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Comment by borski | Hacker News Reader

I find that AI is very useful for getting me past the 'blank page' writing block, but inevitably it writes in ways I would never, and so I end up editing it heavily. But, for me, a boy with ADHD, editing something is infinitely easier than writing it from scratch.

I think this is the opposite of how most people tend to use LLMs, and I actually think my way is the "better" way. My issue has never been the act of writing well, or clearly expressing what I mean... it has been the inertia of putting words on a page at all.

(and an LLM had nothing to do with this comment :P)

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I can relate to the inclination, but so many new insights and moments of inspiration are necessarily confined to that painstaking iterative line-by-line process of real writing. When you are simply prompting and editing, you will fill the page (and it might even sound like “you”), but you will not have that delightful experience of encountering something unexpected along the way to filling it.

There's nothing stopping you from doing that with an LLM. I get more insights refining a draft through prompts than I ever did writing because there's more of it. The end stage of that process rarely sees the light of day because the artifact wasn't the point.

For writing as thinking with trouble starting from scratch, LLMs are the most important technology to emerge in my lifetime. Microblogging filled that gap in a way, but it had too many downsides.

>> you will not have that delightful experience of encountering something unexpected along the way to filling it.

> There's nothing stopping you from doing that with an LLM.

There may be, though. The LLM's initial output may anchor your thinking in insidious ways that may not be obvious at all especially since you're feeling productive. I bet the lack of confidence around starting would also increase over time every time you use an LLM to get over the hump.

Not so far.

I'm not talking about using a default mode LLM with LinkedIn Standard Obsequious Bullshit as a conversational imperative that emerges from simple prompts interacting with the heaviest weights. It pushes back because I told it to and it has redirects around common LLM failure modes, and modes unique to how I use them. That's in a set of instructions I've had a bunch of different models tear apart so I could put it back together better.

I treat it and describe it as a language coprocessor, not a buddy. The instructions are the kernel I boot it with.

Yeah, precisely. My "Bobby" knows my voice, but is not me, and is bad at using it. It is aware of all the tropes, and I've built a writing skill that describes, in great detail, how I write. I have also set it up to challenge me, not make me feel good.

Moreover, it's not like I spend my entire writing time arguing with an LLM, lol. I spend more time writing myself and/or doing research on the internet without an LLM, because sometimes they still get things wrong.

In short: it's a tool, not a solution.

I think you missed my point. I don't go back and have AI re-edit my drafts, on average. I have it give me some words that are on a page so I can say 'this sucks' and engage in writing myself, as opposed to continuing to stare at a blank page.

The quality of the AI's writing actually doesn't matter, for me, as much as it might for others, as a result. I write my own stuff. I just find AI helpful to activate me to do it.

Your experience of being better at editing than writing makes me think of advice from Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame) on writing. He says to also read bad books, because if you read only good books, you'll never realize if you unintentionally plagiarized. But if you also read bad books, you'll think, "Jesus Christ, I could write this shit," and feel liberated to analyze their writing and examine why their writing offended you.

I analyze the writing of my LLMs and I get really annoyed and frustrated and I think it's marginally improving my communication.

>but you will not have that delightful experience of encountering something unexpected along the way to filling it.

I feel like you haven't used LLMs very extensively if that is your genuine experience with LLMs.

Without even tuning the heat to a higher setting, a wide range of LLMs have offered me unique content that I had not encountered previously and certainly was not expecting.

I’ve spent more than enough time writing with LLMs.

“Encountering” is actually a very apt description of the “ah-ha moments” of AI assisted writing, so that was the wrong word for the point I was making.

The joy of traditional writing is that those “ah-ha moments” come from somewhere in you. And I’m not arguing that is preferable out of some sort of anti-AI moralism. Rather, the epiphanies of traditional writing are better because they are informed by your singular experience, the life you have lived, the connections you have made, and all you have gathered along the way. I’m saying that it’s a great disservice not only to a given piece of writing, but to writing as a whole, when those influences are not present to guide the first drafts of the world. Follow the branching paths of your own inspiration to the conclusion, then let the machine take a pass at it. To give it the first crack is to rob your work of the stuff that makes it uniquely yours, and to rob yourself of the experience of invention.

> I find that AI is very useful for getting me past the 'blank page' writing block, but inevitably it writes in ways I would never, and so I end up editing it heavily. But, for me, a boy with ADHD, editing something is infinitely easier than writing it from scratch.

As someone who also has ADHD, I would beg you to reconsider this strategy.

Getting the first thoughts down on paper is the hardest part, especially for those who may have trouble with focus, but that's exactly why you should practice it!

