AI.

I think most of us have had some fun with AI tools at some point over the last few years. In 2024, I was quite fascinated with, and naive about, AI and I enjoyed learning about it. It is, understandably, a very divisive topic, especially among writers and illustrators. There are so many reasons to limit AI use and I can't cover them all in one blog, so I will do this as a 2-part post to keep it manageable. 

Most modern creatives, especially writers, have a deep fear of being accused of using AI. Some writers, myself included, are now overthinking their natural writing style because it has some of the tell-tale flags of AI writing. Over the course of two graduate degrees, I have spent a lot of time in academia. Reading academic papers, writing research papers and essays was a weekly task for almost a decade, so I am sure it would be easy to look at my blog entries and think they could be AI considering their formal tone. But it wouldn’t be true. I love research (my undergrad is Journalism) and writing academic-themed essays was not only the day-to-day reality for me, but it is my preferred method of communicating about subjects that are deeply important to me. Having AI do this would take all the fun out of it for me. 

I have two basic 'voices' I use when writing. 

My personal voice you will find in more light-hearted writing or things that feel personal. This blog is a good example and my first blog ever is a good example. I try to pepper these in occasionally because, by nature, I tend towards seriousness and it can be good to break that up from time to time. However, I am naturally a private person, so more often you will get my academic voice, which is much more focused on the facts and will be in essay style format.

I sometimes use headers in more formal work because, as my senior year journalism professor stated, 'brevity is not your strength,' and if I didn't use headers, the information would get lost in the volume of text I often write. The eye needs something to break up the text monotony. 

I also love words. I have always loved words and learning and using interesting and 'old-fashioned' words. I took 3 years of Latin and medical terminology. In high school, a boy once asked me why 'I talked so fancy.' To me, it's not fancy or an attempt to sound pretentious, it's just my natural style. I was raised in an environment where "proper" English was expected and that can sound stuffy surrounded by modern day slang. My brother and I were taught, "My brother and I," not "Me and my brother," and we would be called out on it if we said the latter.

The Infamous Em Dash

The em dash has been around since the 1400's and has been heavily used in writing since, which is why AI is obsessed with it. You will have to pry the em dash from my cold dead hands because I will not stop using it. No matter how much someone points a finger at me and screams “AI,” the em dash is here to stay. I love the em dash and even use it in text messages (long hold on the hyphen and you should get an 'en dash' and an 'em dash' option). The reason people think this is an AI'ism is that the average, everyday American, who doesn't write for a living, doesn't even know how to form an em dash on their keyboard. Writers use them every day. If you are seeing them in social media posts, it probably is an AI cut and paste. But, please, when it comes to writers, lower the pitch-forks and torches because, I assure you, you don't want writers to stop using the em dash.

I hate that writers feel the need to defend themselves for doing what they've always done or even consider writing differently just to try to not look AI. We are now gaslighting ourselves and doubting what we know and even losing touch with our unique styles out of fear.

I also hate that it has to be said so bluntly, but I have no problem in doing so—I write my own work! (yes, even the sentences with em dashes). Whether it is the books I write or the blogs I post, they are my own ideas, thoughts, sentences, words, etc. I even draft my books by hand in an old school notebook. 

Sources

I use search engines for my peer reviewed work and APA format, mostly, in my source citations. I use the Owl at Perdue (been around as a scholarly resource since 1994) for my sources and sometimes, even with that, still manage to get it wrong. 

My book research is done using good old fashioned traditional books (to my husband's dismay as we recently had to buy another bookshelf). When I am planning a book that requires a lot of research that is out of my scope, I typically find published work on the topic on Amazon and buy them used. I hold those books in my hands and read them, highlight them, write notes in the margins and litter every corner of our house with notebooks (again, to my husband's dismay). I have 6 books on Norse mythology on our coffee table as it is the central theme of my middle grades book currently in development. I do, on occasion, have to go to specialized, niche websites for information when there is no book or to find articles and quotes but I always list these.

Editing

Grammar was never my strength in elementary school and before I went to journalism school, I had to reteach myself from a third-grade grammar book just to keep up. I worked very hard to become good at something that, historically, I was not. Because of that hard work, I graduated Summa cum laude and was asked to join a popular magazine’s editorial team part-time. Like most tedious skill sets, it needs constant use to stay sharp and during that season, my skills were much sharper than they are now. 

Now, I keep my APA handbook close and I use a Grammarly extension on my browser that flags missing commas and to remind me when I've started three sentences in a row with "I". There is an early AI (spell check-like) functionality to this, but it is not generative AI in any way.

If I am really stuck on a question, I will typically go to one of my trusted resources like Reedsy to look for the answer or I will go to the professional boards like, The Authors Guild(for my grammar nerds, there is no apostrophe in 'Authors' in their branding). However, I make a lot of grammar mistakes even with all these resources, which is why writers have editors. Sadly, mine does not edit my blogs.

It's sad that we are here as a profession, and it feels lame to have to defend yourself or ‘give an AI statement,’ but this is where we are in the world—writers going after other writers while the general public is being forced to read terrible AI slop everywhere they look. 

However, my professional concerns about AI and the unnerving feeling that I need to defend my own work are secondary to my growing fears about what AI is doing to us on a psychological/emotional level, as a society, to our environment and in the way our brains function. 

Part 2 will cover this in more detail.