Writing in the Age of AI: What to Use, What Not to Lose

As writing becomes effortless with AI, it is worth asking what happens to the process that gives it meaning.

That question sharpened when I learned that Amazon had recently limited authors to 3 uploads per day. Yep, that’s right. Three books a day! That decision alone tells you the scale of what is happening. At the same time, AI tools can now generate articles, blogs, and even books instantly from a simple prompt. The result is a flood of AI-generated material. I deliberately avoid calling much of it writing. It feels more like “stuff,” content produced effortlessly and pushed into our inboxes, our feeds, and increasingly across our eyes.

A story about George Harrison searching for the right words illustrates why the process matters.

When Harrison was working on his song Something, he struggled with one particular lyric. For months, he had been using a placeholder line that he knew was not right. The line was “attracts me like a pomegranate.” It was not the lyric he wanted, but it was the phrase that surfaced while he searched for the right one. Eventually, he brought the song into the studio and asked John, Paul, and Ringo to help him finish it.

Through that collaborative struggle, the awkward placeholder eventually transformed into the memorable line: “attracts me like no other lover.”

The process by which the song came to life illustrates a fundamental aspect of creativity. The awkward, imperfect word or phrase and the toilsome search for something better are the very processes through which the right words finally emerge.

What has nagged me is not the concern that artificial intelligence is being used, but that writers and wannabe writers may be gradually losing sight of the role that creative struggle plays in producing meaningful writing, and that readers are increasingly turned off by the telltale signs that “content” has been AI-generated.

Writing is not simply the transcription of ideas that are already fully formed. In many cases, writing is how ideas evolve towards clarity. Draft after draft, paragraph after paragraph, the writer searches for the right words and, in doing so, often discovers what they truly think. The very act of writing, putting pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard, activates a cognitive and emotional process that stimulates creative thought.

The process often yields a remarkable, memorable outcome. A phrase suddenly arrives. A vague concept becomes precise. A connection appears that wasn't visible before. Those moments are rewarding and necessary. If we outsource or delegate too much of that process, we risk losing those moments of discovery.

I sent an early version of this blog post to my two sons. Both of them write professionally. One writes copy targeting busy executives, and the other writes stories for film. Interestingly, they both raised the same concern: that reliance on AI can lead to the gradual loss of creative muscle.

One of them described it in a way that stayed with me. Using AI heavily for creative writing can feel like going to the gym wearing an exoskeleton that lifts the weights for you. You complete the routine, but you gain very little strength.

Writing works much the same way. The more you wrestle with language, the stronger your ability becomes. The more you search for the precise word, the more capable you become of expressing what is actually within you. Remove that struggle, and the muscle slowly weakens.

Readers do not simply consume information. They listen for a voice. They want to connect with the mind of another person who has invested themselves in the words, the phrases, the logic, and the ideas. It may be unconscious, but increasingly, readers can discern the difference between AI-generated writing and human writing.

That human presence, in a word, is what makes writing worth reading.

Which brings me back to George Harrison. Without the awkward placeholder phrase “attracts me like a pomegranate,” the line “attracts me like no other lover” might never have emerged. The deeper meaning of the song was already somewhere within him. It simply had to be discovered.

So here is the reminder to me and hopefully an encouragement to you. Whether you are a regular writer or a wannabe writer full of self-doubt, keep in mind that the ideas we are trying to express already exist somewhere inside us. They emerge gradually through the act of writing itself. The struggle with language is not a distraction from creativity; it is the pathway to it.

Artificial intelligence can certainly help with many practical tasks. It can assist with editing, with structure, with fact-checking, and perhaps even brainstorming. But the discovery of meaning, the slow revealing of the words buried deep in you, perhaps under layers of self-doubt, that truly express what we think and feel, is something different. That process belongs to the writer.

Sometimes the wrong words are the path to the right ones. George Harrison’s pomegranate reminds us of that. The imperfect phrase was not a failure. It was part of the journey that led him to the words that mattered.

And that is why your words matter. They come from a place no machine can reach. They begin in your mind, pass through your voice, and eventually find their way to your fingers, carrying something uniquely human: the trace of the person who struggled to discover them.

Writers write to be read. And the words worth reading are the ones a writer struggled to find.

So use the tools that help you. But do not lose the work that shapes you. The process is not an obstacle to good writing. It is the source of it.

Lowell Sheppard, MA, FRGS ( Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society), is a writer, speaker, and founder of the Never Too Late Academy. He is also Special Advisor to the International Academic Forum. His work explores longevity, purpose, and what it means to live fully at any age, drawing on decades of travel across Japan by bicycle and sailboat.

He is the author of multiple books, including Dare to Dream, which was shortlisted for Business Book of the Year (UK, 2024). His latest book, Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan, explores the gap between lifespan and healthy lifespan through stories and insights from Japan’s aging population.