It's 90% of the task, it's where you have to practice executive function to plan what you're going to write in the overall broad sense. Please don't give up on it and hand that task over to the LLMs There are a lot of strategies you can use to break through that barrier and you'll be better off by strengthening that muscle instead of leaving it to wither.

I can do it. It's not like I'm not capable. I've spent 38 years 'strengthening that muscle', heh.

But I also have an automatic car, even though I know how to drive stick.

Tools are tools, and how you use them is the important part.

For me, the issue of getting words on paper isn't focus, but an inability to decide how I want to start a page; it's decision paralysis. Whatever an LLM writes is going to be crappy, because it isn't me, but seeing it immediately gives me guidance as to what I want to say, because I have something to respond to as opposed to just being in my head.

adhd'er here too. maybe the practice is good, but it takes a lot of energy, which is finite. i find that leaning on my strengths gets me far, far better results than trying to get up to par with everyone else on things im bad at. if a tool just lets you get started, and you can breeze through getting started on things that you might otherwise just never even start, it seems like using the tool is the way to go.

ive been fighting the way my brain works my whole life, and only recently have i switched to trying to work with the way it wants to work. i get so many more things done that are important to me, and i get them done without the implicit "i need to flagellate myself with this thing i hate because there is something wrong with me" that comes with those fights.

and yeah, the ai's come with their own problems. but the trade is so exponentially in the direction of being worth it. even just the being a decent rubber duck aspect of them can keep me on a task when i would never otherwise hope to see it through.

Exactly

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It is not 90% of the task. If it was, a first draft would be 90% of the task of writing, and it never has been. You write a first draft so you can get to the editing portion.

Similar for me, I find it's an absolutely amazing "creative unblocker".

It generally has enough "activation energy" to get me over the hump of wherever I've been mentally stuck.

Yes this is my use-case for it too - it's great to generate a structure which I will keep but I always end up reworking all the actual content so it sounds like me. It is a great way to get past the 'getting started' hurdle though.

You're the first articulating my exact use case with AI as well! It really helps get me in 'the zone'. I actually now dictate as well and then the AI rewrite it and then I start editing. To lower the barrier even more.

Yeah, I've used dictation at times for the same reason.

I don't like how LLMs write. I like how I write.

But I do like that LLMs get me to write. People seem to miss that a lot, because most of the "AI slop" you see is AI-driven, not human-driven. But human-driven writing, with AI as a tool, is a far better way to go about it, imho.

Same, it's the push that gets the ball rolling down the hill.

>clearly expressing what I mean

I have use for it here too - I use it like a "power thesaurus" when I've got the feeling that the word I have doesn't have quite the right connotation, or to test out different versions of rephrasing something when I feel it could flow better or be clearer but I can't quite get my finger on it. But I don't just take output and paste it, I use it like a pair programmer for writing, where I'm the driver and the AI is the observer.

Neat! Similar to how I use it, but I find looking for the right word to be a lot of mental fun, so I don’t use it for that purpose as much. But yeah, “pair programmer for writing” is exactly right.

If our blank page is first filled by the mediocritizer machine, are the ideas even ours?

To be successful in a workplace, team members fall into roles. It's interesting to consider which roles would have an LLM write its median ideas first: https://internalchange.com/order-profiles-training-materials...

Have you tried free/automatic writing? I don't know what the term is actually, but just stream of consciousness, putting words to paper, zero filter or pause, straight from the brain.

I usually start with "I don't know what to write but" and then just don't let myself stop. I have to keep putting words down, only rule.

It sometimes starts or turns gibberish, but eventually I hit a flow and real stuff starts to come out, and then I'm just writing.

I've seen the concept applied to art/drawing as well. I highly recommend trying!

Quick edit while I can: after googling this there's a lot of woo/spiritual stuff about it. I don't really subscribe to that, I just think it's a great tool to get out of your head and enter the flow state of writing, when it feels inaccessible.

Yes, actually! (Minus the woo)

Most of my best short stories were written precisely this way. For creative writing, I find that works really well.

I also do a version of this now, which is simply record myself speaking extemporaneously about the ideas I want to write about. It’s all in my head, so speaking it out loud (or writing) helps me organize my thoughts. Then I take that recording, shove it into an LLM, and have it turn it into sentences with punctuation, without changing meaning.

Inevitably, it sucks, but gives me a starting point.

I was also like this but I managed to wire my brain to get over the anxiety/fear whatever it was to getting started and it’s worked magically.

And I’m thankful - I’d really hate to rely on something else to get me going…

That’s great! I just want to be clear - it’s not “reliance.” It is a tool, and I find it helpful.

I managed my entire life without it, and I can certainly continue to do that.

But there’s no reason, imho, to give up the automatic transmission just because I already know how to drive stick.

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