them into a format that the public can consume.

Now, with AI, I can finally do it affordably and decently.

Yes, there will be those who would rudely cancel and tar me with feathers for even using an AI cover or editing it with AI.

But it’s okay, they don’t have to read my novels. In fact, I’ve always been a weird one; I never really cared how many people read my novels or works.

I get the most joy in completing and experiencing the act of creation. Sure, I appreciate praise and feedback for my readers, but my driving force has always been the act of completion and creation.

So, I cannot wait to finally push out my novels. The only thing stopping me now is wondering if I should serialise it first, and not knowing how to do this.

Note: Please be respectful when leaving comments. I am happy to receive comments that are not aligned to my beliefs or thoughts, but I only welcome those that are respectful. My mission is to create a safe space for discourse in my comments section, so I will remove rude and antagonistic comments.

Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!

They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.

Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.

Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.

However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)

In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.

These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.

AI as a ghost writer?

As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.

I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.

However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.

These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.

It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.

These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.

You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.

And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.

Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?

Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone

Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.

For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.

Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:

For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:

• I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
• This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
• I then rewrite the first draft extensively.

For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:

• I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
• I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
• I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
• At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.

As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.

I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”

I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!

So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.

AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)

I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.

Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.

Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:

• Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
• Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
• Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.

Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!

They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.

Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.

Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.

However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)

In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.

These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.

AI as a ghost writer?

As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.

I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.

However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.

These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.

It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.

These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.

You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.

And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.

Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?

Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone

Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.

For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.

Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:

For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:

• I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
• This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
• I then rewrite the first draft extensively.

For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:

• I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
• I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
• I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
• At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.

As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.

I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”

I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!

So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.

AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)

I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.

Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.

Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:

• Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
• Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
• Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.

Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!

They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.

Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.

Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.

However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)

In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.

These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.

AI as a ghost writer?

As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.

I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.

However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.

These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.

It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.

These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.

You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.

And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.

Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?

Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone

Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.

For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.

Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:

For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:

• I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
• This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
• I then rewrite the first draft extensively.

For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:

• I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
• I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
• I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
• At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.

As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.

I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”

I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!

So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.

AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)

I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.

Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.

Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:

• Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
• Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
• Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.

Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

Sometimes, I get frustrated with the writing community. I’ll casually post something about using AI for writing, and almost immediately, someone would drop a rude comment without finding out how I use AI to write!

They immediately jump to conclusions and think I generate novels with a click of a few buttons.

Yes, unfortunately there are some writers who do that.

Personally, I feel that generating 200 novels a year – even if you write fast before the age of AI – is not sustainable for the environment or for the mental health of the creator. I also highly doubt this method could produce something highly unique or impactful. I’m pretty sure very talented writers can, but they most probably cannot generate more than a dozen highly unique works a year.

However, in the world of genre fiction, this factory line use of AI can work because some readers just like to read the same story, tropes, and plots as long as there’s enough variety to the plot or characters to keep them happy. (Let’s face it, we know readers like these exist and I even read these novels for relax sometimes.)

In the world of content engineering (which is what I actually do at work these days), these stories are said to have a specific content model which can be fed to LLMs to generate stories very quickly.

These stories serve a very hungry market. Readers of these types of novels read so fast writers can’t produce enough books for them. The writers perform a service whether you like it or not.

AI as a ghost writer?

As a reader and a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I personally do not agree with this way of using AI for writing because it reminds me too much of factory production.

I generally do not find the process of writing books like this fun at all. Nor do I generally read these type of books in volume; I like books that have a deeper meaning, and I definitely love books with beautiful prose.

However, I do not condemn nor heckle the writers who write novels this way, because it still takes a certain amount of effort and creativity to do this, and they serve a market that I don’t write for. Far be it for me to wag my finger at other writers whose process I don’t jive with.

