Where the temptation lies // on AI

February 18, 2025

Okay *breathe *

I’m an author. I have a degree in Creative Writing from a UK university, I worked as a copywriter and a content manager. I published three books already—one of them being a translation of the previous book.

Writing good copy is difficult. I simply know it.

I spent five years of my life writing a middle-grade novel, queried it and was rejected by agents around fifty times. Writing that book was painful, that’s one of the reasons why I won’t write fiction any time soon. Since then, I decided I’d focus on nonfiction. And—I think—I’ve been great at it.

I’ve to admit I took a dim view of the arrival of Artificial Intelligence. Here and there, I heard anybody could write now. Wannabe authors released books generated with AI on self-publishing platforms like Amazon, thinking they’d make tons of money (spoiler alert: releasing books won’t necessarily make you rich), and people started losing their copywriting jobs over the claim that nobody needed them anymore to write good copy.

AI has definitely changed the game.

As an author, and especially now that I’ve a toddler who doesn’t want to nap at home anymore, time is scarce.

I’m currently writing my next nonfiction book about my experience as a pregnant person and a new mother. The first draft was completed a while ago but I’m rewriting it because… well, because I’m not satisfied with what I wrote originally. And it takes time. So much time! Time that I don’t necessarily have. Time I’m stealing here and there, instead of doing something else.

The temptation of giving my draft to an AI tool and being done with it is high. I recently made the mistake of asking ChatGPT if it could rewrite a paragraph of mine. I told it it was a nonfiction author and it had to rewrite something in a storytelling way. Gosh, I was blown away.

I’m a non-native English speaker—should have started with that. Writing in English is like second nature to me but sometimes I struggle with words. Sometimes I can look at my blank page and write nothing for hours. And just like that, AI had rewritten my little paragraph in a matter of seconds. More than that: I thought it was pretty good.

This blog entry hasn’t been written nor touched by AI, I guarantee you :) But I understand the temptation of prompting a tool to get something quickly. After all, we live in an age where people have lost patience. With companies like Amazon, you can get something the next day by simply clicking on a button. If it’s an ebook, you can even get it as soon as you click on said button.

I’m a little bit ashamed of my AI experiment if I’m being honest. I want my books to be 100% me, and the ones I’ve already published are. I think I’ve to make peace with the fact that, yes, writing or rewriting a book will take me longer than some AI. It will be more painful too. I’ve to accept that my writing is not perfect.

In the end, I know ChatGPT wrote a great paragraph. But that paragraph isn’t me. It’s not how I write. I’ll be even prouder of my achievement when I’ll finish my book. I’d have shown patience and dedication to my craft. And it will be 100% me.