When I named my book I Wrote This On A Monday, I was being honest. No exaggerations.
Over the course of a day, I started and then finished the first draft.
“Cool. So which AI did you use? And what prompt?”
Nope – this was before ChatGPT launched. No AI assistance. No assistance of any sort. I wrote every word.
“Hmm, okay… I guess if you got up early, locked yourself away and ignored all distractions-”
Again, nope. The titular Monday was a mess. I flew interstate, did some cooking and cleaning, exercised a little bit and had a long nap. I had to write in between the usual tasks that fill up a day.
Even so, I wrote an entire book.
How?
Part of it was proper planning. I hadn’t written a word before that day, but I had mapped it out.
Part of it was knowing how to write quickly, easily and well.
When you learn both, writing becomes easy. As in “write an entire book in a day” easy.
Now, I Wrote This On A Monday isn’t Tolkien or Tolstoy. At 11,000 words or so, it’s short.
But it’s not that short. That’s a month’s worth of emails to your list.
Or a third of a typical non-fiction book.
Or more than a tenth of a novel.
In one ordinary day.
That’s superhuman productivity. No one will believe you did it on your own – that sort of speed is reserved for codeghosts and millions of monkeys with typewriters.
No, they won’t believe you – until, that is, you reap the benefits of writing things yourself:
- In a world saturated with slop, human writing stands out,
- Writing gets your ideas flowing. I’ve come up with ideas for entire new products while writing to sell other ones,
- When you write instead of outsource – whether to a codeghost or a freelancer – you connect with your audience better,
- The simple pride that comes from doing honest, meaningful, creative work,
- Writing allows your personality to ooze through, and branding is mostly about personality,
- It’s often quicker to write something yourself than wrangle a chatbot to do it, once you factor in all the wrangling and editing,
- It helps you learn what great writing sounds like, which you need to know to prompt chatbots and edit their outputs anyway,
- Writing is fun, especially the way I teach you to do it,
- The skills you learn transfer. Learning to write faster teaches you how to create podcasts, videos and interviews faster,
- Your writing is probably smoother, more persuasive and more interesting than chatbot slop. And if it isn’t, it will be after you get some practice in,
- All creative outlets allow you to express something deep, meaningful and personal. When you write something instead of outsource it, it reflects something inside of you that needed saying,
- It’s better to automate the tedious, clinical and impersonal parts of your business than the meaningful, personal parts like writing.
Find I Wrote This On A Monday here: