Authorship and Creativity in the Age of AI

Debrief of podcast episode on writing and AI

How do we remain a sovereign, soulful creator in a world where machines can generate words in seconds?

In this solo episode of the podcast, I opened a spacious, reflective inquiry into what authorship and creativity mean in the age of artificial intelligence. Rather than offering a polarized take, I wanted to explore nuance, discernment, and deep self-honesty. This conversation is less about what AI can do, and far more about what it means to be human, creative, and in relationship with our own voice.

What follows is a debrief of my podcast episode—an expansion and deepening of the themes I shared aloud—for writers, creatives, and heart-centered leaders navigating this rapidly changing landscape.

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A Life in Words: Why Context Matters

I want to begin by situating this conversation within my own lived history with writing, because context matters.

I’ve been in the world of words since 2003—over two decades now. I began during the wild‑west era of early Google search, when keyword stuffing and writing for algorithms was not only common, it was encouraged. Even then, something felt off to me. I cared deeply about writing for humans, not machines.

That passion eventually led me into academia. I earned my master’s degree in the teaching of writing and communication and became a college writing professor . I loved the classroom. I loved ideas, critical thinking, and helping people articulate what they believe and how they uniquely perceive the world.

And yet, over time, that too felt an increasing misaligned.

In academic writing culture, students are often encouraged to invisibilize themselves—to mimic the voices of experts rather than develop their own. Originality, lived experience, and personal perspective are frequently subordinated to citation and conformity. While there is value in rigor, something essential felt missing to me: voice, soul, and lived perspective.

In 2013, I left academia. I began writing my first book and later founded Whale Song Creative. For the past nine years, my agency and I have helped transformational nonfiction and memoir authors write books that matter—and bring them into the world with integrity.

I share all of this because my perspective on AI and authorship is not theoretical. It’s grounded in decades of teaching, editing, mentoring, and walking alongside authors through some of the most vulnerable creative terrain of their lives.

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From Refusal to Relationship: How I’ve Related to AI

When AI first entered the cultural conversation in a serious way, I wanted nothing to do with it.

Seeing how these systems were trained—scraping and repurposing the work of artists and creatives without consent—felt deeply misaligned with my values.

I stand with artists. I stand with creatives. And at that time, I simply wasn’t interested in engaging with a technology that appeared to exploit them.

For a while, I held a fairly firm, even extreme position: I’m opting out.

Then something unexpected happened.

I was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend and my mom. My mom began sharing a dream she’d had. My friend—who loves using AI—said, “AI is actually really good at dream interpretation.”

If you know me, you know that dream work is something I walk with daily. It’s sacred to me. So I was skeptical—but curious enough to see what her machine thing had to say.

We shared the dream what came back was surprisingly rich and thoughtful. From the perspective of someone deeply practiced in dream work, I had to admit: it was a perspective worthy of consideration.

That moment didn’t convert me—but it softened me. It introduced complexity. And it reminded me of something I value deeply: curiosity.

Rather than remaining in outright rejection, I chose to enter into relationship—to ask, What is this? How does it work? What does it reveal about us?

So what I share now comes from that nuanced middle space: holding discernment and curiosity at the same time, while still fiercely honoring the irreplaceable value of human creativity.

Information vs. Transmission

One of the most important distinctions I want to make in this conversation is the difference between information and transmission.

I worked with a client recently who has spent decades walking a profound healing path rooted in an ancient oral lineage—wisdom passed from person to person over generations, largely outside of written form and beyond the purview of publicity.

They told me, with real distress, that fragments of this knowledge were now showing up in AI outputs.

“Do I even write my book now?” they asked. “If AI can generate this information, what’s the point?”

What I heard beneath the question was grief. And fear. And a reckoning with something once held sacred now living in a radically different context.

Here’s what I offered:

AI can transmit information. But you are here to transmit wisdom.

You are not here to simply list facts. You are here to share lived, embodied experience. You are here to tell the story of what this wisdom has meant in a human life—your life.

Humans have always learned through story. Story is inherently ours. Our lived experiences, our interpretations, and the meaning we make cannot be stolen or replicated. No system can take away your perspective.

That transmission—story, meaning, embodiment—is where authorship lives.

Editing in the Age of AI: What I’m Seeing

At Whale Song Creative, we edit a lot of manuscripts. And increasingly, we’re receiving books that are heavily written by AI.

