Tag: creative writing

Writer’s Corner – Navigating AI as a Writer

In the summer of 2022, I started hearing murmurs about OpenAI’s upcoming release of an AI-powered conversational chatbot that would presumably be a game-changer. There was a sense of dread in the writing industry, with some of my colleagues and friends bemoaning the potential impact of this technology on the field and their careers. Later that year, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released the first iteration of ChatGPT. 

It has been nearly four years since. AI tools are now just about everywhere. From chatbots, coding assistants, and workflow automation to writing, image, and video generation, there is an AI tool out there to suit everyone’s needs. I’ve already crossed paths with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, Perplexity, Grammarly, and many more. My take on all of it is similar to a popular character (who confronts the reality of his success, achieved through years of effort and hard work, becoming a poor and cheap imitation) from one of my favorite anime: 

I have followed the development of ChatGPT and other AI tools very closely and approached their use with great caution. Adaptation is part of the writer’s journey. It has also been a central characteristic of my personal journey regarding new technologies. Hailing from a small town in Madurai, I didn’t come across a compact disc until the early 2000s, when I had the opportunity to attend an international private school. There I was, packing floppy disks into my backpack while my friends were working with USB drives. A few megabytes were my data domain, while others were advancing to gigabytes and terabytes. This pattern of catching up and adapting to emergent tech has persisted throughout my life. It has been both a frustrating and a great learning experience. 

Being slower has helped me assess and adapt to new trends cautiously. Today, in my day-to-day life as a writer, I see AI (in its various forms) simply as a tool and an imperfect one at that. Take ChatGPT, for example, it is essentially a Large Language Model (LLM) in action. Chat is trained on vast amounts of data, including publicly available internet content, books, and articles. It recognizes patterns and generates text without directly storing any information. This approach entails a Pandora’s box of ethical challenges, including potential bias, inaccuracy, intellectual property concerns, and data privacy issues. Like its brethren, Chat is both beneficial and harmful, depending on its use and oversight. That last part can apply to any tool, in general. The funny thing is, none of this is new. It’s just that AI tools today bring a boatload of abilities that, at one point, weren’t possible. 

Remember this guy? 

Clippy was a primitive, rule-based AI (yup, you heard that right) that helped predict user needs and offer help on the go. You can call it a predecessor of sorts to modern generative AI. Clippy also used early machine-learning techniques to analyze user actions and offer suggestions. In a way, Clippy is the granddaddy of modern chatbots. 

Go back a little further, and you have this guy: 

The ’60s and ’90s had AI that followed hard-coded instructions. These AI programs could predict statistics and algorithms but couldn’t do anything more than what was already coded in. Here, we have Dr Sbaitso, an AI speech synthesis or text-to-speech operator program released in 1991.

As AI tools proliferate, they have sparked extensive discussion about privacy, mitigation, transparency, and more. Careers and fields are undergoing a transformative era where jobs and roles are being realigned and remade. The art of writing is also riding this wave of change. AI tools have improved and expanded accessibility and productivity for the average user. Where once you would hire the services of a working professional, say a graphic designer for a specific design task, AI tools make it easy for the uninitiated to be able to come up with something on their own. As such, some tout that AI has levelled the playing field, but I disagree. Rather, I find that AI has significantly elevated the ceiling for talent emergence and recognition.

In my line of work, AI tools have helped streamline parts of my writing pipeline that were tedious or lacking. Much of this doesn’t involve the actual writing. Rather, it mostly concerns the brainstorming and research phase of a given project. Googling things is easy enough, but sometimes there are nitty-gritty details that a basic Google query may not necessarily be effective for. Tools like ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude do make it easier to find what you need on the web, IF you know how to prompt them properly. This whole process is quite analogous to my reaction when Wikipedia first came out. The online encyclopedic database blew everyone’s mind. At the same time, it was imperative for users to remember that Wikipedia is a collaborative, open-editing platform. This means anyone with an internet connection can potentially alter content, creating opportunities for errors, vandalism, and bias, especially on controversial topics. Back then and to this day, I use Wikipedia as a decent starting point to gather information. I don’t take anything on its page at face value; instead, I cross-check with the provided bibliography or supplement my notes with further research.

AI tools are just the same for me. On the one hand, I use them to ease the brainstorming and research phase of my writing. This can involve finding an obscure passage related to a specific work or prompting the AI to provide working examples of a writing concept I may find confusing when a cursory search on my end does not yield what I want. It is a collaboration in which the AI tool serves as “sound board” of sorts, enhancing my efficiency while supporting my originality.  I do not let the tool dictate my writing. Rather, I let my writing dictate how I use the tool. This helps me maintain my authenticity, voice, and critical thinking. As a tool, AI is just another cog in my creative process. I remain the director. On the other hand, AI tools have helped me identify areas for improvement in my writing process. Grammarly, for one, has pushed me to further study and build on fundamentals, including grammar, style, and composition (in fact, it was my persistent mistakes in these departments that got me reading “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White). 