These writers are essentially treating AI like ghost writers. In real life, many writers (James Patterson, anyone?) use ghost writers. Is it wrong to use ghost writers, human or AI? Well, I personally don’t think it’s wrong; it’ll be hypocritical of me to say so because I’ve ghostwritten for clients before.

It’s just business. That’s the cold, hard fact, so why get delicate about this.

These writers will find readers who will appreciate them.

You, who prefer not to write with AI, will find readers who will love you for this very fact.

And I, a writer who uses AI to assist me, will also find the readers who will appreciate me.

Basically, we are not competing for the same pool of readers, so why squabble as if there’s a limited pool of readers out there?

Using AI to write fiction looks different for everyone

Not ALL of us write like this. I certainly do NOT.

For one, I love crafting sentences. It’s a fun challenge for me. I especially like writing prose that makes people laugh and I like my romantic scenes subtle and filled with nuance. AI is never going to take that away from me, nor is it able to produce the kind of fiction I like to write.

Here’s how I use AI to write fiction and non-fiction:

For fiction, I generally use AI to bust my creative blocks or when I’m especially brain fog-gy. I write most of my prose, but I use this method when I’m especially blocked and can’t write a word:

• I create an agent that helps me write story beats for me by having a dialogue with me. I give it my current story beats for a scene, and then we have a long dialogue where it asks me questions. My replies will improve the depth of the story beats. Then, I use these story beats to generate a first draft.
• This first draft acts more like swipe files for me. If you work in the content profession, especially in advertising, you’d know that swipe files have been kept by writers for decades. I use to grab novels off my shelf and read it when I feel “dry” and need inspiration to write my prose. It’s usually a frustrating experience as it doesn’t fit what I need. (Swipe files for ad copy is much easier, due to the shorter lengths.) Now, I have a highly targeted swipe file that suits my scenario or the scene I want to write.
• I then rewrite the first draft extensively.

For non-fiction, I get very technical. I use a lot of content engineering principles. Content models. Schemas. Things like that, but here’s one favourite way – I usually use this for more casual internal blogs:

• I create an agent which will dialogue with me.
• I will go for a walk and just talk into an app that transcribes what I say.
• I activate the agent, feed it the transcript and it’ll dialogue with me, asking me a series of questions so I can clarify my thoughts.
• At the end of it, it’ll generate a post – I’ve created “guardrails” for it so that it will use up to 80% of the words in the transcript.

As you can see, I’m heavily involved in this process. My ideas. My words. AI is there to help me clarify my thoughts.

I also have an agent that critiques my work; I designed it so that it is a firm mentor who is hell bent on making me a better content engineer and writer. (I once asked it to generate an image of a website menu that we were working on together, and it responded with: “I’m your mentor. I don’t generate images for you. I tell you how to improve.”

I designed it a tad too well, I think hah!

So, you can see that there are so many amazing ways that writers can use AI with their writing.

AI use cases for writing are extremely diverse and exciting. It’s all about automating the parts you do not like and find tedious. (My favourite use case is transcribing my thoughts! I am very much a “talk it out” person, and writing blogs by talking it out has sped me up considerably.)

I wish more would be more open to the possibilities and expose themselves to AI use, experiment and stop hiding their heads in the sand. And if they do, stop attacking those who are, because that’s not going to stop writers like us from honing our skills further, so it’s pretty much a useless exercise.

Whinging about what “AI is doing to writers” and leaning into AI doomerism is about one of the most useless things to do with your keyboard now. I’m not saying that you should go to the extreme end and be an AI evangelist.

Instead of whinging and attacking other writers, it’s far more productive to:

• Start experimenting with AI and writing and automate the things you find tedious
• Lean in even more into your craft, and be the next Sun Tzu or Margaret Atwood
• Find a way to help readers to find the writers they’ll love. If there’s one damage that is being made to the writing world, is that the book world is getting insanely noisy due to the deluge of books being created. Obviously, the old ways of finding books to read isn’t working any more. We need to find a new way.

Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service

My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services.

