I Let AI Draft My Posts — Here’s What Still Feels ‘Mine’
The model doesn’t have my job stories, my bad deploys, or my taste. I use it anyway — just not the way the Twitter takes suggest.
I’ll say the quiet part out loud: I use AI to write parts of this blog. Not because I can’t write — because some nights I have twenty minutes on my phone and a half-baked idea, and I’d rather ship something imperfect than bookmark it into oblivion.
The internet wants two camps (“AI is theft” vs. “AI replaced writers”). Real life is messier.
What I mean by “blank page”
It’s not writer’s block in the romantic sense. It’s Tuesday at 11 p.m., you know the point you want to make, and you’re stuck on the first paragraph because your brain wants a runway.
Here’s a prompt I actually sent last week (slightly cleaned up):
Topic: why I still read stack traces by hand
Mention one production bug story, keep tone dry, no em dash spam, ~800 words
What came back wasn’t publish-ready. It was something to react to — structure, a few phrases I hated (deleted), and one joke I’d never write (also deleted). That’s still useful.
A tiny before/after (same idea, different hands)
My rough note:
“ai writing — not replacing people, more like compiler for prose, still need taste”
What I’d publish without help:
I’d spend 40 minutes circling the same three sentences.
What the model gives me first:
A bland but organized essay with confident-sounding claims I have to fact-check and a few words I’d never say out loud (“delve,” “landscape,” “unlock”). Editing that is fast. It’s like pairing with an intern who never gets tired.
What I don’t let it fake
- Stories from my job — if it didn’t happen to me, it doesn’t go in as if it did
- Strong opinions on people or products — I’ll ask for outline only
- Anything I’m not willing to defend in a PR comment
The model is great at fluency. It’s mediocre at stakes.
My editing pass (usually 15–25 minutes)
- Fact pass — numbers, library names, “this API does X” claims.
- Voice pass — kill clichés, shorten sentences that sound like a keynote.
- Structure pass — move the punchline up if I buried the lede.
- Link pass — add one or two real references if I’m making a strong claim.
If I skip (1), I deserve the comment that corrects me in public. That’s the deal.
What I tell junior devs who are embarrassed to use AI
Using a model doesn’t make you less of an engineer any more than using Stack Overflow did. Hiding that you didn’t read the output does. Own the tool, read the diff, keep your name on the byline.
Where this blog sits
Some posts are mostly me. Some are me arguing with a draft. The through-line is I’m trying to sound like a person — irregular rhythm, specific examples, the occasional weird metaphor — because that’s what I like reading, too.
If you’re building something similar: use the robot for momentum, not for identity. The weird, specific bits are still on you.
A prompt pattern that keeps tone less “AI”
I almost always add constraints like: no em dash spam, one concrete example, assume the reader has shipped production bugs. Those lines cost nothing in tokens and save a lot of eye-rolling on read-through. Vague prompts get vague essays — that isn’t the model being dumb; it’s me being lazy.