How AI Is Helping Me To Be More Analogue
(and more creative)
There was a thump on the room door. “Are you talking to yourself again?”
I almost crimsoned with embarrassment. Sometimes I just get carried away. I don’t mean about talking to myself. I mean, I get so absorbed in my work that I forget there are other people in the house who might hear me.
So I now try to keep the talking to myself to myself, which is easier when everyone else is out of the house and I am alone. As I reread this, I can see how confusing this is getting. Let me explain.
I recently read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I’m sure many of you will have come across her excellent book, in particular two activities she recommends for every creative person:
Artist’s Dates (where you book some time away from your desk to immerse yourself in something creative. For me, this month’s date was yesterday at the amazing Hay Literary Festival), and,
Morning Pages.
Now, Morning Pages are something I’ve tried, off and on, for years. But I’ve never kept them going for more than three weeks.
If you’ve never come across them before, the idea is that as soon as you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is grab a notebook and pen and write three pages. (Beginners may want to start with the smallest notebook you can find.)
Julia wasn’t the first person to come up with this. Dorothea Brande recommended something similar in her 1930s book Becoming A Writer, although she used a typewriter, so when I read that I felt sorry for her partner lying in bed beside her.
Essentially, Morning Pages is a form of Stream-of-Consciousness writing. It doesn’t need to make sense. You just need to keep writing until you have filled three pages. In the early days, my pages generally comprised two sentences: I am not awake yet, and My brain isn’t working today.
But, eventually, things happen. From all the mush, neurons fire, and suddenly, ideas appear. And what is our writing business with an idea or two?
Morning pages are not just for ideas, though. Because they are a depository for all that early morning gunk, sometimes they are a place for writing down anxieties and working our way through them. Writing those thoughts on paper can be a brilliant way of lessening their impact, which ultimately freeing up our brains to be creative.
What’s this got to do with talking to myself?
One reason I’ve never kept Morning Pages going for over three weeks is because I like to have a digital copy of them. Sometimes, when I’ve had an idea about something, I can’t quite remember all the details, but I know I wrote about it in my Morning Pages, so I’ll find it in there somewhere. But searching through notebooks isn’t as easy as searching through a digital file. In the past, I know I’ve wasted half an hour looking through all of my recent Morning Pages (trying not to get sidetracked with other ideas as I read them looking for the original idea), only to give up and do something else.
So I started typing them up into a digital journal. Now, despite being a writer for—gulp—four decades now, I’m not a proficient typist. I’m more than a two-finger prodder, but I’m certainly no touch-typist. Typing up my Morning Pages often took half an hour, hindered further by my inability to read my own handwriting.
To lose half an hour from my day, every day, is a lot of time. Ultimately, it’s always this that has led me to stop doing the Morning Pages.
Sometimes, my stupidity amazes me. A lot of these journal apps on our computers and phones allow us to take photos, and the software can analyse any writing within it and extract it. (Yeah, well, all I’m going to say is that the software developers didn’t test their AI on my handwriting.)
But then I suddenly realised. Why aren’t I dictating my Morning Pages directly into my journalling app? These days, the dictation and transcription ability of AI is truly incredible. And so, that’s what I’ve been doing. Such is the accuracy of the AI transcription that this now only takes me five minutes.
This has been my breakthrough. I’ve now been doing Morning Pages every morning for eight weeks. Most mornings, I write more than three pages (and I use an A5 notebook, in case you’re wondering).
Now that Morning Pages is becoming a true habit, I’m beginning to see the benefits. My list of ideas is growing exponentially. Not only that, but I’m now finding that ideas from different days ago are linking with recent ideas to create further ideas.
I also use my Morning Pages to write about my anxieties, and it’s fascinating how the creative process of writing by hand gives our brains the time to think and resolve many of those issues. Only last week, I woke early, suddenly realising I was behind with finding a literary agent to interview from my Ask The Agent column in Writing Magazine. Most of my Morning Pages were filled with thoughts of whom to approach (mainly because the column focuses on a genre they represent, rather than the agent themselves), when I remembered an agent who represents a writing friend. They represented a genre I hadn’t yet covered. Perhaps they might help.
By 9.30am, I’d written my approach email and by 10.30am the agent had replied and agreed to help. Thank you, Morning Pages.
I’ve always enjoyed writing longhand. Ultimately, it is a creative process in itself. I’m drawing letters. I’m drawing my words. Creativity breeds creativity. Typing doesn’t do that. Typing is mechanical. It’s finger-prodding. (Well, my typing is.)
I’m rather enjoying the irony that AI dictation and transcription are helping me to be more analogue in my writing. I’ve never written so much by hand as I have in the past two months. (If Leuchtterm1917 or Moleskine are reading this and wish to provide notebook sponsorship, please get in touch 😁.)
The downside to all this (apart from the fact that my pens now run out of ink much quicker) lies with the dictation and how everyone else thinks I’m talking to myself. Which, I suppose I am, when I stop and think about it. I’m having a conversation with my future self. Because I know that at some point in the future, I shall be searching these notes, looking for something I remember writing about weeks or possibly months ago.
This business of writing lark can be so frustrating at times. Half the battle is finding ways and systems that work for you. For me, AI is helping me maintain a consistent Morning Pages habit. And that has boosted my creativity immensely.
The Business of Writing - Volume 5
I’ve recently published the fifth collection of articles from my Business of Writing column in Writing Magazine, and it’s available in eBook format on all platforms.
As a subscriber to my newsletter, you can get a free copy from the GooglePlay Book Store. Just click on this link, which should apply the discount code automatically. (If it doesn’t, please enter KG1UQG1MT9JP4 in the discount code box in the checkout.)
Please note, this code expires on 26th June 2025, and is limited to the first 5,000 users. (I don’t have 5,000 subscribers yet, so that should be enough!)
Write Club Podcast
Last month saw the release of Episode 8 of The Write Club Podcast where some chap called Simon Whaley was interviewed (for over 50 minutes!). If you fancy listening to how I got started with my writing, how I work now, which book I’d recommend for writers, and what my advice for writers is, you can listen to it here: https://rss.com/podcasts/writeclub/2001674/.
Amazon Paperback Royalty Changes
If you haven’t logged onto your Amazon Dashboard recently, you may not be aware that with effect from 10th June, they are cutting paperback royalty rates from 60% to 50%, but only for books priced £7.98 or less (other currency equivalents apply).
If you have any books that fall under this price threshold, you may wish to review your pricing strategy for those books. Further details here:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GXFPA52P6ZJD2U3N
Until next month, keeeeeeeeeep writing!
Best wishes,
Simon
Simon, I badly need to look at dictation/transcription as a writing method because of joint pain. Any app in particular you recommend? I have android BTW. Ali B