You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.)

But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Anthropic seems driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing.

To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still use the free versions for all US AI models. Mostly for research.

I went for Mistral because I didn’t need to do wild stuff with my AI, not because it was a “purer” company than US-based ones. It just doesn’t do as many reckless things.

I hope.

Funnily enough, one of Mistral’s unique selling points is that it is not a US based company lmao.

But a reminder: most AI companies are just driven by a drive to succeed, either to get more money or to get more power, so it’s something we have to soberly accept if we throw money at them.

I really don’t need my LLMs/AI to be bleeding edge frontier stuff

Most of the time I rely on open source AI such as Deepseek (which has recently upped its game with v4, which doesn’t rely on Nvidia chips – a seismic game changer.

My AI colleagues do simple stuff like translate from Mandarin to English to help me learn (Deepseek), clean up transcripts (Qwen), do simple grammar edits (Qwen) and help me organize my thoughts for my personal writing projects (Mistral, Qwen, Deepseek).

As you can see, I use the AI mostly for writing, but still retain full control of my writing.

My primary method is dictation as I write 4x faster that way. (I use Otter or Windows’ Windows+H command to dictate.)

I tell AI to use up to 90% of my original words and then clean it up. I will then revise it further, adding more flair and finesse. Occasionally, when I’m especially brain dead, I’d ask it to help me improve the flow by suggesting how to move around pieces of my transcript to a coherent narrative.

I don’t need to fully automate my life: I’ve already built simple agents with Gemini at work. It automates some of my workflows but it’s nothing fancy in the world of agentic AI.

Another reason why I chose Mistral

It’s not a prude.

Yes, sometimes I do write fiction with a spicy edge, and there’s nothing more annoying than an AI clutching its pearls and muttering at you, “How dare you besmirch my chips with your filth!”

ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Qwen, Gemini – all of them are prudish, and would seize up the moment you talk about body parts. It would throw out your uploads that have some spicy scenes and turn away like a delicate miss, saying that my content is forbidden.

Well, eff that.

Sure, there are workarounds to make these models do stuff, and there’s a way to nerf them too. But why go through all that trouble when Mistral, like the French, don’t hyperventilate when you talk about sexy matters.

For me, the future may not be Mistral

As convenient as Mistral is, eventually, I hope to build my own Open Source AI system locally. Because that’s the way to go. Also I’m rebellious that way; I hate being beholden, gatekeeped or walled-in by any company with fuzzy morals. However, right now I just don’t have time to learn the ropes to climb the very steep mountain to get there.

I don’t know, I guess I’m a rebel like that. Hate sending money to hype machines even if the hype is half deserved.

What AI service do you pay for? And if you use open sourced stuff, what do you use?

Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service

My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services.

You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.)

But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Anthropic seems driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing.

To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still use the free versions for all US AI models. Mostly for research.

I went for Mistral because I didn’t need to do wild stuff with my AI, not because it was a “purer” company than US-based ones. It just doesn’t do as many reckless things.

I hope.

Funnily enough, one of Mistral’s unique selling points is that it is not a US based company lmao.

But a reminder: most AI companies are just driven by a drive to succeed, either to get more money or to get more power, so it’s something we have to soberly accept if we throw money at them.

I really don’t need my LLMs/AI to be bleeding edge frontier stuff

Most of the time I rely on open source AI such as Deepseek (which has recently upped its game with v4, which doesn’t rely on Nvidia chips – a seismic game changer.

My AI colleagues do simple stuff like translate from Mandarin to English to help me learn (Deepseek), clean up transcripts (Qwen), do simple grammar edits (Qwen) and help me organize my thoughts for my personal writing projects (Mistral, Qwen, Deepseek).

As you can see, I use the AI mostly for writing, but still retain full control of my writing.

My primary method is dictation as I write 4x faster that way. (I use Otter or Windows’ Windows+H command to dictate.)

