Hello, lovely! Grab a brew, because I’ve got something a bit personal to share with you this week.
Here’s something I never thought I’d admit: I nearly let a machine make me forget how to write.
The technology didn’t fail – quite the opposite, in fact. It worked so well, and so obligingly, that I started reaching for it instead of reaching for my own brain – and before long, the muscle I’d spent decades building started going soft. Very soft. Embarrassingly soft, for someone who’s been doing this since she was 16.
Decades of journalism, books, columns, coaching, speaking, training other speakers, creating content every single day to serve and inspire the people in my world… and I found myself staring at a blank page, wondering if my words were still any good.
They were, as it turns out. They just needed me to trust them again.
If any of that sounds familiar, this one’s for you.
FIVE THINGS THAT HELPED ME GET MY VOICE BACK
Go and read something you wrote before AI was part of your process. An old email, a blog post, a proposal, a rant you fired off at midnight and probably shouldn’t have sent – anything. Read it and remember how you sounded. That person hasn’t gone anywhere; they’ve just been getting a bit less practice lately.
Always write the messy first draft yourself. Even when it’s rough. Even when it’s rambling and held together with the literary equivalent of duct tape and good intentions. Get your thinking onto the page in your own words first, then – and only then – invite AI in to tighten, challenge or restructure. The thinking has to be yours, or the whole thing rings hollow.
Notice the pause – and write through it anyway. You know the one. That moment of self-doubt before you start, when opening a chat box feels far easier than facing the blank page. The wobble is completely normal; giving in to it every single time is how the muscle weakens. Write the imperfect thing. Write it anyway.
Use AI as a sparring partner, not a ghostwriter. Ask it to argue against your ideas. Ask it where the gaps are. Ask it what you might be missing, what you haven’t considered, where your argument falls apart. That’s where these tools genuinely earn their place – pushing your thinking further, rather than replacing it altogether.
If you use AI for content, feed it your voice first. Paste in examples of your own writing before you ask it to help with anything. Ask it to work within that style. The output will be infinitely more you and infinitely less like the slightly-off, reaching-for-depth-without-quite-getting-there tone that’s taking over half of LinkedIn right now.
None of this is about avoiding AI – it’s about staying in the driving seat while you use it. Your experience, your perspective, your stories, your gloriously specific way of seeing the world: those are the things no machine can generate.
Hold onto them. They’re worth more than you think.
#UnleashYourAwesome