When I wrote The Spoon and the Sea, AI wasn’t in the room with me. I wrote it in the olden days when the only machine nearby made coffee. It took long hours, obsessive rewording, and research through archives and interviews.
I wrote because my grandma had passed away, and it was my (unhealthy) way of keeping her alive. But the character soon took on a life of her own. Rose started making choices that weren’t my Grandma’s… and I let her. That’s how writing helped me let Grandma go.
I work in tech, so I come with a wholesome readiness to embrace AI. Which is why I look at this moment with AI stepping into the creative writing process with both curiosity and caution and wonder what it would have been like - for better or for worse - to write The Spoon and the Sea today.
What happens to that raw, therapeutic kind of writing when the machine is in the room? Would I have been able to dive into and process my grief the same way if AI had been sitting there, all shiny and smart?
And what about the joyful kind of writing that comes not from grief or pressure, but from the sheer pleasure of lighting up a creative part of your brain? Do we still get that same feeling? Does it matter?
These are my thoughts on writing and AI. Part 2 will be about publishing and AI.
Part I: Writing in the Age of AI
1. Have we seen this movie before?
Authorship has always evolved. Once, it was revolutionary to revise your work. Then to research from books instead of the field. Then to Google instead of libraries. We didn’t stop being writers when we switched from ink to keyboards or through any of the monumental shifts along the way. AI is just the next frontier (maybe the biggest in our lifetime), but it’s part of a long continuum.
2. How does AI fit into a collaborative creative process without replacing the heart of storytelling?
Sometimes I sit down knowing the emotional point of a scene and that I want to start with a flashback. But I don’t know what the flashback is. I use AI to brainstorm. It’s like a lightning-fast very eager intern who doesn’t mind being rejected. But deciding to start with a flashback, then linking it to a tiny visual detail from the chapter before… that’s still magic from little old humans.
3. What happens to voice when AI starts suggesting the next sentence?
AI still struggles with voice. It often hands over something correct but hollow. It’s brilliant for breaking a blank page, fixing clunky phrases, or summarizing obscure history. But to make a reader feel something? Not quite yet. (Yet is the operative word here because the pace of innovation is mind-blowing, and emotive storytelling may not be out of reach for long.)
4. What’s an idea worth when AI can generate thousands (plus)?
We live in an era of infinite ideas. But I come from Israeli startup culture, where ideas are cheap because everyone has one, including your taxi driver. What matters isn’t the idea; it’s what you do with it. As The Social Network puts it: “If you were the inventor of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.” J.K. Rowling wasn’t the only one with a story about a boy wizard but she wrote it first, wrote it well, and put it out there.
5. When it comes to research, where does speed cut depth?
Fast research can feel like having a tireless assistant riding the high of an all-nighter and a million Red Bulls. Want a legal case summarized in seconds? No problem. But the danger isn’t shallow research on the subject matter. It's a shallow connection for the writer. When shortcuts become too easy, we risk skipping the long, winding paths that build emotional investment. That’s the part the reader actually feels, even if they only see the tip of the iceberg. The depth isn’t just in the facts you gather, but in how much you care.
6. How can AI help busy people find time to write?
This may be the most personal reason I’ve come to value AI. I’m a mother of three under six, with a full-time job as a tech exec. I hate not finishing things I start. Writing, in that context, can feel like a project that haunts me at night. AI helps me move faster when I need momentum. It doesn’t write for me, but it helps me believe it’s worth starting because it increases my chance of finishing. This sometimes plays at odds with point 5 but I think it’s a balance worth pursuing.