After Months of Using ChatGPT In My Writing Process, Can I Really Let Go?

The first time I used chat GPT was a few months back, but only weeks ago did I stop to assess it’s effects and determine if they have been positive or negative. Before I type anything else, this article wasn’t written to condemn or discourage anyone currently using chat GPT. This is me narrating my own experience because I believe it’ll help someone gain clarity just like I did.

Did using AI make me a better writer? No! But in the begining, I thought it would. The thing with using AI language models like chat GPT is that it makes you lazy. When you’re lazy, you can’t think for yourself. We both know that writing demands a lot of mental work. Now, imagine that you can’t think of two paragraphs without running back to your chat GPT app. Your brain begins to rely on the AI model subconsciously. It also starts to happen very slowly until you begin to take notice. This is exactly how it happened to me.

It started off as, “Oh let me just try this cool AI” and before I could say Jack, I was relying on it to help me put my thoughts into speech as if they were ever ramblings. Yes, I was thinking in fragments and needed an AI language model to gather my thoughts into readable text. Can you imagine that? How did it even happen without me taking note of it? How did it get that bad in just a few months?

It’s all exciting at first until you don’t even remember how to spell the words you could write effortlessly before. I know you might ask, “can it get that bad?” and you can already guess my answer. You’re shaking your head no, but my head is about to snap from bobbing up and down. Yes, it can get that bad.

It took me a couple of weeks to consciously train myself to stop being dependent on AI. Note that I didn’t write “overly dependent” because in all honesty, I wasn’t. Here are a few tips on how I was able to get my creative juices flowing again.

● Assess your usage of AI platforms: carry out a deep assessment of how much you use AI for your writing. Also, try to determine how you’ve felt about yourself and your work while using AI. This will help you realize how fast you need to drop that tool as a writer. In addition to that, It will help you know what measures to take in order to let go. Using AI made me feel like a cheat and caused me to be very dissatisfied with my work. I became very bored and for sometime, I couldn’t churn out content like I used to. I had to sit back and do a comparison of my work before and after using AI in my writing process. The results were shocking. I was a better writer without AI!

● Talk to Other Writers About Your Concerns: This is something that greatly helped me. I couldn’t speak to anyone about it because it seemed everyone was quite enchanted with Chat GPT. I didn’t want to be the only one whining about it, no can do!

So I went on Reddit (which is my favourite social media platform after LinkedIn) and searched for threads and discussions on the topic. I had a good laugh for the most part but found comfort knowing that there were other writers who had experienced what I was going through and felt the way I did. So you see, I wasn’t alone. You can try Reddit too if you’re like me, you’d love it, lol.

● Stop using AI for your writings: dear writer, enjoy the whole writing process. It can be hard to let go of something you’ve relied on for a while but this is your sign to slowly let go. It might take you days or months, it took me weeks.

I found a helpful opinion on Reddit by a user with the name tapgiles. It was quite long but I’ll share only the end because it’s a summary of the whole piece.

“ Refinement is writing. Drafting, revision, editing… it’s all part of the writing process. So if chat GPT is doing those things for you, it’s writing for you.”

I haven’t stopped using Chat GPT entirely though, it’s quite a fun and helpful too. I just don’t use it anymore for writing. I hope this piece helps another writer in all the right ways. See what I did there? 😉

I’d like to hear your thoughts!