Using an AI tool for coding doesn’t necessarily make me proficient in programming. The same logic applies to writing as well. One still has to learn the skills of the trade to have the basic know-how and to keep improving. AI tools for writing often seem like a shortcut, but an overreliance on them may potentially come at a loss of one’s personal voice, that most critical aspect of your writing that makes it original and, simply, you. AI tools geared toward writing are as much a means to enhancing your efficiency as they are in helping you identify weaknesses in your writing. Working and improving in those areas is on the writer.

At the end of the day, the actual writing is my very own personal journey, untouched by AI.

Introducing the Writer’s Corner & My Writing Process

Welcome to the Writer’s Corner! Now that I’m a full-time writer, I feel it is appropriate to dedicate a portion of my blog to discussing my adventures as a creative. Today, I wanted to share my answer to a question I have asked several pros in the field: “What’s your approach to writing?”

After detailing their personal experiences, most pros settled on, “You’ve got to find what works best for you.” When I started out, I thought this meant reading references and manuals on stylistic writing and learning proper grammar and punctuation. I did everything except actually sit down and write. It has taken me quite some time, but I think I’ve finally figured out my response as a writer to the very same question.

Writing IS a subjective affair. The whole shebang of “you’ve got to find out what works best for you” feels like a cop-out, but it is true. How you take that advice and put it into action is what really matters. I’ve been writing since I was 12 years old. I still have copies of my first stories from middle school and high school. From teenage rom-coms to extremely misguided novels in the gangster genre, these stories were a window into my protected worldview at that point in my life. Things seemed comedically simpler and less chaotic. On the flip side, there was also the sheer embarrassment that accompanied the content’s juvenile quality, like when I had members of the mafia naming their cars with “cool” names like “Cherry.” Let’s leave it there for now. Best not to open Pandora’s box.

Despite the questionable quality of the writing, I got one thing right back then. I was fearless. I wrote whatever came to mind and however I liked it. There was a freedom to my voice, which, as I grew older, diminished. This is partly a natural consequence of life. As adults, we become more responsible and thoughtful (or at least hope to), a little slower, and a tiny bit more cautious about everything we do. Writing is anything but that. It is about being free and voicing whatever is in your mind. It is about bringing worlds in your imagination to reality without restraint.

At the end of the day, how one approaches all of this is a highly personal and emotional part of their creative process. Most of all, it is not up for comparison.

Sounds simple enough? Yeah, it took me nearly 15 years to figure this out. I realized that for much of my journey as a writer, I had been a comparative creative. What does that mean? Well, I always compared myself to others. The result: I lost track of what worked for me. I spent years reading the works of different authors, following their styles, referencing writing guides, and whatnot. Somewhere along the way, writing became a chore and not a passion. Where there was freedom, there was now a system. A system that convinced me that only by setting myself against a pedestal of sorts (usually someone else whose work was better than mine) that I could accomplish my goals as a writer. I was imprisoned within the walls of this system, and as a result, lost my own touch and flair.

I don’t deny the importance of learning the elements of style and grammar. It is also beneficial to reach out to pros in the field and learn from their experiences. But most of all, it is necessary to recognize that what works for others may not always work for you, and it is okay if that is the case. What truly matters is that you work with what works best for you and refine it by strengthening your skills and expanding your toolkit. The latter part involves the stylization, grammar, punctuation, etc.

In my case, the breakthrough was becoming a father. Things get quite busy as a parent, and time becomes a privilege. For four years, I had to hold back on my writing. This allowed me to really introspect and reevaluate my approach, and now, I have regained my creative voice. How does this translate on paper?

Well, I’m the brainstorming type. That means I end up creating an entire story in my mind in one go. Much of it is patchwork at this stage, but I focus it with a directive. I use a narrative compass that follows my protagonist and guides me along the way. The beginning and end of the story are the easiest portions for me. Everything else in the middle I build out later. I don’t think too much about world-building or whatnot. My focus is on having a clear narrative structure with a definitive beginning and an end. That’s pretty much it! I grind away at this process until I’m confident enough to put pen to paper and begin writing the actual story. Along the way, I do take any opportunity to note down sentences or phrases that I find inspiring or suitable for the story. In most cases, I spend maybe a month or two doing this before sitting down to write the story.

This is my approach. Of course, it has slight variations depending on the genre I’m working on, but it is an approach I’ve honed over several years. On a slightly unrelated note, I’ve realized my approach is very similar to storyboarding in the animation/comic-book industry. So, for aspiring writers out there, take some time out and think about your writing. Use this introspective period not to rebuke your writing but to reflect healthily on what works best for you. Much of it can be trial and error, which can be very annoying. Be patient! Writing has no right or wrong; it is an art of improvement. So, even if you make mistakes, you are still learning!

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” — Julia Cameron.