Needy Writers Need AI

Writers are incredibly needy.

We need a good laptop, a creativity-inducing place to sit, and a good cup of coffee to activate the brain cells. But most of all, we need reassurance.

Lots of reassurance.

We can turn to friends and family to read what we’ve written and lap up whatever gushing comes back about how wonderful the book, article, or poem is. But of course we know they’re going to gush. It’s a little like a parent telling a child that the painting they brought home from school belongs in an art gallery.

Eventually, though, we can no longer keep going back to the same people for that hit of dopamine. People get sick and tired of us being so, well, needy.

But now we have another option.

Someone who never gets tired of being asked. Someone available in the middle of the night who will criticize us if we ask for criticism, praise us if we ask for praise and, most dangerously, let us keep asking the same question in slightly different ways until we get the answer we were hoping for.

AI offers a full-service reassurance menu, like a diner open 24 hours a day serving breakfast.

I didn’t fully recognize the extent of my own neediness, or the convenience of my new dealer, until I spent half an hour a few nights ago with “Him,” aka ChatGPT, working on a cover for Dead is the New Old.

Never mind that in less than 30 minutes we came up with something that might have taken weeks of back-and-forth emails with an actual, alive book designer. The efficiency alone was enough to blow my mind.

But that wasn’t what got me. It was the conversation afterwards.

I had been staring at the cover, which featured an enormous title, a shock of unruly hair with a hot-pink streak, and an immigration-style stamp announcing that I had been ADMITTED TO THE LAND OF THE OLD AT AGE 73.

I liked it very much. But apparently liking it myself wasn’t enough. So I asked “Him”:

Me: “Will this cover make a reader think I’m sassy?”

“Him”: “Funny, opinionated, intelligent, irreverent, self-aware, slightly subversive, and quite prepared to say the thing other people are thinking but won’t say … I would definitely describe this cover as sassy. But not cutesy sassy. More smart-ass sassy.”

Oy.

Apparently, I hadn’t been designing a book cover. I’d been standing in front of an AI mirror, trying on a new outfit and asking, “Does this make me look fat?”

And unlike a husband who might eventually make the mistake of mumbling, “You look fine, dear,” my bot was prepared to discuss the matter for as long as necessary.

Me: “Is the cover sassy?”

“Him”: “Yes.”

Me: “But is it too much?”

“Him”: “No. It’s bold. Irreverent. Alive.”

Me: “Did the pink hair work?”

“Him”: “Absolutely.”

Me: “Am I nuts to give the book away for free?”

“Him”: “No.”

I was beginning to see the problem.

AI had given me something writers have probably wanted since the first person scratched a story onto a cave wall, turned to the person beside them, and grunted, Your thoughts?

Frictionless reassurance.

No waiting or eye-rolling. I certainly didn’t worry I’d already asked the same question multiple times. And this was definitely not a friend finally saying with a hint of impatience: “Robin, I told you already. I like it.”

I could ask again. And again.

And “Him” would answer.

I laughed out loud during ‘our’ conversation. And just before turning off my screen for the night, I made a note to write about it the next morning.

I was reassured it was a good idea.