On AI, Sloppiness, and Being Honest About the Work

When I was a kid, I used to get out of trouble by punishing myself harder than anyone else could.

I’d replay mistakes in my head, pick them apart, scold myself privately until whatever authority figure was involved decided I’d clearly “learned my lesson.” In reality, I was just being left alone with my thoughts—and I was ruthless with myself.

I still do that.

Lately, I’ve noticed I do it most around the current “AI slop” discourse.

Part of it is because I know I sometimes resemble the thing people are criticizing. I do let the AI go wild at times—intentionally—just to see what appears. I treat it like a Choose Your Own Adventure engine. I follow paths. I backtrack. I explore dead ends. That part is fun for me, and I won’t pretend otherwise.

Another part is because I also know how much work happens after that.

I reread. I edit. I tinker. I delete entire sections. I rewrite sentences until they feel like mine again. What ends up published is nowhere near “the machine pumping out stories.” But that doesn’t always matter in the discourse—because nuance doesn’t travel well online.

I also have to admit something else, plainly: sometimes I’m lazy.

Sometimes I want to get an article out quickly. Sometimes I don’t want to fight every sentence into perfect alignment. My typing is only okay, but I can type fast and sloppy, and when I hand that mess to the AI for a first pass, it sticks pretty close to what I actually said. That’s a tool I use.

Other times, I’ll do the opposite—I’ll tell it, “I want an article on X,” and then refine from there, not because I want it to think for me, but because I want to see what its thoughts provoke in me. That process has led me to ideas I wouldn’t have reached alone.

I don’t think either approach is inherently dishonest.

What would feel dishonest is pretending I don’t care about the reader.

I do. A lot.

Reading is a choice now. A real one. Five minutes with a blog post is a big ask, and I know how busy and overloaded people are. That awareness cuts both ways: it makes me grateful when someone reads, and it also tempts me—sometimes—to chase hits instead of taking two more seconds to personalize something properly.

There’s something mesmerizing about metrics. They light up the same part of the brain as approval. And if I’m being honest, that can pull focus away from care if I’m not paying attention.

That’s part of why I’ve held the fiction back.

I treasure the written word. I want to know that what I put out—especially fiction—is something I can stand by years from now, not something I’ll have to endlessly explain or defend. I don’t want to publish fast just to prove a point. I want to publish true—true to the work, to my standards, and to myself.

The reality is: we’re in a messy moment.

I use AI.
I sometimes use it sloppily.
I also revise obsessively.
Both things are true.

Above all, honesty is my aim.

Not purity. Not martyrdom. Not winning an argument online.

If putting this out there frees someone else to be more open about how they actually work—without shame or performance—then it’s worth saying.

I never wanted to be an AI martyr.
I just want to be clear about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and where the responsibility actually lives.

With me.