I Can Write. I Just Don’t See Why I Have To.

I can write.

I’ve spent years writing proposals, explaining technical things, communicating with clients and doing all the other writing that comes with running a business. I’m perfectly capable of sitting down and writing an article.

I just don’t particularly want to.

That isn’t because I dislike ideas or expressing myself. Quite the opposite. I enjoy thinking about things. I enjoy conversations where someone challenges what I’m saying or offers an interpretation I hadn’t considered.

What I don’t enjoy is spending four hours turning those thoughts into a polished article. By the time I’ve made the same point sound slightly better for the ninth time, I’ve usually stopped caring about the point altogether.

The bit I actually enjoy

I might notice something. Recently, for example, I realised I hardly ever hear anyone described as a “self-made man” anymore. I started wondering why.

I mentioned it to ChatGPT. It suggested some explanations. I agreed with some, disagreed with others and introduced a few ideas of my own. We ended up discussing industrial working-class identity, the changing meaning of wealth, social media, consumer debt and the way our reference points have changed.

Twenty minutes earlier, I’d simply wondered why nobody used a particular phrase anymore. Now I had the beginnings of an article.

That’s the bit I enjoy: the conversation, the exploration and finding connections between things. It’s much closer to a good chat in the pub than staring at a blank document and wondering how to begin.

A way of thinking that suits me

I’m autistic. That’s relevant to how I experience the process, but it isn’t the reason I need AI. I don’t need it to write. As I may have mentioned, I can write perfectly well.

Conversational AI just happens to be a way of exploring ideas that works particularly well for me. Sometimes I have a thought that isn’t fully formed. AI offers an interpretation. I can reject it, correct it, expand it or take the conversation somewhere else.

I’m not suggesting this says anything about autistic people in general. It’s simply something I enjoy and find useful.

So, is it still my writing?

It’s fair to ask whether an article has less value because AI helped construct the sentences.

I developed the ideas. I chose which interpretations to pursue. I challenged the suggestions I disagreed with. I decided what I believed and what I wanted to publish. Does it matter that I didn’t personally type every sentence?

Perhaps to some people it does. That’s fine.

AI isn’t simply a transcription service, though. It introduces ideas and influences the discussion. Pretending otherwise would be silly. These articles are AI-assisted, and I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that.

But influence isn’t the same as authorship. A conversation with a friend might change how I think about something. An editor might restructure an argument or suggest a better phrase. We don’t normally conclude that the finished piece belongs to them.

It does have its problems

AI can be too agreeable. It can make a weak argument sound convincing, introduce inaccuracies and make something sound more intelligent or profound than it really is.

I don’t want any of that. I want to explore ideas, not have a machine tell me everything I say is brilliant. Sometimes I want it to tell me I’m talking rubbish. Ideally before I publish the rubbish.

Whatever help I use, I remain responsible for what appears here. If an article is wrong, tedious or both, that’s on me.

Why start a blog?

I used to have one around twenty years ago. I miss that internet.

People had personal websites where they wrote about whatever interested them. You didn’t need a content strategy. You didn’t need to become an influencer. You could just have a thought and share it.

I’d like to do that again. But I also have a business to run, a family and other responsibilities. If writing an article takes four hours, I’m probably not going to do it very often.

If exploring an idea takes twenty minutes and AI helps turn it into something readable, I might actually enjoy doing it regularly. Or irregularly. I’m making no promises.

And that’s really the point.

I can write. I just don’t see why I have to spend hours doing it when the part I enjoy is thinking.

If technology lets me spend more time exploring ideas and less time writing them up, that seems like a perfectly reasonable use of it.