AI Didn't Kill My Writing. It Just Made Me a Better Editor

For years, my writing process was beautifully chaotic. I'd dump all my thoughts onto a page: messy, unstructured, raw. Then I'd spend days, sometimes weeks, reading through that word vomit, rearranging sentences, finding the throughline, shaping it into something that actually told a story. I'd send drafts to friends, get feedback, revise again. Rinse and repeat. The whole process could take weeks.

I loved it.

Then AI showed up, and suddenly I felt... guilty?

I found myself using ChatGPT and Claude to help refine my drafts. The feedback loop collapsed from weeks to hours. I could iterate faster, test different structures, get instant reactions to whether an idea landed. It was incredible. And it made me feel like a fraud.

Was I even writing anymore? Or was I just prompting?

The Conversation That Changed My Perspective

I was talking with my friend Felix, a professor at Berkeley, about this exact crisis. I expected him to validate my guilt, maybe tell me I was taking shortcuts.

Instead, he completely reframed it for me.

"Your process," he said, "is exactly what happens in academic writing. We don't publish papers alone. There are multiple rounds with copy editors who help us rearrange our arguments, highlight what matters, cut what doesn't. Then peer reviewers check for rigor and soundness. The final paper has my ideas, my research, my voice, but it's been shaped by a whole team of people."

I hadn't thought about it that way.

He continued: "AI is giving you access to something that used to cost thousands of dollars. Do you know how many brilliant people have written books that never got published because they couldn't afford a good editor? How many important ideas died in obscurity because the person couldn't pay someone to help them communicate clearly?"

The Real Question Isn't Whether You Use AI

Here's what I realized: The question isn't "Are you using AI?" It's "How are you using it?"

I'm not typing "write me an article about AI and creativity" and hitting publish. I'm still doing the hard work:

• The original thinking is mine
• The messy first draft is mine
• The judgment calls about what stays and what goes are mine
• The voice, the perspective, the actual insights are all mine

AI is just helping me do what copy editors have done for writers forever. It's helping me see my work from another angle, catch where I'm being unclear, suggest better ways to structure an argument.

The Privilege of Editing

Felix's point about access really stuck with me. For most of human history, having someone help you refine your writing was a luxury. You needed to be in academia, or have enough funds to hire an editor, or lucky enough to have incredibly generous friends with time to spare.

Now? That capability is democratized. A single parent working two jobs can write their memoir and get editorial feedback at 11 PM. A non-native English speaker can ensure their ideas come through clearly. A self-published author can compete with traditionally published ones.

That's not cheating. That's progress.

What Writing Actually Is

I think I'd confused the struggle with the substance. I thought suffering through awkward transitions and unclear paragraphs was the writing. But that's not writing. That's editing. And editing, it turns out, is a skill that can be augmented.

The actual writing (the thinking, the noticing, the connecting of ideas, the choice to put something out into the world) is still entirely on me.

AI doesn't have opinions about what matters. It doesn't wake up at 3 AM with an idea it needs to explore. It doesn't feel compelled to share something because it might help someone else.

I do.

Moving Forward

I'm done feeling guilty about using AI in my writing process. Not because I'm using it to replace my thinking, but because I'm using it the same way writers have always used editors: to make my ideas clearer, my arguments tighter, my voice more effective.

The words you're reading right now? These ideas came from my conversation with Felix, filtered through my experience, written in my voice. AI helped me organize them. Just like Felix helped me see them differently through our conversation.

And I'm okay with that.

Because at the end of the day, the question isn't whether you had help. It's whether what you wrote was worth writing and worth reading.