1 Huge Mistake Writers Make With AI
HINT: Don't let it write everything for you
It’s happened.
Yesterday I saw someone market a new “Viral Notes Tool” where you can just import your Substack URL, and then it gives you generic viral Notes in your niche automatically.
It was….depressing.
I knew when I created The NoteSmith that I’d open up the Pandora’s Box of AI on Substack, and here we are not even 60 days later, seeing these kinds of problematic tools pop up.
Unfortunately, they’re not going to help you go viral, because the outputs are way too generic.
It’s the same reason you’d never ask Claude to just “write up a blog post about traveling” and post it on your publication. It won’t give you anything specific. It will be the most generic of generic sludge. Unpublishable.
I just wanted to let you all know..we’re going to start to see this more, and I wanted to write an article to explain why and how to use AI effectively as a writer.
There’s a few different levels of AI use that creators tend to fall into..
1. Creators Using AI To Auto-Generate Everything
This is the most problematic level.
I have a huge problem with tools that just help you auto-generate stuff.
“But Tom, isn’t that what the NoteSmith does?”
NO! No, it doesn’t. And that’s the most common misconception about my tool. You have to give it a 50-200 word Note draft to get an edited rewrite.
My tool doesn’t:
Auto-generate an entire Note
Change the focus of your Note
It simply:
Suggests ways to improve it for virality.
It’s like putting makeup on. You don’t fundamentally change the appearance of the person underneath.
This new Notes tool, though, is like cloning somebody—the outputs all look and sound the same. Just imagine a conveyor belt of people who all look exactly the same. THAT’S the kind of stuff these AI tools make. THAT’S problematic AI to me.
Why do they all look and sound the same?
Well, for one, because you’re not giving it anything. You’re just asking AI to blindly write you something out of thin air. It’s going to be generic. AI works best when you give it:
Lots of details
A really good prompt
A draft to work with
These tools don’t seem to have any of this.
There’s another key point here..
Who even are you when you use AI to auto-generate stuff? What’s your brand? If AI just auto-generates your opinions and POV’s, well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not you.
And you’re not going to stand out if you get AI to think and write everything for you. Because it’s just going to write for you what it wrote for 100, 1,000, or 10,000 other people.
That’s not going to work, y’all. You stand out by having different opinions, different stories, not similar ones. You’re actually speeding up your own downfall by using these kinds of tools.
You’re not going to get 1,000 subscribers by just clicking a few buttons and getting 4 articles and 30 Notes written for you in seconds.
Nope. Sorry.
You still need to do the work.
I guess my main thesis is this: If you want AI to create something valuable, you NEED to work with it. It still. requires. work.
2. Creators Using AI Tools To Refine Their Writing
This is where I’m at (and this is where you probably should be, too).
So, I used to think that AI was binary in that you either:
Didn’t use it at all
Used it to auto-generate everything
That’s it. It was one or the other. For the longest time, I fell into the didn’t use it at all camp, and that’s where most of you all are right now.
That’s fine.
But there’s a middle ground. You can use AI to refine your writing.
To take something heartfelt, and make it more “viral” worthy—which is the challenge so many great writers have. It’s just a few tweaks we’re talking about here!
To use AI as a Coach. As an Editor. But never as a pure ghostwriter!
There are so many people who used the NoteSmith to go viral. They wrote wonderful personal stories, and the NoteSmith helped them clean it up a little.
Like these:
I’m sorry, but no AI, right now or in the future, will be able to write personal stories like these. You can’t auto-generate this. ☝️
But you can use AI to help you clean these stories up. To format them better. To make them shorter. Punchier. That’s literally all I want to do with my AI tools, both now and in the future:
I make AI tools to help YOU create, not to create FOR YOU.
That’s not my audience anyway. I don’t write for people who hate writing. I write for people who love writing in their bones. That’s because THAT’S ME! And here’s a crazy fact.. you can love writing AND use AI to help you write better at the same time.
They’re not mutually exclusive things.
The problem is, AI has been hijacked by growth bros so much that normal, level-headed people gag at the idea of using it. I get it! That’s where I was at just last summer!
But when you actually give AI a chance to help you refine your existing writing, magic can happen—just like we saw in the viral Notes that the NoteSmith helped a few people polish.
But the thing is… AI can ONLY create magic when it’s refining your writing, not auto-generating it for you.
3. Creators Not Using AI Tools At All
Look. I’d much rather you be here than in the first level. 😆
This means you love writing. This means you wouldn’t give it up for the world. Welcome! You’re my people.
If you want to keep your writing process 100% organic, that’s fine. Go right ahead. That’s your choice.
I hope, now or in the future, that I can convince you to at least try AI out a little bit. I think it could genuinely change your life as a writer.
Look y’all. I’m not here to teach you how to use AI to create everything for you. I’m here to help you use AI to refine your existing writing. If you want to learn how to use AI to auto-generate everything for you, go right ahead. But just understand that you’re not going to get where you want to go with that strategy.
You still, even with all these AI tools floating around, need to do the work and create something original for AI to work with.
As long as you know that, I’m happy.
If you want to try the NoteSmith for free, sign up for it here.
It mimics my Notes feedback, and gives you tips to improve your Note draft in seconds.
You’ll be given 3 tokens (or 3 uses) for this tool.
If you want 50 tokens per month, become a paid subscriber to The Writing Long Game right here.
I use AI to analyze my writing. I ask it to tell me if anything is confusing, or if anything is contradictory, or if anything is repetitive. Is my tense wrong. Are there factual errors you can detect etc.
I don't have a specific set of questions I use. If I'm worried my writing has an issue, I ask questions surrounding the issue until I understand the issue better and can make changes I choose.
I might ask it if there are any problems that I have not thought of you writing. Sometimes it suggests things I've overlooked, or assumed people knew, etc.
I find this is a good approach that allows me to be completely authentic and point out issues that I may or may not be aware of and may or may not want to change
I’m glad to see your stance on pure AI writing as what I’ve read that was pure AI generated sounded that way. I’m fortunate that I’m not trying to make a living with my writing so going viral has never been my goal. I write a weekly science fiction column on Substack and sometimes it resonates with readers and sometimes doesn’t but the writing is all me.
I think your attitude towards your tool and AI writing is great, as well as your acceptance that not everyone is jumping on the AI train. I’ll continue to write the road less traveled and hopefully some people will join me.