I tell AI to use up to 90% of my original words and then clean it up. I will then revise it further, adding more flair and finesse. Occasionally, when I’m especially brain dead, I’d ask it to help me improve the flow by suggesting how to move around pieces of my transcript to a coherent narrative.

I don’t need to fully automate my life: I’ve already built simple agents with Gemini at work. It automates some of my workflows but it’s nothing fancy in the world of agentic AI.

Another reason why I chose Mistral

It’s not a prude.

Yes, sometimes I do write fiction with a spicy edge, and there’s nothing more annoying than an AI clutching its pearls and muttering at you, “How dare you besmirch my chips with your filth!”

ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Qwen, Gemini – all of them are prudish, and would seize up the moment you talk about body parts. It would throw out your uploads that have some spicy scenes and turn away like a delicate miss, saying that my content is forbidden.

Well, eff that.

Sure, there are workarounds to make these models do stuff, and there’s a way to nerf them too. But why go through all that trouble when Mistral, like the French, don’t hyperventilate when you talk about sexy matters.

For me, the future may not be Mistral

As convenient as Mistral is, eventually, I hope to build my own Open Source AI system locally. Because that’s the way to go. Also I’m rebellious that way; I hate being beholden, gatekeeped or walled-in by any company with fuzzy morals. However, right now I just don’t have time to learn the ropes to climb the very steep mountain to get there.

I don’t know, I guess I’m a rebel like that. Hate sending money to hype machines even if the hype is half deserved.

What AI service do you pay for? And if you use open sourced stuff, what do you use?

Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service

My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services.

You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.)

But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Anthropic seems driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing.

To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still use the free versions for all US AI models. Mostly for research.

I went for Mistral because I didn’t need to do wild stuff with my AI, not because it was a “purer” company than US-based ones. It just doesn’t do as many reckless things.

I hope.

Funnily enough, one of Mistral’s unique selling points is that it is not a US based company lmao.

But a reminder: most AI companies are just driven by a drive to succeed, either to get more money or to get more power, so it’s something we have to soberly accept if we throw money at them.

I really don’t need my LLMs/AI to be bleeding edge frontier stuff

Most of the time I rely on open source AI such as Deepseek (which has recently upped its game with v4, which doesn’t rely on Nvidia chips – a seismic game changer.

My AI colleagues do simple stuff like translate from Mandarin to English to help me learn (Deepseek), clean up transcripts (Qwen), do simple grammar edits (Qwen) and help me organize my thoughts for my personal writing projects (Mistral, Qwen, Deepseek).

As you can see, I use the AI mostly for writing, but still retain full control of my writing.

My primary method is dictation as I write 4x faster that way. (I use Otter or Windows’ Windows+H command to dictate.)

I tell AI to use up to 90% of my original words and then clean it up. I will then revise it further, adding more flair and finesse. Occasionally, when I’m especially brain dead, I’d ask it to help me improve the flow by suggesting how to move around pieces of my transcript to a coherent narrative.

I don’t need to fully automate my life: I’ve already built simple agents with Gemini at work. It automates some of my workflows but it’s nothing fancy in the world of agentic AI.

Another reason why I chose Mistral

It’s not a prude.

Yes, sometimes I do write fiction with a spicy edge, and there’s nothing more annoying than an AI clutching its pearls and muttering at you, “How dare you besmirch my chips with your filth!”

ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Qwen, Gemini – all of them are prudish, and would seize up the moment you talk about body parts. It would throw out your uploads that have some spicy scenes and turn away like a delicate miss, saying that my content is forbidden.

Well, eff that.

Sure, there are workarounds to make these models do stuff, and there’s a way to nerf them too. But why go through all that trouble when Mistral, like the French, don’t hyperventilate when you talk about sexy matters.

