Whether you’re a complete beginner or you’ve been writing for years, making it as a writer has never been more difficult.
Since the birth of blogs and YouTube, which is just writing with extra steps, the internet has been the hub of information. Those who could articulate their expertise and offered simple solutions could turn a blank page into a thriving business. But in this new age, succeeding as a writer requires more than using SEO to bring people to your website.
The requirements for content creators have become superhuman. It’s no longer enough to write a valuable weekly newsletter—now the algorithm demands long-form YouTube essays, TikTok videos, and daily threads across multiple social media platforms—while maintaining quality and authenticity.
Those of us trying to compete by sticking to the traditional method of writing are being crushed by people who use AI to pump out dozens of pieces of content with a few clicks. Trying to match this output manually is like bringing a quill pen to a digital gunfight.
There are two camps of people: one boycotts AI out of fear that it threatens creativity, while the other treats manual writing as an archaic limitation. But there’s a third camp, those of us who refuse to compromise our creativity and integrity but know that keeping up with the thousands of pieces of AI-generated garbage is next to impossible.
Six months ago, I was in the first camp. I rejected the idea of using AI in my process. I felt that using AI meant surrendering my creative soul. But I was wrong.
When used correctly, AI doesn’t threaten creativity; it unlocks a part of the creative brain I never knew existed.
There’s one caveat. There are ethics to writing that I believe are sacred. I never ask AI to do the work for me; I use it to find direction so I’m not held back by the limitations of my own mind.
There are three problems with my manual process that AI has solved.
Connecting ideas
Writer’s block
A bias towards my work
Connecting Ideas
This is the beginning of my creative process, the time when I’m collecting as many ideas as I can until I find one that clicks.
I believe in intentional consumption. I spend the majority of my free time reading books, newsletters, watching YouTube videos, or reading content from other creative people on social media. This isn’t just for entertainment; it’s for finding ideas that inspire me to create, and I always have some way to capture ideas next to me.
Finding ideas comes naturally to me; I probably have somewhere between 20 to 30 a day, but organizing them is one of the weakest parts of my creative process.
When I have an idea, I like to follow it for as long as I can. I call this brain dumping, but doing this manually presents a problem. My notebook is full of misspelled words and confusing phrases, Apple Notes and Kortex are loaded with single sentences that don’t make any sense on their own.
I’d lose my train of thought, I would focus on one aspect of my idea while missing so many possibilities, and when it was time to choose an idea for the week I would have no idea I’d be lost because what I thought was genius was little more than jumbled sentences.
This is the first problem AI has solved. While binge-watching Ali Abdaal videos, I found VoicePal, his app specifically designed for brain dumping.
When I want to save an idea for later, I can enter it as a title for a new document, but if I feel compelled to follow it, the power of VoicePal shines.
I still ramble, but to an AI ghost that can talk back. Unlike my one-sided conversation with Voice Memos, this conversation doesn’t just capture my thoughts—it enhances them. Once I’ve shared my initial thought, VoicePal analyzes the transcript and asks questions to help me dive deeper. These questions help me connect my thoughts in a way that makes sense and leave me with a strong starting point when it’s time to come back.
What used to be chaotic scribbles in dozens of places is now a singular place of developed ideas. Instead of spending time trying to reconstruct my thought process, I now have a conversation I can return to—complete with context and connections to other ideas.
This hasn’t just solved my organization problem; it’s changed how I capture my ideas in the first place.
Writer’s Block
One of the worst feelings a writer can experience is having no idea what to write.
Before I operated under deadlines, I could walk away and come back when I felt like I was ready to try again. Now that I’m writing a weekly newsletter, making YouTube videos, shorts, and social media content, I can’t afford to waste time. This is one of the curses of being a content creator.
For me, writer’s block manifests during two parts of my process: the research phase, when I’m struggling to find a piece of information in my database, and the drafting phase, when I hit a wall that I don’t know how to cross.
