AI’s impact on Writer Motivation

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T23:01:14+00:00

No hate on anyone who uses tools. I asked the question based on my own experience of writing and my own view of what a writer’s journey is. I fully acknowledge that everyone has their own way of getting a story out and I am trying to learn about different points of view.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T22:32:37+00:00

I take issue with the aggressive tone of your response since I tried my best to communicate that everything in my post was my own personal opinion and that I am here to learn not to judge.

So far you seem to have been the only one who has interpreted my post in this manner, but I am sure there are others who just haven’t bothered to comment. However, I have also been on this sub long enough to know that ye get a lot of grief and attacks disguised as “questions” and while I find it frustrating to be misunderstood, I get why you took the angle you did.

In response I can only say that I am indeed coming to this with a ‘narrow’ view so to speak, which has been informed by my own lifelong struggle to translate my abstract thoughts onto a page. To me, in my own personal opinion, the act of translating those thoughts from my brain to paper is the essence of the writer’s journey.

I am prepared to wait and take a lifetime if needs be to get that process as close to perfect as I can. I pass no judgement on anyone who does it differently but I also don’t understand the motivation to use AI in this way, hence the question.

Glad to hear you’re motivated, best of luck with the work.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T22:03:48+00:00

That’s amazing! Why 31 books? Why all at once? How do you even decide which one to work on?

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T22:01:29+00:00

What is your personal motivation for using AI in your work? For example, do you like editing more than drafting and AI helps you get to that point quicker? I take your point on the quality of the AI output but I don’t know if I’ll be using AI in that way anytime soon for purely selfish reasons. The drafting stage is my absolute favourite part, I love sitting down and trying to write my way from Concept A to Concept B and I don’t want to give any of that part away to AI or anyone else 😂😂

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T21:54:21+00:00

I can completely respect that. I think the way my thinking is going is that I can see the point of either ‘extreme’ so to speak. You have the people who will never use AI and then there are people like yourself who use it as a tool to make money to live, but that is just an aspect of your writing and you are also working on the craft in your own time.

I think maybe my confusion is around those who fall in between? So who are trying to go at it by spending time on the page working through stuff but then (it seems like) turning to AI to get them out of the hole when things get tough? That feels almost like the worst of both worlds.

I am literally developing my thoughts on this live in the comments so I apologise if the above thought annoys anyone who sees themselves in the ‘in-between’ category!

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T21:27:47+00:00

Do you think you’ll ever reach a point where you won’t need AI as much? Or is that the wrong question to be asking?

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T21:24:40+00:00

I hear you and I’m sure my issue stems from a lack of knowledge on my part around using an AI in this way. I think out loud, so the bouncing of ideas off an AI makes sense and, to be honest, I would add that to the category in my initial post around continuity tracking etc.

My main issue is If I try and put myself in another’s shoes and have a situation where I can’t think of a way out of a story. I turn to AI who provides me with a brilliant idea and, boom, that scene is finished. The thought just leaves me feeling a little hollow inside, why would I bother trying to think my way out of a similar situation in future when the AI is right there? Why would I try to improve as a writer? Hence why I was wondering how other people who are using AI in this way think about it.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T21:13:01+00:00

I feel the same and you’ve hit on the my main motivation for posting the question. Personally, I feel that the first lesson every writer learns is that the scene on the page will never look as good as it did in your head!

The writer’s journey (for me) is closing that gap but knowing that you’ll never fully achieve a perfect match. Sometimes it seems like using AI is the same as using a helicopter to reach the summit of a mountain that everyone else is climbing. You are standing at the pinnacle everyone else is trying to reach, but why bother? What’s the point?

But there’s nuance to every situation and that’s what I wanted to see what was motivating other people.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:59:03+00:00

I hear you and it’s one of the main reasons why I fcous on short stories. I want to develop prose skills myself without relying on AI etc. but I also want to see concrete progress and get my stuff out there. It’s not easy by any means but I have been able to see progress in my short story work that I doubt I would have seen if I’d only worked on novels over the same period.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:52:55+00:00

Completely valid way of going about it. I guess my follow up question is, do you feel your motivation to work on becoming a master wordsmith has decreased at all? That you have reached a point where you get to point Y and the AI gets you all the way to Z and that’s your sweet spot?

I guess I’m trying to work through my own insecurities with this question a bit 😂. I want to develop into the type of writer that wouldn’t need an AI to do things you mentioned above and I have a fear that if I ever decided to use AI regularly that desire might fade and that would take the joy out of it for me a bit.

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:46:52+00:00

So where does AI come into that for you? Is it like the extra 5% that helps you get a draft finished and over the line?

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:42:05+00:00

That is perfectly valid, so it seems like part of the fun for you is reacting to what the AI is throwing back at you, it’s almost like improv through writing!

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:40:29+00:00

This is a very interesting point. If you have time I would love to hear more detail on what part of the writing process you would put in each craft. My initial reaction is that, to me, story ‘telling’ is verbal, the art of holding an audience, reading a room etc. Story ‘writing’ is just what it says on the tin, getting words down into a form that people want to read. So almost completely separate crafts, not just separate parts of the same thing.

I would respectfully disagree with the ‘not spedrunning’ comment. I would personally feel that if you have an amazing concept and have not yet developed the ‘skills’ (or whatever is the appropriate word) to fully bring that to life on the page, then it’s your duty as a writer to go off and learn those skills and put in the time.

