OK, I admit it… I got lazy.
I wanted to quickly finish some non-fiction work, so I could move on to new, more exciting projects…
… I’d already discovered the efficiency of asking ChatGPT research questions, rather than searching in the traditional way and then wading through pages for the information I now wanted.
It was such a simple step, on a slippery slope, to see if the tool could then draft articles from those questions?
The answer was ‘yes’, and it speeded up my workflow by at least 50%. Instead of researching, collating, drafting and editing… I found I could move straight to editing.
Or so I thought.
The reality is that using ChatGPT in that way was making me creatively lazy.
Like a marathon runner in the closing miles of a race, I suddenly hit a creative wall when I found a topic that Chat-GPT could not write about… counter-surveillance. My story had a strong historical base, being set during the Cold War in East Germany, where surveillance was rife, and the BRIXMIS teams (I’ll let you look that up) used a whole raft of documented, factual, counter-surveillance techniques to evade the Stasi. Depsite the factual evidence that ChatGPT knew about, it was forbidden to write about those techniques.
I almost had a sweat for a moment, when I realised I’d have to do the work and write this story all by myself.
And then the revelation – what had using ChatGPT as a research tool done to me?
It had certainly made me lazy.
More subtly, I think using it was re-wiring my creative brain towards editing instead of creating.
Now I’ve noticed that, I’ve immediately stopped using ChatGPT to generate drafts. I still use it to research topics, but the creative energy is back where it belongs… in my head. I immediately feel much more connected to my work, and I’m getting a lot more enjoyment from it.
What about you? Are you over-using these new “AI” tools?
I can reassure you that there is life after GPT, and it feels every bit as good as it used to!
Lee J. Russell, creative 