Research
For research, two tools have solved this problem: OpenRead AI and Readwise AI.
If you read, you’re probably familiar with Readwise. I’ve been using it for years to store all of my highlights from books, articles, YouTube videos, and other source of information that interests me. The problem was, finding specific highlights was a nightmare because I don’t always know what I’m looking for.
With the new “Chat with highlights” feature has solved that problem. Instead of combing through hundreds of pages trying to find the right reference, I can ask a few questions and suddenly have a dozen sources for inspiration. (As of writing this, Kortex, the app I use as my second brain for writing, added this feature to kAI as well.)
OpenRead solves another problem: I know what I’m looking for but Google isn’t great at finding it. OpenRead is essentially an AI-powered search engine designed specifically for writers. Now, instead of spending hours scanning Google, I just give OpenRead my topic and instantly have access to dozens of sources. I can also manually filter between peer-reviewed articles or what other content creators have said about the topic. I also get detailed summaries and citations from each source, saving me from having to read each article or watch every YouTube video just to find one sentence.
Drafting
When it’s time to write, I like to let my own thoughts do the work. I spend time writing my first draft with no assistance, piecing things together in my own voice like I always have, but unlike before when writer’s block would stop me in my tracks, a few tools help me find direction.
As I said before, I never ask AI to do the writing for me, that would defeat the purpose of writing in the first place, but as a one-man show, having a 24/7 assistant is helpful.
I mentioned Kortex before; it’s my preferred second brain for writing, and the new kAI features added this week are helpful. After I manually structure my outline using my custom built template inside of Kortex, I use kAI to help me explore new angles that I wouldn’t have considered before, which gives my outlines more depth, and a strong outline is where I go when I need some direction.
The second tool I’ve added is Lex, which has become my writing app of choice. Sorry Ulysses, I’ll be back when it’s time to write my book.
I write all of my drafts in Lex, which at first glance looks like a traditional writing platform, but it comes with an added AI assistant that doesn’t want to do the writing for me, it wants to help me get all of my thoughts onto the page. When I inevitably find myself stuck, or something isn’t making sense, I ask Lex to analyze what I’ve written, help me figure out where to go next, and then I am able to continue with my own voice. It’s a way to bounce ideas back and forth, not a way to have the work done for me.
In a creative profession where momentum is everything, that’s the difference between thriving and burnout.
The Bias Towards My Own Work
Editing is arguably the most important part of the writing process, but when editing my own work, I tend to have on rose-colored glasses.
As writers, we’re proud of what we do, and that can make editing difficult. We fall in love with our own words, overlook weak sentences, and often fail to see when we’re being confusing.
Lex is my friend in this scenario. This is my new process for editing my work.
First, I ask Lex to read my draft and give me detailed feedback. This identifies weak arguments, suggests improvements, and helps me look at my work through someone else’s eyes. Unfortunately, it can sometimes shatter my ego, but it’s made me think about my writing from a new perspective.
Second, I use Lex’s “Checks” feature to clean up my draft. Checks has a few strong features:
Grammar. Like any other writing app, Lex has a built-in grammar check, but what I’ve found is that it doesn’t just tell me what I’m doing wrong, it tells me how I could do it better.
Brevity. One of the golden rules of writing is, “Write at an 8th grade level.” Unfortunately, I’m bad at following rules. I tend to write long sentences for the sake of adequately explaining my point, but that can get confusing. The brevity check finds unnecessary words and confusing sentences and helps improve the clarity of my writing.
I don’t always use these suggestions, usually I’ll make my own edits, and sometimes I like to leave typos and weird sentences. One of the common misconceptions about writing is that it has to be perfect, but perfection can get in the way of authenticity, and without authenticity, you can’t cultivate an audience and you end up sounding like another piece of AI-generated content.
As content creators, we’re not writing for a college paper, we’re writing because we enjoy it, don’t let perfection get in the way of using your own voice.
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