(Non) Writers Using AI Tools to Write (Cheat) Their Manuscripts and Query Letters

Following on from yesterday's Bookseller article, and in defence of true writers

Yesterday, rushing to pack to take the train to do a guest author appearance for the Arvon Foundation, I saw the following Bookseller headline on Damian Barr’s instagram feed - ‘Literary agents urge writers to avoid AI as they see ‘change in the nature of submissions’ … with an answer written beneath (possibly written by Damian): if you’re asking AI to ‘write’ your book, you’re not actually writing… Judging by this statement, the Bookseller should edit their headline… How can you call yourself a writer if you use AI tools to do your writing? - It seems an obvious question, but, scarily, one that more and more people seem to draw a blank on.

For those of us who consider ourselves to be writers in the true sense, and who write their own manuscripts, their own proposals with their own words, and who - if they can’t do the above - are willing to pay to attend a course to learn (Portobello Literary is a good resource for this), getting published has just got a whole lot harder. According to the article, over the past year, agents have been getting an increasing number of AI generated submissions, which makes the agent’s job much more onerous because they have to look closer to see which submissions are written by fakes. (I am grateful many agencies don’t want to feed their submissions through software that recognises when something has been generated by AI because they risk feeding yours or my submission, which basically gives our data to an AI model who will steal and exploit it).

The tone of this Bookseller piece is agents very politely pointing out that ‘writers’ shouldn’t use AI tools to help them write or edit their work - while stating they will be adding a line or two to their websites that they will not accept submissions that have a sniff of being AI generated. Do writers really think it’s okay to ask computer software to do the difficult work for them? Do they not see the point being made in Damian Barr’s instagram post that you can’t actually call yourself a writer if you ask someone (or something) else to do your writing for you?

Or are there just a load of fakery forgers out there, who are actively trying to cheat the system? Or are they so self deluded they don’t know what they are?

I think there is a problem with communication. What is happening with AI is so scarily rapid that it’s almost like people don’t know what to think. I was shocked to read an article in Mslexia (a writing magazine for women) not long ago which was encouraging writers to use certain AI software, and went so far as to say that if we didn’t make use of it we would fall behind, spending too much time on those tasks that could be done quicker by some bot called Claude or Chat or Jasper. I felt really pissed off reading this, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it feels too obvious to state that this is a slippery slope. If we ask Claude to help us structure a magazine journal we have been commissioned to write, and it takes one day to write it instead of three, why not do it again? And where is the writerly solidarity, if we get paid the same as the person who slogged away at it on their own and it took that much longer?

But, more to the point, we’d be missing out on further strengthening our writerly craft and skill. Structuring an article is an act of creativity, the structure often echoing the subject of the piece. If we don’t use the creative and critical part of our brains, they will cease to be useful to us. Why would we give over our most precious asset? It feels as if we need to recalibrate here and remind people that good things take time. That there is beauty and pride in something you’ve worked hard on. That true writers don’t plageurise, just as they don’t cut corners. They want their work to be original and to solely belong to them.

As a teacher and mentor of memoir, I feel really quite militant about how writers should support writers and stand firm by not using any AI software to enhance their writing, in order to give a clear message that it’s simply not okay.

In the Bookseller article, Anthony Topping, of Greene and Heaton literary agency talks about how he can recognise when something has been written by AI because it had a ‘flattening effect’ to the writing. As a university lecturer, I can also tell. Those of us who are writers and teachers and mentors (editors or agents) work with words every day. We know what makes good writing. We feel it in our bones. We know when a voice sounds authentic, when the language being used is in line with that. We know when the writing is embodied - has evolved from a living, breathing human being with blood coursing through their veins. I would go so far as to say that we can feel the author breathing within the words, hear their heartbeat.

I woke up this morning in this beautiful Arvon house in Shropshire with this fresh in my mind because the last three days I have been a part of three events, talking about memoir, about truth, about the importance of a writer’s connection with their subject, and how they simply need to connect with what moves them. This Patricia Hampl quote says it all, whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction:

‘The heart, the guardian of intuition with its secret often fearful intentions is the boss, its commands are what a writer obeys - often without knowing it.’

The more I teach, and am invited to speak about memoir, about experiential truth, and memory and what it means to be human, the more I realise the importance of all this. I have always known it in my own personal relationship to writing, but now I see what I do - the writing and the teaching and the mentoring – as a responsibility to preserve something preciously human. I see the effect true writing has on the people who come to my events and who attend my courses: how giving them permission to recall their own personal past, to touch the sensory nerve of experience, and to create images that shape their life, helps them connect with themselves on a profound level. Our heart speaks to us, and it speaks through our writing. Writing to those who have a regular practice is a powerful teacher and a powerful balm.

Writers are prepared to do the difficult work, because nothing comes from nothing.

I will be appearing at a Wild Women Writers' Salons event with the brilliant Susanna Crossman and Elissa Altman and Catherine Simpson tomorrow, to talk about the power of memoir … online at 7pm. Book here