Why I’m Choosing to Write Without AI (Even If It Slows Me Down)

Last Updated on April 7, 2025 by Candice Landau

I’m worried about AI. Not about how it will take my job, though I’m not so naive to think that isn’t possible. Rather, I’m concerned about how it could devalue real writing—the stuff we spend days crafting, that draws on hard-earned experience, that is thoughtful, unique, real and unpredictable.

That being said, I am not anti progress. Tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Claude have also helped inspire creativity and in some ways, have been better at answering questions—when not hallucinating—than traditional search engines. Because I am firmly entrenched in the digital space, I am also a proponent of learning to use these tools. However, I’m going to be honest. As a writer, I think they stand to stunt writing growth.

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It’s too easy now to request an outline for an article, especially if it’s a service-driven article, or to have the tool write a rough draft. Even if you understand “prompt engineering” and take the time to feed the tool the information you want it to incorporate or convey, you lose out on the opportunity to improve your ability to stitch words together, and to create something truly unique. You deprive yourself of the quiet space that writing allows for, and you deprive your reader of a level of intimacy they may not know they require but will feel deep in their processing bones.

I’ve spent hours playing with these tools because I love gear, technology, and creativity. I’ve tried to understand how they work and how to make them work for me. In the end, I’ve becoming convinced that the only way I’m going to grow as a writer is if when I sit down to write, I set them aside entirely.

No outlines using them. No brainstorms using them. Just plain old hard work.

As I see it currently, there are three camps of writers.

There are those writers who embrace the tools. The ones I mention above. They use AI to get ahead, to write faster, to “play the game.” Perhaps they won’t write whole articles using it, but over time they will largely become AI editors rather than writers. Their writing will lack a level of depth that the reader will notice even if they aren’t sure why. They will have a pattern and templated feeling, they will lack true originality. But, these writers may initially rise to the top as they churn content out faster, learning quickly how to disguise it better.

I’m being particularly even though I know many of these writers are just trying to make a living or “get ahead.” They churn out more because magazines and newspapers pay crappy rates. They desire to do it faster because modern life demands attention on all sides. But they’re also the ones changing the world for the worse. It’s the very reason search engines have become so poor at providing actual value. Because every digital marketer is now also a “content marketer” and “SEO expert” writing has become less of a hard-earned skill and more of a requirement of the job, quality be damned. Rather than the best articles rising to the top, it will be the articles hosted on sites that understand link building, technical SEO, and frontend SEO, even if they aren’t the best to return in response to a query. It’s the ultimate race to the bottom.

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There are those like me who are struggling to figure out how to work within this new world. We see the opportunities, but we see the issues too. We aren’t willing to let the machine be our hands but we see others allowing it, people we once admired. This is hard. It’s disappointing. It’s frustrating. It’s sad. As the content director of a magazine I sometimes receive pitches written by AI, often even from good writers (my heart sinks when that happens). I can’t tell you exactly how I know they’re written by AI, except that I do. I’ve played with ChatGPT enough myself to detect an AI-drafted response. I also receive articles outlined or written in part if not wholly by AI. This is not only disappointing when I know the writer and when I know that their original work would have been better but it’s also insulting. I’m not paying you to use an AI generator. I could do that too and for free.

Finally, there is the writer who rejects AI wholly. There are an increasing number of these writers as there are artists rejecting it for many of the same reasons. More often than not, these are what I term the “real writers.” The ones that create literature. The ones who win awards. The ones who write to think, who write to attempt to convey the nuance of a thought or realization. They will reject AI not out of principle (though I’m sure there are those who will fall into this category too) but as a result of self awareness.

Personally, I’d prefer to be a part of the very last group. For one thing, I’d like to continue growing as a writer and that’s done by writing a shitty first draft and then taking the time to whittle it into something beautiful, something you feel proud to show to an audience. Secondly, there is nothing—outside of a calm dive—that gives me a sense of peace like writing does. There’s just something about laying the right words in the right order on the page, letting them merge like raw baking ingredients to finally become a cake. There’s something about the space that sitting down to write requires you carve out. There’s something about exploring your thoughts on the page, about forming them into images that align with an emotion rather than the next best word as large language models like ChatGPT do.

So no, I think for now I’ll give writing with these tools a miss. I’ll choose to write without AI. I’ll keep playing with it in so far as it relates to career growth but more than ever I’ll endeavor to outline and write every word myself. Otherwise what am I doing but hastening the death of real writing? What are YOU doing?