Don't Let AI Steal Your Voice: My 7 Rules for Nonfiction Authors
The line between borrowing a tool and losing your voice is thinner than you think
In Monday's article, AI Can't Replace the One Thing That Makes Your Book Valuable, I explained why your voice matters. Today, I want to show you how to protect it while using AI as a powerful writing assistant.
I love AI. I use it every day, for research, for outlines, for the tedious grunt work that used to eat my mornings.
But I also see one of the biggest risks facing nonfiction authors right now, and it’s not the one everyone’s worried about.
It’s not that AI will replace writers.
It’s that writers will slowly replace themselves.
It doesn’t happen in one dramatic moment. Nobody wakes up and decides to hand over their voice. It happens one prompt at a time, the way a river doesn’t erode a canyon in a single flood. It carves it slowly, drop by drop, until one day the shape of the land has changed and nobody remembers what it looked like before.
The more AI does your thinking, the less your readers hear you.
Over the past few years, I’ve built seven personal rules that let me use AI as a tool without letting it quietly become the author.
