How I Write

It begins with me talking, and often walking or hiking.

A large part of my way of thinking is verbal, not linear. I work through ideas by recording long-form audio and video where I speak freely, follow tangents, contradict myself, and circle back. Lots of voice memos and videos.

That’s where the real substance comes from. My everyday lived experience. The unfinished thoughts. The things I wouldn’t write if I were trying to sound polished.

Those recordings are the raw material.

From there, I use modern tools, including AI, in a very specific, limited, and complementary way: as editing and writing coaches. I edit and personalize the output to ensure that it is what I am saying.

I do not use AI to generate ideas, perspectives, concepts, or opinions. I never have. Every idea I share originates in my own experience, reflection, and long-form thinking.

The role of these modern tools is to help remove noise that doesn’t serve my readers and to translate my spoken language into clear, readable prose. I do not ask AI to think for me. I am asking it to help me edit what I have already thought.

This approach didn’t start with AI.

Years ago, I was frankly poor at grammar and spelling. My readers and clients often gently told me so 😬. Tools like Microsoft Word, with its red and green underlines, helped me improve. Later, tools like Grammarly also helped refine my writing further. For me, today’s tools are a fancier continuation of that same pattern. They help me communicate messages that matter to me more clearly than I could on my own.

This matters because my natural writing style is… dense, to put it kindly. Other tools routinely rate my older writing at a grade-15 reading level or higher. While that may look impressive on paper, it creates unnecessary friction for the men I’m trying to reach.

Most midlife men, even highly intelligent ones, prefer writing that lands closer to a grade-8 to grade-10 level when the subject is emotional, relational, or existential. My goal for most of my public writing is clarity, not complexity. I reserve my more complex thoughts for elsewhere, mostly my community posts.

Writing itself is not the point for me. I enjoy it, but it’s a means to an end: communicating in a way that people in pain and frustration can find and experience empowerment and encouragement.

I’m not trying to be a novelist. I’m trying to help people overcome stuckness and experience freedom. Clear communication serves that goal better than ornate language ever could.

It’s also worth naming the difference between authoring and writing.

Authoring is the work of originating ideas, forming perspective, integrating experience, and taking responsibility for meaning. Writing is the work of encoding those ideas into language that others can understand. Long before AI existed, many authors relied on editors, collaborators, or ghostwriters to help translate their ideas into an accessible form.

I see modern tools as part of that same lineage.

The ideas are mine. The responsibility is mine. The final words are mine.

The tools simply help me communicate what matters more clearly.