My good friend Tom, is an excellent expository writer. We met while working for Boys & Girls Club. Tom was hired to write grants although he had no previous experience in grant writing. We were impressed by his lengthy resume of writing and editing for newspapers and colleges and he passed our writing exam with flying colors. We felt he could learn to write grants and he did so with great success. I consider him an expert in punctuation, grammar and word choice.

To me though, Tom’s writing is a little superfluous. Doesn’t mean I don’t like his writing; in fact, I totally respect his writing abilities and greatly value his approval, editing and suggestions of my writing.

Tom and I met for lunch a couple of months ago. I brought several entries I had written for my blog – www.mytruelovelist.com – and entries on the same blog topics “written” by ChatGPT. We had been talking about ChatGPT and what it means for writers like us and others such as students and advertisers. It was pretty clear which was which so I didn’t fool him at all, but he did give me some helpful guidance on using AI programs. And he’s using AI himself but lightly, carefully, focused.

Here’s a link to an excellent article about finding your writer’s voice written by Estelle Erasmus for the ajsa (American Society of Journalists and Authors.)

My 10 minutes is up. Wishing you a wonderful writing day!