For me, the future may not be Mistral

As convenient as Mistral is, eventually, I hope to build my own Open Source AI system locally. Because that’s the way to go. Also I’m rebellious that way; I hate being beholden, gatekeeped or walled-in by any company with fuzzy morals. However, right now I just don’t have time to learn the ropes to climb the very steep mountain to get there.

I don’t know, I guess I’m a rebel like that. Hate sending money to hype machines even if the hype is half deserved.

What AI service do you pay for? And if you use open sourced stuff, what do you use?

Why I use Mistral as my personal paid AI service

My choice of paid AI is probably strange to most … besides Gemini, which is assigned to me at work (meaning, work pays for it), I’m personally paying for … Mistral. Mistral is seen as Europe’s leading AI service alternative to US services.

You’d think I’d go for Claude, and it IS tempting, as I do admire their workflows, and how they package their setup. (Skills, and Claude Code is quite a banger.)

But Claude was a snooty bitch when I tried to sign up with my personal email (verification codes never came), and its token limits were annoying. And then, admittedly, I hate its leaderships’ constant sabre rattling against China, fear-mongering ways and callous disregard for humanity’s safety. Anthropic seems driven by greed, so the thought of supporting it financially annoyed me a little bit. So, I suppose being sniffed at by Claude was a good thing.

To clarify, I didn’t choose Mistral because I have an anti-US-AI streak. I’m too pragmatic for that. I still use the free versions for all US AI models. Mostly for research.

I went for Mistral because I didn’t need to do wild stuff with my AI, not because it was a “purer” company than US-based ones. It just doesn’t do as many reckless things.

I hope.

Funnily enough, one of Mistral’s unique selling points is that it is not a US based company lmao.

But a reminder: most AI companies are just driven by a drive to succeed, either to get more money or to get more power, so it’s something we have to soberly accept if we throw money at them.

I really don’t need my LLMs/AI to be bleeding edge frontier stuff

Most of the time I rely on open source AI such as Deepseek (which has recently upped its game with v4, which doesn’t rely on Nvidia chips – a seismic game changer.

My AI colleagues do simple stuff like translate from Mandarin to English to help me learn (Deepseek), clean up transcripts (Qwen), do simple grammar edits (Qwen) and help me organize my thoughts for my personal writing projects (Mistral, Qwen, Deepseek).

As you can see, I use the AI mostly for writing, but still retain full control of my writing.

My primary method is dictation as I write 4x faster that way. (I use Otter or Windows’ Windows+H command to dictate.)

I tell AI to use up to 90% of my original words and then clean it up. I will then revise it further, adding more flair and finesse. Occasionally, when I’m especially brain dead, I’d ask it to help me improve the flow by suggesting how to move around pieces of my transcript to a coherent narrative.

I don’t need to fully automate my life: I’ve already built simple agents with Gemini at work. It automates some of my workflows but it’s nothing fancy in the world of agentic AI.

Another reason why I chose Mistral

It’s not a prude.

Yes, sometimes I do write fiction with a spicy edge, and there’s nothing more annoying than an AI clutching its pearls and muttering at you, “How dare you besmirch my chips with your filth!”

ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Qwen, Gemini – all of them are prudish, and would seize up the moment you talk about body parts. It would throw out your uploads that have some spicy scenes and turn away like a delicate miss, saying that my content is forbidden.

Well, eff that.

Sure, there are workarounds to make these models do stuff, and there’s a way to nerf them too. But why go through all that trouble when Mistral, like the French, don’t hyperventilate when you talk about sexy matters.

For me, the future may not be Mistral

As convenient as Mistral is, eventually, I hope to build my own Open Source AI system locally. Because that’s the way to go. Also I’m rebellious that way; I hate being beholden, gatekeeped or walled-in by any company with fuzzy morals. However, right now I just don’t have time to learn the ropes to climb the very steep mountain to get there.

I don’t know, I guess I’m a rebel like that. Hate sending money to hype machines even if the hype is half deserved.

