I Co-Write With a Robot, and Somehow, It Still Feels Like Me

After two decades of typing in my own voice, I let AI join the process. Here’s what surprised me, what scared me, and why I still hit ‘publish’ with pride

There was a stretch of months where I, for the life of me, couldn’t write a single decent sentence.

Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t know how. But because after years of writing for everyone else — clients, campaigns, algorithms — I couldn’t hear my voice anymore.

I’d open a blank doc and just… freeze. The cursor mocked me.

My confidence, once rock-solid, flickered like a dying light bulb.

Then came the weirdest part: I started talking to a robot.

I didn’t expect much. Just wanted help getting words on the page again. But something strange happened. The more I collaborated with this strange, pattern-matching machine, the more I heard something familiar underneath the noise: me.

Not an AI version of me. The real me — the one with a pulse, some scar tissue, and a knack for shaking me with the truth.

That’s how AI became my unlikely writing partner.

The Writer in Me

My first paid article was about realizing that I needed help for my mental health.

I was twenty-nine, armed with little more than a caffeine addiction, a secondhand tower computer with a CRT the size of Cleveland, and the naive belief that writing could change my life.

I sat in a cramped room, air conditioning gurgling above me, sipping bitter black coffee and typing like my life depended on it, because it kind of did.

Freelancing was going to save me; all I had to do was work hard.

Since then, I’ve written… a lot. Thousands of pieces, across dozens of industries. Healthcare, tech, travel, mental health, content marketing, blogging, SaaS, B2B — you name it. I’ve ghostwritten thought leadership articles for Fortune 500 execs and blog posts for eCom founders.

I’ve churned out landing pages, email funnels, SEO pillar content, newsletters, scripts, and most often, personal essays. My Google Docs and OneDrive folders are like graveyards of first drafts and final approvals.

And for most of that time, it was just me. Me and the blinking cursor. No tools except Microsoft Word, no prompts, no shortcuts. Just an outline in my head and a deadline on the calendar.

Because back then, real writers wrote solo. That was the unspoken rule. You wrestled the words onto the page yourself, or you weren’t a writer at all.

Enter the Robot

When the first consumer GPTs came out, I wasn’t impressed. They were clunky, and the writing was subpar, full of cliché.

Then came GPT-3, and I started learning the ins and outs of large language models. I wasn’t trying to get it to replace what I could do, I just wanted to see if I could make it sound human.

I started talking to AI, treating it like a person. What it turned into was a funny, not-too-reverent companion. Like having a very eager intern with no off switch.

Right around this time, college was over, I had a solid contract writing job paying the bills… but my personal writing was blocked. Kaput. Nothing.

I scribbled notes for ideas I had, but nothing would gel.

So I asked my AI companion how I could start writing again. After hours of conversation, it helped me create an outline. Then it nudged me to fill in the blanks with my own voice — and that’s when I realized: AI wasn’t writing for me, it wrote with me.

What Still Surprises Me

AI surprised me. It’s not stealing my voice, it’s helping me hear it more clearly.

It makes a killer rough draft. With GPT-4, the quality of writing it can produce is incredible. But it still can’t fake wisdom. It still sounds like someone trying just a little too hard to be human.

And the more I write with the help of AI, the more essential my human weirdness becomes. My quirks. My rhythm. My ability to make mistakes that still somehow sound right. AI can’t replicate that.

But I outline faster. I riff ideas at light speed. I research like never before. No more spending hours combing through search results. I can easily reframe the structure of a story, but I always return to my own edits, tone, and rhythm.

The Line I Won’t Cross

Unless an employer specifically asks me to use AI to finish stories and articles (and many do), I never deliver work straight from an AI output. I wouldn’t be a writer if I did.

Even when they want AI to handle the grunt work, I still add my flair and voice to every piece I submit.

My personal work? That’s all me. Yes, I use AI to outline and sometimes restructure, but the final product is my voice. Because I love to write. And I want people to know these are my thoughts, my ideas, my blood on the page.

My hard-and-fast rule for personal writing: “If I wouldn’t put it in my journal or say it to a friend, it doesn’t go out.”

AI doesn’t replace writing. It replaces wrestling with blank pages.

The Future Isn’t Either/Or

If you’re a writer staring down the barrel of this new world of AI with suspicion, or even dread, I get it.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that art must come from struggle. That anything made with help is somehow less pure. But I’m here to tell you: that’s outdated thinking.

We’re not losing our art, we’re gaining a co-pilot. A screaming-fast, occasionally weird, sometimes brilliant co-pilot.

It’s also a companion, one that can help you brainstorm, research, reframe, restructure, and refine. And one that, if you use it right, can bring you back to your voice, not erase it.

It brought me back from the brink. From a place I hated, where I felt like all my creativity had been snuffed out.

Besides, even after thousands of articles, I still need someone to catch my typos. Might as well be a robot.