In Defense Of Using AI As A Writing Assistant

Don't kill me!

Photo by Thomas Franke on Unsplash

Wow! Yesterday we had over 100 people try The NoteSmith for the first time. It was incredible! We got some amazing feedback.

The best writer I know,

Michael Thompson

, said this, “I was on the fence when you told me about this last week, but shit, that video example is incredible and way better than I was imagining. I can see this doing really well and very cool way to improve as a writer (and not just write viral notes).”

But we also got some pushback to the tool..

Quite frankly, more pushback than I was expecting. 😬

Let’s talk about it!

The main concerns are:

• All Notes could start sounding similar.

• If a computer rewrites your work, it’s no longer “yours”

• You’ll start sounding like a robot.

I completely understand all of these points, but they’re all misconceptions..

Also, I kinda screwed up yesterday…

First off, my original headline was problematic.. “I Built An AI Tool That Writes Viral Notes Like Me”

A more accurate headline is “I Built An AI Tool That Edits Your Notes To Help Them Go Viral”

I really screwed up there with the framing. Looking at it now, it’s so obvious to me how I screwed up, but it was an honest mistake. Technically The NoteSmith DOES write stuff, but I think a more accurate word is EDIT.

To all my subscribers, can you do me a favor? Can you give me the benefit of the doubt and just hear me out here? I’ve provided a lot of free value to people here since 2023, and my track record on the sanctity of personal writing is sound.

I will write from the heart until I die. Writing has changed my life, and it’s not something I will ever get AI to do for me from start to finish. EVER!

But I will use it to assist my writing sometimes—like a writing coach!

Please. Just read this post in its entirety, and if you still think this tool is crazy, then that’s fine.

Here we go:

AI Isn’t A Replacement, It’s An Aid

A key switch flipped in my mind last Fall…

AI isn’t a replacement. It’s a writing aid.

Think about Grammarly.

It’s an AI tool that many writers love, and it gives people suggestions on grammar, spelling, tone, and style. Most bloggers are fine with using Grammarly—which does suggest changes to tone and style—but somehow averse to using Claude or ChatGPT when it does the same thing. Why?

Think of a Thesaurus, too. These are writing tools that help elevate the quality of our work when used. I will never endorse AI as a replacement to the writing process. Again, I do think it’s a fantastic assistant, though! And that’s all the NoteSmith is.

Your Unique Voice Will Not Get Lost

To use The NoteSmith, YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT SOMETHING YOU HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN. It is NOT rewriting your work entirely. It’s adding or deleting words, suggesting additions (which YOU write), deleting paragraphs, or moving existing sentences around.

The final decision remains with the writer to include the NoteSmith’s suggestions, or not.

The tool is here to offer a second opinion—one that’s grounded in experience—nothing more.

Plus, your Note’s idea and structure stays the same. The NoteSmith just suggests how to make the existing writing more concise, focused, and interesting. It won’t take a Note about your 10th grade summer in the countryside and rewrite it into an alien invasion story. It will keep the bones of what you’ve written, make it snappier and more focused, and send it back to you.

The DNA of your post will remain. It will just be a little more focused and optimized for short-form. That’s all. It’s working, completely, with what the user gives it and it’s designed to not change the foundational lesson, story, or perspective AT ALL. It’s just designed to make it snappier so these unique perspectives can get more likes and hopefully get shared with more people.

Try it out! The only way for you to understand this is to see it for yourself..

Writing Is More ‘Homogenous’ Than We Think

It’s a misconception that this tool will make everything sound the same, too..

Think of it like a coach who gives standard drills to athletes—they’re fundamental, but each athlete brings their own flair to the game.

There are fundamentals of good writing, right?

It’s not like there are billions of different ways to write quality posts. It’s my view that great writers follow a lot of the same writing principles. I’ve simply created a tool that helps you internalize these principles better than a live training or paid article can. You could look at The NoteSmith as a teacher more than a writer.

When Strunk & White wrote the book “Elements of Style,” did they not put forth a variety of rules to follow to improve your writing? Nobody complained when millions of people bought this book and implemented its suggestions. Nobody was afraid that it would make writing sound more homogenous as more writers used this.

Another thing is, popular Substack Notes are already pretty darn similar. The growth hackers and writing coaches are fantastic at detecting patterns and teaching these patterns to their students to use.

Why is it okay for a human to teach these principles and an AI not to?