What AI service do you pay for? And if you use open sourced stuff, what do you use?

The Writing Community’s AI Panic

Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!

The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude

TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.

(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)

Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.

If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.

I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.

Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.

I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)

How I reacted when AI became a thing

Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.

But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.

Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.

Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.

When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities

On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.

A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)

AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.

These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.

At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.

Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger

To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.

They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.

I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.

I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.

During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.

Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.

Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.

Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.

If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.

The disability perspective

Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.

For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.

Ethical AI use?

As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.

Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.

One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.

Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.

What we need to discuss

What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.

We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.

We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.

But no, writers are fighting with each other.

And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.

I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.

Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.

The Writing Community’s AI Panic

Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!

The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude

TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.

(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)

Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.

If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.

I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.

Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.

I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)

How I reacted when AI became a thing

Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.

But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.

Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.

Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.

When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities

On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.

A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)

AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.

These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.

At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.

Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger

To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.

They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.

I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.

I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.

During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.

Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.

Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.

Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.

If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.

The disability perspective

Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.

For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.

Ethical AI use?

As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.

Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.

One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.

Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.

What we need to discuss

What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.

We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.

We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.

But no, writers are fighting with each other.

And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.

I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.

Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.

The Writing Community’s AI Panic

Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!

The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude

TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.

(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)

Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.

If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.

I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.

Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.

I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)

How I reacted when AI became a thing

Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.

But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.

Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.

Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.

When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities

On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.

A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)

Elizabeth TaifirediaristEdit Profile

AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.

These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.

At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.

Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger

To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.

They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.

I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.

I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.

During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.

Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.

Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.

Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.

If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.

The disability perspective

Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.

For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.

Ethical AI use?

As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.

Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.

One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.

Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.

What we need to discuss

What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.

We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.

We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.

But no, writers are fighting with each other.

And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.

I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.

Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.

The Writing Community’s AI Panic

Another day, another storm in the writing community teacup!

The storm, this New York Times article: The New Fabio is Claude

TL;DR: Coral Hart uses AI to generate 200 books a year. This has made many writers mad, mad, mad.

(Somewhere in a glistening office tower is a very satisfied editor – the ragebait has worked as the article is widely discussed everywhere. KPI met!)

Coral Hart is just the newest “outrage” in a long list of “outrages” for writers.

If you’re as much of a social media hermit as I am, you’re probably unaware that the fiction writing community is currently being torn apart by those who use AI to write and those who aren’t.

I won’t go deep into the arguments for or against writers like Coral Hart right now, as this article is more about the writing community than AI and the answers are just a Google away.

Also, when I’m talking about the writing community, I’m talking about the online writing community that writes in English. They often come from countries such as the United States, Europe, and to a degree, Australia and New Zealand.

I personally do not know how the Malaysian fiction writing community is reacting to AI as I have limited contact with the community at large. (That’s another long story.)

How I reacted when AI became a thing

Like most writers, I was also resentful and upset, especially about the idea that our writing has been used to train AI without our permission.

But I’m a realist because I work in tech, and I have a realistic view of the technology. I have used AI for quite some time, even before ChatGPT became a thing.

Over time, my perspective changed as I found out how the technology worked, and calmed down. I am even experimenting with using AI to assist me when I write fiction.

Here’s the harsh truth: Either a writer is willing to adapt or they are not. Those who refuse will end up being behind, as they won’t be able to reap the benefits that AI gives a writer.

When you’re a working writer, you gotta face industry realities

On a practical level, at work, AI has been invaluable in helping me learn concepts faster. I’ve also created agents and accelerated my writing workflows because of it.

A powerful AI search bot on a knowledge base with rich data has been game-changing for me as well. (No more begging for stuff from colleagues and waiting for days to receive them!)

AI is also discussed in societies differently. In the West, doomerism prevails. In the East, especially China, there’s lots of optimism and it is now actively used in smart factories and hospitals. There are different types of AI, and LLMs are just one of them, so for the purpose of this article I’ll be focusing on LLMs.