If you know how to read writing at the level I do—tracking patterns, rhythm, coherence, and energetic tone and signature—you can feel it immediately.

AI has a signature. A style. A recognizable cadence. It’s coherent, often polished, and strangely hollow.

These manuscripts are often difficult to edit—not because they’re “bad,” but because they lack a human consciousness behind them. They’re an amalgam of voices, not an embodied one.

We’ve had to get clear internally: we are here to edit human books. We are here to help humans articulate their lived truth—not to refine machine-generated output.

And I’ve noticed something else, too.

Some people seem to be opting out of human support altogether—either because they feel discouraged (“Why write a book now?”) or because they’re relying on AI instead of human companionship.

I don’t know if that story is universally true—but I find it worth getting curious about.

Same Comparison Trap, New Context

One insight I keep coming back to is this: AI is simply the age-old comparison trap dressed up in new clothing.

Before AI, the inner voices of resistance said: “This has already been said,” “Someone more famous already wrote a book on this,” “Who am I to speak on this?”

Now it says: “AI can do this better,” or “Why bother if a machine can generate it?”

It’s the same underlying comparison trap.

Comparison has always been one of the most effective ways to silence creative expression.

Here’s what I know to be true: you are the only you in the world. Your combination of lived experience, insight, education, and voice is unrepeatable.

There are people on this planet who need your way of explaining something. Your words will unlock something in them that no other voice can.

When a topic is already being discussed—by another author, or even by AI—that’s not a stop sign. It’s often a green light. It means the conversation is alive. People are talking about what you want to talk about.

Authorship Is About the Process

I will stand on this hill for the rest of my life:

Writing a book is not primarily about the product. It is about the process.

Authorship is one of the most potent transformational containers a human can enter.

Writing a book asks for clarity, devotion, consistency, and deep internal reckoning. It requires you to metabolize what you’ve lived and articulate it with integrity.

A book changes its author before it ever changes its reader.

This is why the question “Why write if AI can do it faster?” misses the point entirely.

AI cannot transform you through the act of writing. It cannot initiate you into deeper authority, embodiment, and self-trust.

Words as Energy

I want to offer something a bit more mystical here—take it or leave it.

In my own work as a channel, I’ve had conversations with the Whale Collective about the nature of creativity. What I was shown is this:

Words are containers for energy. They hold energy, information, codes, light, sonics.

We know this intuitively. Tone, cadence, and presence change how words land. Writing carries frequency just as spoken language does.

As authors, we transmit far more than information. We transmit what we have lived, integrated, and embodied.

AI carries a consciousness. Humans carry another.

These transmissions are not the same.

Outsourcing Authority

When we choose to let AI lead a creative project, something subtle happens: our authority is outsourced, marginalized or silenced. Just like it was in academia.

As I said earlier, we’ve been conditioned to mimic, defer, and seek external validation. Authorship already requires a radical act of self-trust.

Using AI instead of your own brilliant mind and heart can feel alluring because it bypasses doubt, fear, and vulnerability.

But those are the very edges of initiation our soul is guiding us toward.

The places we want to avoid are exactly where our deepest authority is forged.

What Is Uniquely Human?

At its heart, this conversation isn’t really about AI. It’s about who we choose to be in the face of reality as it is. What is uniquely ours to offer one another?

I believe it’s companionship. Empathy. Story. Meaning. Presence. Lived wisdom. None of that is under threat—unless we silence ourselves.

And look, I’m not here to prescribe a set of shoulds or perpetuate any kind of dogma. Rather, let’s step into inquiry together. Let’s ask”

Why am I creating this? What actually matters to me?

Your big @ss WHY is the antidote to fear, comparison, and paralysis. It is the anchor of your ship in any weather. It is the truth of your soul/.

If I choose to engage AI in any way, how can I do so with consciousness, self-awareness, sovereignty and integity?

In a world where words are abundant, meaning becomes sacred.

In a world where machines can generate words, choosing to write as a human is an act of devotion.

Authorship really isn’t in competition with or under threat from AI.

You answering the call to express what you have lived, so that others may recognize themselves and feel less alone is still sacred. Worth doing. A gift sitting at your feet.

If you’d like human companionship for your author adventure, please reach out.