Your writing isn’t soulless. It’s silenced.
“Efficient” writing Is killing your voice (What to do before you ask AI anything again)
This newsletter is in response to my last.
I got quite a number of responses and honestly, I'm grateful to everyone who reached out.
In fact, two persons called me on the phone to check on me.
I genuinely appreciate it.
I’ve been away this week to have a downtime, and I’ve just gotten back.
While I was away with no Wi-Fi, just mountains and notebooks, I thought of so many things.
But my last newsletter (and the conversation about AI) still remained on top of my mind among other things.
So today, I want to help those of you who want to write but feel that AI, while convenient, has crowded out your unique voice and creativity.
I understand your fear (and hey, that’s a huge subject area of mine): your writing has become inauthentic, “soulless,” and you’re losing the very skill that once defined you.
Your question is:
How can I strike a balance between using AI for efficiency and keeping my unique voice front and center?
As someone who uses AI almost on a daily basis (if you don’t count the days I was away in a mountain with no internet access), I can share some tips I use myself:
1. Read more, learn more
“Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,” right?
AI does not live inside of you, it’s external.
Whatever is inside you is what AI will expand on or reduce.
If you want to talk or write about an idea, how many minutes or hours have you invested in finding as many angles to it as possible?
AI can help organize and polish (as it has done to this particular newsletter), but it can’t generate your raw insights.
Start every session by asking:
What have I read or experienced this week that moved me?
Which angle excites me most?
Pour fresh ideas into your heart and note, and you’ll give AI richer soil to cultivate, not barren ground to spin.
2. Chunk your writing
Try not to write it all at once.
Write in chunks.
Except when I’m piecing together my newsletter or when I have a huge spark, I often write in small quantities regularly.
Daily, sometimes.
Here’s what I do:
Whenever I read something or watch a video, I ask, “What am I working on that this content answers?”
I share the content to my Readwise app along with a note and a tag.
Those micro-moments of reflection become the building blocks of your true voice. For example, I’m quoting someone below because I had read what he wrote, and thought it would enrich this newsletter. So I saved it.
My tags list in Readwise app
3. Keep AI in its lane
Never start with AI first.
I know that is not very friendly, but here's a thought question:
Where do you turn when the only place you've been trained to turn is the same place that's keeping you disconnected from yourself?
Flip the question:
“What practices help me reconnect with my natural writing flow when I’ve fallen into an AI-first habit?”
For this I'll say, the quality of your relationship with AI depends entirely on the quality of context you give it.
As Nick Milo recently said:
“If AI doesn't have good context to work with, you won't get good results back. It's that simple. And the only way to provide that rich context is through—you guessed it—writing in your OWN WORDS. It's in notemaking. The practice of processing your thoughts, making connections, and developing your own ideas becomes even more valuable, not less, in the age of AI. This is where your thinking muscles truly matter. When you've done the work of exploring and clarifying your thoughts, then you can provide AI with the clear context it needs to truly augment your thinking rather than replace it.”
4. Editing: Sound more you
If AI-generated text feels soulless, how do you rewrite or remix it so it genuinely sounds like you?
Use a tool like Hemingway Editor. I keep mine completely offline—no distractions—and it cost me about $20 for a lifetime license. Dump your draft in, then:
Trim the fluff.
Adjust sentence structure.
Tune the rhythm until it feels like your heartbeat on the page.
As I wrap this up, I have a question for you:
What’s one line you wrote this week without AI?
Hit reply and share it…
Live courageously,
Dayo Samuel 💯