Do you remember teaching your dad how to double-click?
You’d say “just click the blue ‘E,’” and he’d open seventeen Internet Explorers while muttering something about not trusting computers. Fast-forward to today, and he’s still watching cable news while texting you in all caps like he's yelling across the living room.
That’s exactly where most writers are with AI right now. Suspicious. Confused. Paralyzed. Hovering their cursor over the future and whispering, “Is this thing gonna steal my novel and ruin my chances at getting published?”
Meanwhile, the rest of us, we’re using ChatGPT as part of our creative workflow and finishing drafts before your Scrivener even loads. Yeah. I said it.
Let’s Talk About the New Yorker Article Everyone’s Whispering About
I’m talking about “Can AI Writing Be More Than a Gimmick?” by Dan Brooks in The New Yorker.
And the answer is—drumroll, please—YES, but only if the writer has vision.
Brooks does a sharp job laying out the current cultural tension. Writers are spiraling into existential dread over AI’s rise. Some are intrigued. Others are posting rants about the death of art from their iPhones (the irony). And the fear at the center of it all is that GenAI is churning a plagiarism remix-mush and calling it literature.
If I had a dollar for every person who tells me ChatGPT is a plagiarism machine, I’d be sipping champagne on a private island, dictating this rant to an AI assistant named Barry.
Which part of "it doesn't remember word for word what is was trained on" is so hard to understand?"Is this 1987? Do people think LLMs are glorified copy-paste machines? Someone stop the madness—or at least send snacks (preferably something with protein - LEAN bar anyone)?
NEWSFLASH: Publishers are already offering authors $3–5K on top of their contracts to opt in and train LLMs on their newly minted books. And do you know why they are doing this? It is SURELY not because it is a payment to remember your new book word for word so others can plagiarize it.
Seriously. Someone get me off this crazy train before I start carrying a laminated FAQ and a megaphone.
The Myth of the Lone Genius Author Is Dead. Long Live the Creative Director.
We’ve romanticized the solo author for centuries—some tormented soul bleeding genius into a typewriter, possibly drunk, definitely depressed, and surrounded by crumpled pages and bad lighting.
Cute story bruh, but it needs more ponies.
But let's call it what it is: unnecessary suffering.
AI isn’t replacing the writer. It’s replacing the parts of writing that suck—like blank-page paralysis, plot holes, and rewriting that one sentence 74 times. (Yes, Susan, I see you.)
“But Who Owns the Words?” (asks every writer over 40 with a solid strategy that's never gotten them to best seller status)
In his New Yorker piece, Dan Brooks asks the big question:
“If someone uses a program to write a short story and then publishes it, who is the author? The person who wrote the prompt? The software company that owns the model? No one? Does it matter?” — Dan Brooks, The New Yorker
Let’s be honest, Susan: trying to slice a novel into “this paragraph is mine, that one’s the machine’s” is like trying to bake a cake and then identify which eggs came from which chicken. You can’t. And you shouldn’t. It’s weird. Stop it.
The U.S. Copyright Office currently says AI-generated content isn’t protectable unless there’s meaningful human contribution (and I appreciate they are looking out for human creativity as they should). But “meaningful” is one of those words that sounds like a policy but acts like a shrug.
Here’s what I think will happen
We’ll stop obsessing over who wrote every word, and start asking the only question that matters: “Is it good?”
Because your readers don’t care if you had help. They care if it wrecks them emotionally, in a good way.
You had the idea. You shaped the story. You wrote the draft. AI was just your assistant—not your ghostwriter. So yeah, you’re the author. You just exchanged the suffering part for a different kind of effort, one that actually drives efficiency and brings you results (and dare I say JOY?). It's like reading a book with your reading glasses vs. without them. When you use AI in the complex creative process, everything becomes clear...much faster.
Writers Who Wait Will Regret It
Let me say this as clearly as possible: If you’re waiting to “see where this AI thing goes,” you’ve already missed the exit ramp. You’re one algorithm update away from becoming the literary version of your uncle who still prints MapQuest directions.
The writers who are scared to experiment with AI today? They’ll be the ones muttering five years from now that “books just aren’t what they used to be,” while the rest of us are crafting brilliant, genre-bending masterpieces that never would’ve existed without our creative sidekick: machine intelligence.
Now imagine them trying to publish a novel in a world where readers expect content that’s smarter, faster, and emotionally electric.
So Where’s This All Going?
Put on your neural-lace baseball cap, because here comes the forecast:
- In five years, most professional authors will use AI tools. Not as a crutch—but as a creative amplifier.
- Copyright law will evolve to reflect collaboration, not exclusion.
- No one will care how much you used AI in your creative process (nor will they be able to tell). They’ll care how much the story mattered and touched them.
- The writers who adapt early will lead the next wave of publishing. The rest will be chasing trends they no longer understand.
And as for the authors who refuse to adapt? They’ll be the ones still asking if ChatGPT can do italics and help them with spell check while the rest of us are publishing trilogies.
Final Word from the Loud, Sassy, and Unapologetically Correct Side of History
Use the tools. Write a good book. Share your stories. Make the money. Because in the end? We’ll all be dead anyway.
And your tombstone sure as hell won’t say: “She never used ChatGPT to help write her novel.”