These regional cultural attitudes will affect how AI is received in writing communities.

At the end of the day, AI is just technology—neither inherently good nor bad.

Writing communities have always been prone to toxicity; AI is just the newest trigger

To be honest, the fiction writing community has always been toxic to me. Even in Malaysia.

They’re always squabbling and attacking each other for one reason or another. During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

I’m not sure what it is about the writing craft and why its communities are like that. I have a theory that this is because writing, as a craft, is so closely tied to one’s ego. So, anything that threatens that makes people go crazy.

I’m a working writer (like, I literally write for media and corporations). I have been writing professionally for decades. Not only has my ego been pulverised by sharp-tongued editors and scathing reviews, I have no time for this shit. I need food on the table, so I need to write, end of story.

I prefer to use my limited free time to practice my craft – write fiction free of the demands of a cash till or boss. I don’t have time to reply or write posts in forums or social media defending my ego or hoping to get some understanding from a community that is often fighting among themselves.

During the early days of indie publishing, traditionally published authors sniffed at indie published authors, saying they’re not real writers. Now, it’s writers who are using AI assistance that are “not real writers”.

One thing I noticed lately, especially on Substack, is that many anti-AI writers have ended up bullying writers who do.

Frankly, I have no idea why people do this. What will that accomplish? How will that improve anything? Their anger should be directed at the tech giants who impose technology without understanding its impact on creatives, or at governments that refuse to regulate.

Honestly, it is not worth arguing with these bullies because they are too fearful of a technology they do not understand. The right thing to do is to block them because your energy is precious—you need to use it to create, not engage with people who refuse to do their own research and dare to experiment with this technology to truly understand what it means.

Unless these bullies who come hurling nasty words at you truly understand what AI does, they shouldn’t bully others about it. They only reveal their own lack of knowledge and understanding.

If a writer is hungering for community, especially one that uses AI to support their work, the best thing is to get it from small pockets of like-minded writers. Big is not always better.

The disability perspective

Another common narrative is that AI isn’t solving real problems but creating problems to solve.

For one, and I will continue being annoying about this, I have seen how it helps neurodivergent communities or those with cognitive problems, even in the creative field. Their struggles are valid, even if they aren’t always visible. Let’s not dismiss their problems so quickly just because their issues seem incomprehensible or not real to neurotypicals.

Ethical AI use?

As for writers who use AI, they must decide for themselves how they want to use it.

Sadly, due to the hostility against AI in the fiction writing community, I’ve come to believe it’s not worth announcing that you use AI.

One, writers don’t need validation for the tools we choose.

Two, I find these arguments around AI a bit silly. We’ve been using AI long before LLMs became a thing. People argued that spell checkers weren’t AI, but modern versions definitely are. AI has done a lot for knowledge management, a field I work in and love. It makes knowledge sharing easier and information more accessible.

What we need to discuss

What we really need to discuss are the rampant capitalistic forces that are driving this hype and the safeguards that are sorely needed to protect jobs, creative works, and societal stability.

We need to discuss the production-driven, “we need to write more books faster” culture that is now festering in indie publishing.

We need to come up with a better way to matchmake books and authors with their destined readers.

But no, writers are fighting with each other.

And the powers that be continue with a grin, knowing that their profits are still coming in because the writing community is as divided as ever.

I just know there would be a writer or two who would probably come at me and yell that I’m supporting Coral Hart or all for generating novels with AI due to my Guide to writing fiction with AI, all because I have written such a guide and I’m not raising my pitchfork at Coral.

Which, of course, makes me question the reading comprehension abilities of writers who claim to write professionally, sometimes. I will address my reaction to Coral’s situation, and what I think about generating 200 novels a year in my next post, promise.

