This Christmas, while most people were sleeping off the turkey or untangling fairy lights, I was conducting an experiment that has completely reshaped my view of creativity.
In a single twenty-four-hour window, I produced a full, twenty-chapter sci-fi manuscript. It’s called The Gravity of War, a story where Interstellar meets the Battle of the Atlantic, featuring 1.25G gravity environments and WWII history. It’s 65,000 words of coherent, complex narrative.
And here is the kicker: I didn’t type a single sentence of it.
The Wall vs. The Window
To understand why this matters, you have to understand the barrier. I am neurodiverse. I have dyslexia and often battle with fatigue. For me, the cognitive load required to physically sit at a keyboard and type a novel isn't just difficult; it is an insurmountable wall.
For years, our education system and creative industries have conflated "writing" (the mechanics of spelling, grammar, and typing) with "storytelling" (imagination, empathy, and structure). It reminds me of the old adage about judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree; we judge storytellers by their ability to type, and in doing so, we silence thousands of voices.
So, I removed the keyboard. instead of typing, I verbally acted out the scenes. I dictated the physics of gravity wells and the emotional arcs of characters like Kurt and James. I then used AI to weave those raw, spoken thoughts into narrative prose. I didn't ask the machine to invent the story; I asked it to remove the friction of telling it.
The "pollution" problem
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. When you say you produced a novel in a day using AI, the immediate reaction from the creative community is often—and understandably—horror.
We are right to worry about "plagiarism by proxy." AI models are trained on billions of lines of text, often without the original authors' consent. There is a genuine risk that if we use these tools lazily, we aren't creating art; we are creating a statistical collage of other people's hard work.
Furthermore, there is the danger of what I call "cognitive offloading." Writing is often a gym for the mind; the struggle to find the right word is where the thinking happens. If we outsource the prose entirely, do we risk "cognitive atrophy"? If I flood Amazon KDP with this manuscript just to make a quick buck, I am not an author; I am a polluter, saturating our creative spaces with AI-generated noise.
From Bricklayer to Architect
However, I believe there is a middle path, and it requires us to rethink the role of the author.
Using this workflow changed my position in the creative process. I was no longer the Writer—the bricklayer placing every noun and verb by hand. I became the Architect, designing the building, and the Foreman, directing the machine on where to pour the cement.
For neurodiverse creators, AI isn't a replacement; it’s a prosthetic. Just as a wheelchair isn't "cheating" at walking, using voice-to-text and AI expansion isn't necessarily "cheating" at writing—provided the creative spark and structure are yours.
The Future is Transparent
So, where is the ethical line? I believe it lies in transparency.
If we hide the tools, it feels like deception. We cannot present AI-supported text as purely hand-crafted prose; that breaks the "human contract" readers expect. But if we declare the tools, it becomes accessibility.
Imagine a future in education where we stop telling students "I can't write" and start asking "Do you have a story to tell?" We could empower a generation of storytellers who have been silenced by the blank page.
Let’s not ban the technology because we fear the spam. Let’s regulate the transparency so we can democratise the creativity.
“This text was conceived and directed by a human, using Voice-to-Text and AI assistance to overcome a dyslexia induced literacy barrier.”