The NoteSmith IS trained on my unique approach to writing Notes. You would’ve gotten these principles shared with you in this newsletter regardless. Why is it important that you get these principles taught to you via a live training or article instead of with an AI tool?

With a live training, there’s no way for the teacher to make sure everyone is implementing what’s taught. With AI, it’s a certainty that these principles WILL be internalized because it will tell the student, directly, what they’re missing.

For me, that’s pretty darn revolutionary!

AI Tools Are The Best Way To Learn

I don’t think people understand just how incredible AI can be for learning. Normally to critique 20 Notes I’d need 4 hours of free time. Now I can critique 20 Notes in 5 minutes digitally.

You can get more feedback—more 1-1 time with me—for much less money compared to my $150 hourly rate. It’s incredible.

I look at The NoteSmith as a way to learn the fundamentals of great short form writing. It’s like culinary school for chefs. They go, learn cooking principles, then take these principles and add their own flare to them.

It’s the same thing with this tool. Look at it as a teacher more than anything. Learn from it. See what you’re doing wrong. Take those lessons into your future Notes and long-form blog posts.

The NoteSmith is a great tool for showing you what your writing is missing, not taking over the entire creative process.

And look, if you don’t want to listen to me, listen to the actual users of the NoteSmith!

These NoteSmith Users Have Tried It Out, And Don’t Have These Concerns

Here’s some feedback that was shared with me:

Here’s something my friend

Ilona Goanos

wrote me:

“1. Since I come up with the original idea, your AI NoteSmith presents an alternative based on your wise recommendations and gives reasons why what I wrote could be improved. I may or may not take what you propose.

I consider it like a human editor, and no one objects to that, do they?

2. Notesmith tells you why changes are recommended. I have been told countless times to start my writing with a punchy first line, but I still either forget, OR I don't make it catchy enough. Notesmith is giving real-time learning and theoretically we could improve by repetition alone after using it.”

Here’s something my friend

Glenna Gill

wrote me:

“I think some people are always going to be against AI and worry it's going to "take over the world," but they never take the time to see how valuable it can be in some instances.

I'm a better Notes writer because of NoteSmith, and I'll always appreciate it.”

Here’s another perspective from my friend

Teri Leigh 💜

“I always think anyone’s concerns are valid, and usually, people’s concerns come from a place of ignorance and lack of awareness.

I think people just need to be educated on what the tool is and how it works. They are coming from a place of how AI has traditionally been used, and that’s not what you are doing.

In order to use this tool, I have to give it my writing, my original writing. I can’t just have a conversation with it and ask it to write for me. I have to write something first, and it works with that. For example, Grammarly is a well accepted tool, and this is a specified form of grammarly. Taking my writing and giving me feedback on it.

When I use the tool, like any AI, I have to read what it kicks back to me and decide if it is appropriate. sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. There have been times I’ve used your tool and it edits down my original story to something much much shorter and I feel like it’s lost the heart of the story. And there are other times where it has given me very specific line edits that are still in my voice but revised in a way that is much more readable. I personally prefer when the tool gives me feedback on single specific lines and doesn’t give me a total rewrite. The total rewrite does come out sounding a bit more like Tom’s edits than my voice. But not all the time.

This tool has definitely helped me write notes that I like better. Performance is hit or miss, but I’m in a slump now where I’m not focusing much on notes, so I’m not getting much engagement on notes. I KNOW they are some of the best written notes I have ever done, and yet they aren’t getting engagement. That’s not the fault of the writing quality, that is about the algorithm and my current lack of being active on notes.”

Here’s something paid subscriber

Marika Páez Wiesen

wrote to me:

“Here's how I use AI: I put my OWN ideas, my OWN concepts into it. I don't just give it a general prompt like "write me a post about how hard it is to think of something to write." I give it ideas I have really taken some time and chewed over. Things I have written about in my posts. With the language that I've used to describe my experiences. Then AI helps me distill this into something that catches a reader's eye and hopefully engages them with the idea.

I've only used the NoteSmith twice and already have learned so much about how to write "for social media." (It's its own genre, you know!)

Now I scroll other folks' posts and think, "Oh, that's too bad, you could have landed that idea with way more impact if you'd moved this up here and ended like this..."

Thank you so much for reading this.

If you want to try The NoteSmith out for free, sign up for it here.

You’ll be given 2 tokens (or 2 uses) for this tool.

If you want 50 tokens per month, become a paid subscriber to The Writing Long Game right here. I’m running a 12% discount on monthly and annual plans until Friday, February 7.

Cheers!