I’ve had a good week — I signed a book contract — but there was one part of one conversation that was miserable and I keep thinking about it. A writer nearing the end of her university course asked me about joining the Writers’ Guild and at one point said that emerging writers who do not use AI are at a disadvantage, I think even that they are left behind.

Now, that reads as if she were arguing in favour of AI and she was not at all. She was asking about it because this is how the industry looks to her at the moment, how it’s being presented to her.

But what this looks to me is that she’s been listening to an AI evangelist. There are still a lot of these, and that’s not even including people who sell AI. There are so many people who have invested so much of themselves in this bullshit that they have to say it’s the way things are and that you’d better join in because otherwise you’re never going to get any work as a (insert job title here). It helps if these people are not writers because any time you can devalue something that you can’t do, there are people who like that.

I think you noticed that I slipped in a certain word there. You were reading quickly, so to save you skipping back up, I mean the word beginning with B and ending with “ullshit”.

I do use AI tools and actually more and more: I’ve used AI for transcribing every interview I’ve done in the past ten years. I’ve an AI shortcut that takes a list and converts it into the right HTML for that list to be seen on a website. The other day, the new Siri AI was able to tell me some names of sources of mine that I’d somehow blanked on.

The list goes on but the list will never include having AI write for me or, an example this writer said, product pitch deck visuals.

I could now trot out half a day’s worth of reasons but if you don’t happen to already have exactly the same opinions about it as me, you have at least heard all of this before.

So let me focus on that specific thing of new writers being left behind. Forgive me, this is quite a technical point: if you get AI to do your writing for you, why the fuck should I use you? Commission you? Publish you?

I mean it. There is nothing you can do with AI that cannot be done by absolutely every single person else on the planet. So you are demonstrating to me that you are entirely worthless.

There is this thing in writing that if you’re not a writer can sound very arty and detached from reality. It’s that you should write what you want. As in what you personally are interested in, not what the market demands. It is arty, but rather than being detached from reality, it is stone-cold pragmatism.

Like I said to this writer — who I really liked, by the way, I should say that — today the market is hot for gay sports stories. Great. But by the time you’ve written yours, the world will be onto something else. No one could seen what an impact Rachel Reid’s Game Changers tale Heated Rivalry would have, and today no one can see what the next thing that will have that excellent wallop will be.

Writing what you want to write is not arty or being up yourself, it is entirely pragmatic because you cannot predict the market, you can only write the best thing you can and see what happens when it’s done.

Don’t use AI for writing — well, do if you like but how is that writing? — and never try to write what readers and audiences like today.

Unless it’s zombies. For some reason zombie stories just will not die.