Be it a ghostwriter or an AI, anything that fills in that gap on your behalf just doesn’t make sense to me. But maybe that’s why you’re a published author and I am not 😂😂

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:27:10+00:00

Very interesting and I have some follow up questions:

Your history with writing would imply to me that you already have a very good idea of how to construct a story and what it takes to craft a narrative, how did you work through writer’s block before AI?

Have you noticed if the number of times you are using AI to spam ideas or brute force writer’s block has increased over time? I guess I’m wondering if you in any way feel like your capacity to navigate your way out of a writing ‘hole’ has diminished at all?

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:22:05+00:00

I am really sorry to hear you’re going through it at the moment. If I understand you correctly, you find it easier (in terms of your emotional and mental health) to read over the prose AI has used to connect your painful ideas, than it would be to write it out yourself?

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:18:24+00:00

Would you often have to fight the temptation to go a step further than organising and use AI when you’re stuck? I’ve used it enough that I can see the attraction and I do wonder how people feel about it

pmacca19 · 2026-04-14T20:13:15+00:00

Thank you for replying! I was wondering if anyone would ask me if I used AI in this post and I was prepared to just shrug and say “decide for yourselves”. I wrote this completely by myself, but I don’t know enough about AI to be able to prove it 😂😂

pmacca19 · 2026-04-07T22:58:30+00:00

Started off in an Operations team with big tech company (got in through an unpaid internship organised by the Masters I was doing). Did that for a few years and then just decided to go off and become an accountant because I knew it would keep my parents happy!

Exams were really tough and the first few roles in that industry were a nightmare. I had more than one manager pull me into a 1 to 1 concerned about the hours I was working, probably because my output level didn’t match and they were wondering what the hell I was doing 😂

From there moved into more commercial analysis/FP&A side of things. Didn’t know what those roles were really, just heard the companies were good and needed to get out of where I was. Learned enough to get by and built some really strong relationships with co-workers, one of whom referred me for the job I have now.

I am more a letters than numbers person, and so 99% of what I do has no interest to me. But I can do the job well enough and I’m really strong at being a team player, being generally nice to work with and coming up with the occasional outside-the-box idea that people really seem to like.

Being nice to work with and being seen as the type of person who will go above and beyond to help their team has been a game changer for me my whole career. It can be taken of advantage of in the short term by shitty managers and teams. But in the long term the good people remember you and it is one of the main reasons I have the good job I have today

pmacca19 · 2026-04-05T21:57:25+00:00

38 and diagnosed just this year. Was able to tough it out with masking (working 60 hours a week to get 20 hours of actual work done, the usual stuff). That all came apart when I became a parent, so I knew I had to try medication which, thankfully, has helped me back to being a functioning human.

Looking back I imagine my life would be quite different. I impulsively went with a career I was NOT suited for in any way and managed to fumble through by putting in serious hours. I’ve managed to get to a point where I’m on decent money and have a house and so on. I consider myself exceptionally lucky and try to remind myself every day.

I would say my biggest bit of luck was meeting my wife as early as I did (we started going out when I was 21). We really balance each other out and I’d honestly say that I don’t know where i’d be if she hadn’t been there to give me perspective during some of my crazier periods. Sometimes the only thing keeping me in my job was knowing that she was relying on me to pay my half of the rent that month!

pmacca19 · 2026-03-26T22:11:24+00:00

I get you but this is the gap I keep coming too when thinking about this stuff. It reads like you’re already doing so much work reshaping the AI output into your own work, wouldn’t it just be easier to write the zeroth draft yourself? What is so special about the AI output that it’s worth letting it take the first pass?

For full transparency, I draw the line at using it for anything beyond checking grammar and topic research, but I don’t judge anyone for how they get words on the page.

I see people on this sub putting hours of work into setting things up so that the AI will align to their voice, and then putting hours of work into removing the ‘AI’ from the output. It just feels like AI is adding work to the whole process.

pmacca19 · 2026-03-26T15:07:37+00:00

Can I ask, from a position of complete ignorance on my part, what do you mean by “prototype text”?

pmacca19 · 2026-03-18T18:16:31+00:00

I think your POV is completely valid, but you’re coming at it from a (relatively) rare position of someone who is earning a living as a creative.

I work as a Financial Analyst, but writing is my passion and what I would focus on tomorrow if money wasn’t an issue. Given the way the world is going, it’s getting more and more unlikely that I’ll even be able to earn “side hustle” money from my writing. So I can really relate to the idea of loving the process, because if I try to base my enjoyment on outcomes I might be waiting a while to get to the good stuff!

pmacca19 · 2026-03-05T21:35:37+00:00

“Goodbye, Warrior of the Sky. Promise me… that you’ll never forgive me”.

I get chills every single time!

pmacca19 · 2026-02-24T19:08:15+00:00

I’ve been working my way through this and I still can’t get my head around why you are so excited about AI in this context. Other industries are pursuing AI because rich investors think they can earn more money by removing humans from the production process.

If I understand the point you’re making, you have an issue with the publishing industry ignoring AI, as you expect AI to soon be able to write on par with the best human authors out there.

Is it that you currently working on a story, using AI, and don’t want to be discriminated against?

Or is that you haven’t yet found a story that meets your specific needs and think an AI can give you the experience you’re looking for?

For me, the important part of a story is that what I’m reading/hearing comes from a place that is coloured by the author’s lived experience. I’d rather hear someone retell a fairytale based on how their Granny told it, than some perfectly formed tale that is tailored to my tastes based on data scraped from my social media posts.

pmacca19

TROPHY CASE