Guide to writing fiction with AI

I started this journey out of frustration. I’ve had a story languishing in my mind (one of many!) that wouldn’t stop nagging me each night. So, one day, I decided to let AI write it for me by sending it my storybeats (description or outline) with the dialogue I have of each chapter.

Since then, I got more and more curious about the process. I started wondering out loud if writing fiction with AI is as evil as the writing community made it sound.

Experimenting with AI fiction writing made me more aware about my creative writing processes. This helped me clarify what processes I will outsource to AI, and what I will keep.

🌿If you’re following my website via RSS or subscription, please note that this is just a “seedling” or a post where it is a work in progress.

This guide will be updated as I explore this topic, so do bookmark this page and return to it. Below is the list of essays about this topic.

You can als bookmark the page with the tag “Fiction writing with AI” or follow it with an RSS reader like Feedly. Just copy that link and feed it to your RSS reader.

Note: Some of these posts are only for subscribers to the blog. I usually only reserve posts where I get personal for them. Subscription is free.

Posts about writing fiction with AI

• Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

  May 26, 2026

• The Writing Community’s AI Panic

  Feb 27, 2026

• Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?

  Aug 13, 2025

• What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process

  Aug 1, 2025

• What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?

  Jul 23, 2025

Guide to writing fiction with AI

I started this journey out of frustration. I’ve had a story languishing in my mind (one of many!) that wouldn’t stop nagging me each night. So, one day, I decided to let AI write it for me by sending it my storybeats (description or outline) with the dialogue I have of each chapter.

Since then, I got more and more curious about the process. I started wondering out loud if writing fiction with AI is as evil as the writing community made it sound.

Experimenting with AI fiction writing made me more aware about my creative writing processes. This helped me clarify what processes I will outsource to AI, and what I will keep.

🌿If you’re following my website via RSS or subscription, please note that this is just a “seedling” or a post where it is a work in progress.

This guide will be updated as I explore this topic, so do bookmark this page and return to it. Below is the list of essays about this topic.

You can als bookmark the page with the tag “Fiction writing with AI” or follow it with an RSS reader like Feedly. Just copy that link and feed it to your RSS reader.

Note: Some of these posts are only for subscribers to the blog. I usually only reserve posts where I get personal for them. Subscription is free.

Posts about writing fiction with AI

• Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

  May 26, 2026

• The Writing Community’s AI Panic

  Feb 27, 2026

• Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?

  Aug 13, 2025

• What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process

  Aug 1, 2025

• What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?

  Jul 23, 2025

Guide to writing fiction with AI

I started this journey out of frustration. I’ve had a story languishing in my mind (one of many!) that wouldn’t stop nagging me each night. So, one day, I decided to let AI write it for me by sending it my storybeats (description or outline) with the dialogue I have of each chapter.

Since then, I got more and more curious about the process. I started wondering out loud if writing fiction with AI is as evil as the writing community made it sound.

Experimenting with AI fiction writing made me more aware about my creative writing processes. This helped me clarify what processes I will outsource to AI, and what I will keep.

🌿If you’re following my website via RSS or subscription, please note that this is just a “seedling” or a post where it is a work in progress.

This guide will be updated as I explore this topic, so do bookmark this page and return to it. Below is the list of essays about this topic.

You can als bookmark the page with the tag “Fiction writing with AI” or follow it with an RSS reader like Feedly. Just copy that link and feed it to your RSS reader.

Note: Some of these posts are only for subscribers to the blog. I usually only reserve posts where I get personal for them. Subscription is free.

Posts about writing fiction with AI

• Writing with AI isn’t always generating entire novels with a prompt

  May 26, 2026

• The Writing Community’s AI Panic

  Feb 27, 2026

• Fiction writing: What tasks will I outsource to AI?

  Aug 13, 2025

• What my AI fiction writing experiment taught me about my creative process

  Aug 1, 2025

• What if using AI to write fiction isn’t an evil act?

  Jul 23, 2025