Thinking at Half Speed

15 April 2026

The concern

It is a fair one. AI-generated writing has a recognisable texture – smooth, competent, and somehow belonging to nobody. If you have read much of it you know it immediately. The worry is that using AI to help write means your voice gets smoothed away along with the effort.

That concern is worth taking seriously. But it rests on a misunderstanding of what the process actually is.

What the process actually is

Nothing here starts with Claude writing something and me publishing it. It starts with me talking – thinking out loud, explaining what I mean, pushing back when something does not sound right, redirecting when the tone goes wrong.

Claude proposes. I decide. Every sentence that stays is one I have read, recognised as mine, and chosen to keep. Every sentence that does not sound like me gets changed or thrown out. The filter is always my own judgment about what sounds like me and what does not.

That is not AI writing. That is me writing, with a tool that handles the parts my condition has made difficult – the physical effort of typing at length, the word-finding gaps, the organising of thoughts that arrive fragmented.

The practical discipline

Talk first, do not prompt. Start by explaining what you want to say in your own words, however rough. The AI works from that raw material. If you skip this step and just ask Claude to write something, you will get Claude’s version of the topic, not yours.

Read it back carefully. If a sentence would not come out of your mouth, it should not be in your post.

Change what does not fit without apology. The draft is a starting point. If a word is too formal, too smooth, too obviously not you – replace it.

Keep the awkward bits. Real voice has texture. Over-polished prose is often the giveaway that something has been too heavily processed. Leave a little roughness in.

The bigger point

A friend raised this concern when I told him I was starting the blog. He worried my voice might get lost. I slept on it and came back to this: without AI assistance I would not have a blog at all. The condition has made extended writing genuinely difficult. The choice is not between my authentic voice and an AI voice. It is between having a voice and not having one.

The tool gives me back something I was losing. What I do with it is still entirely mine.

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Talk first. Claude drafts. You decide what sounds like you.