I’ve been writing long enough to remember the feel of carbon paper under my fingers.
My first script was hammered out on a typewriter by my sister — slow, noisy, unforgiving.
Then came computers, Word, the internet, script-formatting software, grammar checkers.
Each new tool cut the grunt work, expanded the reach, and let me focus more on the real craft — the story.
Now it’s AI’s turn.
Some people panic, some sneer, some call it “cheating.”
I call it what it is: another instrument.
Creative writing with AI is like making music with an instrument.
A guitar doesn’t dream up a ballad or a solo; it waits for the musician’s touch.
The human decides the tune, feels the rhythm, pushes the note.
AI is the same — a fretboard, a sampler, a rhythm section waiting for a writer’s imagination.
You still have to bring the vision, the taste, the sense of when to pause, when to push.
The imagination, the meaning, the judgment — that’s still human work.
People who say using AI makes you less of a writer miss the point.
We didn’t call novelists cheats when they swapped quills for typewriters.
We don’t belittle filmmakers for using editing software instead of scissors and tape.
Tools extend human creativity; they don’t diminish it.
The art still depends on the person holding the instrument.
This isn’t new.
Every tool humanity has made — the knife, the hammer, the calculator — can be abused.
A knife can carve bread or spill blood.
A hammer can build a house or smash a window.
A calculator can help a student or be used to cheat.
We didn’t ban them.
We taught their use, we set rules, and we held users accountable.
AI belongs to that same lineage of tools.
The real debate isn’t whether AI should exist.
It’s who controls it and how it’s shared.
Think of fresh water:
when it’s piped to everyone, it raises health, learning, and opportunity;
when it’s hoarded, it becomes a lever of inequality and power.
AI can be the same.
Open and shared, it amplifies creativity, boosts education, and widens access.
Locked behind corporate or state gates, it becomes an elitist tool — shaping culture and policy for the few.
I know this from experience.
AI already acts as a tireless digital scribe:
catching typos, fact-checking in seconds, suggesting alternatives at three in the morning.
It clears the bottlenecks so I can focus on the story.
It’s a research assistant who forgets nothing, an editor with endless patience.
Used well, it multiplies what a good writer can do.
Used lazily, it only multiplies mediocrity.
AI isn’t here to replace what you know; it’s here to multiply what you can do.
A dull mind will still produce dull work.
A sharp mind can now work at the pace of its imagination, not the pace of its typing fingers.
History shows the same pattern:
cars were called dangerous toys,
cameras were said to “kill memory,”
calculators were accused of “making kids stupid,”
drum machines were blamed for “killing music.”
Yet each one became a basic part of progress.
AI wears the same crown of fear.
But the pen was never the poem, and the tool was never the story.
We face a choice.
Shared widely and governed well, AI becomes like clean water — a basic good that raises the floor for everyone.
Hoarded or weaponised, it widens the gap between the connected few and the excluded many.
In the end, the measure of writing isn’t whether you used a machine.
It’s whether the work moves someone — whether it carries emotion, insight, story.
That’s still the writer’s job.
AI just gives us another instrument to play.
By Cajetan Boy