My Writing Process

On Being Audited by Machines (and the Humans Who Think Like Them)

“The machine is not to be feared. The machine is to be used. What is to be feared is the human being who uses the machine like a machine.”
— Wendell Berry

I spend my days buried in research, structuring, and rewriting in pursuit of one thing: meaning. Not novelty or speed, but using every tool at my disposal to mold my thinking and ideas into a work of art that is meaningful in this day and age of endless content.

But some left-brained people like to reduce my work into a binary: Is it written by AI or is it written by you?

No analysis of the content or meaning. No greeting. No recognition. No humanity. These people think more like a machine than a human being—they bypass the message, the point, and run straight for an audit. And it got me thinking about this construct we’ve built around authenticity. The Indo-European root of authentic is authentes (one acting on one’s own authority). But we’ve twisted it into something else entirely—a compliance check, a mechanical scan for violations.

Let me walk you through how I actually see this. Do I use AI? It’s a little like asking if I used the internet, a spellchecker, a laptop, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a library, or a search engine. Of course I do. I use a variety of research and editing tools. But the writing, the voice, the structure, the thinking, the composition, and the art are mine. I don’t use AI to generate essays. I spend days—sometimes up to 40 hours or more—on one essay. No joke! I’m a perfectionist and I pride myself on being thorough.

The words are mine. The craft is mine. After spending that kind of time on something, to have someone skip over the message and reduce it to an audit on tools is actually more telling of that person than my process. It is that rogue left-brain I so often write about.

Here’s what I want you to understand. I see AI as a giant left brain—not in a neurological sense, but as a metaphor for pure analysis without synthesis. It is logical, sequential, literal, and obedient. It’s a great tool for someone like me, who operates from a strong right brain—the side that perceives holistic patterns, feels the emotional arc of a story, intuits connections, and senses meaning beneath the words. The right brain is where voice, metaphor, and intention are born. To me, AI is the perfect assistant—an obliging, pleasant-voiced servant that saves me time. I see it through the lens of Julian Jaynes’ “bicameral mind”: I am the conscious authority, and it is the internal voice that obeys beside my own much more limited left hemisphere.

This giant left brain can articulate structures that my own smaller, mortal left brain struggles to formalize. It is a chisel. But I am the sculptor. I am the author. I am the boss.

Get the picture? I command it: Get me this research. Restructure this paragraph. Name this concept I’m circling. Produce this table or diagram. Create this image. This sentence is limping; give it some legs. This isn’t the right word—help me find the right word for this idea. Translate this academic jargon into human English. Give me a list of titles that you think would best resonate with people, make them want to open and read. My tone is off—would you agree? Are there holes in my argument? What authors and researchers support my idea? Can you summarize their main ideas and help me connect them to this one here? That’s garbage, what are you talking about? Stop giving me propaganda—think! I disagree with you, sorry. And on and on.

It is a vast, silent library and a relentless copyeditor. A thesaurus that’s actually useful and a debate partner who never gets tired.

Now, here's the part these left-brain auditors don't think about. I am not a lifestyle blogger drafting posts between margaritas on a beach. I am in St. Joseph, Michigan, in an old house where my world has shrunk to these things: rehabbing, gardening, thinking, sleeping, and writing. Thinking and writing. And then thinking some more. The hours I log inside my own head, working on these essays, would bankrupt most content farms. This tool doesn't replace that labor—it makes the sheer volume of it possible without burning my life to ash. And I do all this with just 29 paid subscribers. For years with zero paid subscribers! While it doesn't pay my bills, it's enough to give me the confidence to go on. So thanks to those of you who support me. I simply wouldn't be doing this without you. But with you, I am committed to keep going, because I have a heart for this work, and a calling to do this work. You make me feel like I'm not speaking into the void, that you actually see me, that this matters. And so I endeavor.

So before you do a binary scan, not a human reading of my work, think twice. Are you reading me for meaning, or for compliance? My work often explores how left-brain, mechanistic logic can strip life of its textured, human meaning. And now I have to worry about left-brain human readers responding in the flattest, most algorithmic way possible—scanning for patterns, flagging a perceived anomaly, and dismissing the entire complex system of my labor, intent, and craft without a second thought. It’s hilarious. And terrifying. This isn’t the case for the big guys, the mainstream publications, who surely use AI. But for some reason, little me is under the watchful eye, audited. We fear the machine mimicking the human. But perhaps we should fear more the human mimicking the machine. Don’t you think?

Anyone who reads my work must understand that this isn’t a content farm. It’s serious stuff.

People write books using ghostwriters. Major publications have teams of editors, fact-checkers, and multiple drafts before a piece goes to print. At a news agency, a story passes through several hands before it reaches the public. I was recently told by a book publisher that AI is transforming the industry—publishers use it almost exclusively now. That is simply the reality of modern publishing. Do they disclose all their processes? No. If I hired and paid a research assistant or a copy editor (which would be impossible with my limited resources), should I disclose that? Do the big guys disclose? No.

Think about that for a minute. When institutions use advanced tools, it’s called professionalism. When individuals do, it’s called cheating. This is not a logic of quality; it is a logic of permission and control.

So, how is my use of AI any different from using any other tool? It isn’t. We don’t accuse an arborist with a chainsaw of cheating forestry, or a filmmaker with an editing suite of cheating cinema. Tools don’t corrupt craft; they redefine labor.

Look, I understand why people are suspicious. There’s plenty of AI-generated junk out there—soulless, derivative, churned out by people who want content without craft. That’s not what I’m doing. But the suspicion has become a reflex, and reflexes aren’t thinking. The “Auditor” in you is making a fundamental error if this is your focus. You are confusing the process for the meaning, the implement for the intent. Most readers these days aren’t distinguishing between propaganda and art. This is a new skill humans must develop. You either find meaning in the work, or you don’t. That’s all you really need to know about my thinking and writing.

The sadder truth is that a part of us is growing cold, mechanical, or maybe electrical like a circuit. We’re becoming auditors in a world that needs witnesses, programmed to police instead of connect and understand.

Picture a friend leaning in, eyes alight. “You have to read this—it made me think of you. There’s a voice here, a real humanness…” That’s a right-brain gift. A thread of meaning, passed from the heart. Now watch the left-brain takeover. Instead of leaning into that warmth, a silent panel lights up behind the eyes. Fact-check protocol initiated. The gift is taken not into the heart, but into a cold, bright room. It’s scanned for ideological residue. A label prints: Suspicious Source. The thread is dropped. The connection is overridden. The meaning is lost.

This is what’s happening to us: the willingness to hold something wholly human before breaking it. The curiosity that sees and feels the heart, and responds by saying “Tell me more” before it signals “Abort.” The real loss here isn’t about who gets to use what tools. It’s about what happens when we stop asking What does this mean? or How did you make this? and instead run a cheap, internal algorithm that only asks: Does this match my narrow template for authenticity?

My work is an invitation to step out of that binary. To reject the audit. To look for the hand, even when it’s holding a new kind of tool. To do that, you must engage your right hemisphere. Develop your right brain. It doesn’t audit; it synthesizes. It doesn’t reduce; it connects. It is less concerned with sourcing than with meaning, less with correct sentences than with resonant voice. It reads for context, senses effort, and perceives the unique human fingerprint—the thousand intentional deviations from the standard, polished, AI-perfect prose.

So if you find yourself reading something and feeling a spark of suspicion, pause. Before you jump into audit mode, before you dismiss, ask yourself: am I thinking, or am I just processing? The danger is not that machines will help us write. It is that we will read each other like machines and forget our humanity altogether.