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# Most writing is editing
- URL: https://www.howardgray.net/most-writing-is-editing/
- Published: 2026-09-07T12:45:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-07T12:45:19.000Z
- Description: On what an AI editor taught me about my own tics - and why I've ended up using it less, not more.
- Author: Howard Gray
- Tags: Howard's Riffs, A.I, #practice

A lot of people bemoan AI writing. I understand - most of it is grim.

But most writers will tell you: most writing is editing. And as an editor, AI can be wonderful.

Mine reviews my stuff via two skills I've built. Each contains ten files of banned phrases, editing passes and a scoring gate that nothing ships under. Every new mistake it catches gets written back into the files, with a date. The whole thing is really a diary of my errors, recited back to me in cold white text.

I never studied grammar at school. Is that an English thing - the English not teaching English? Ironic. I just sort of taught myself. That means a machine is now filling in the gaps school never got to: my comma splices, my dropped subjects, all manner of things I'd been doing without noticing.

The cool bit is that it's teaching me - and that I use it less, not more. I run a draft through, learn what the issue is - three negations for one fact, the deliberate motif, the aphoristic kicker - and start catching it myself before the machine gets a look.

A year ago I didn't really know what any of this stuff meant.

Has it made me faster? A bit - maybe 20%. Better? I'll let the reader decide.

Either way - the editing still matters a ton. I still toil over the final line, the turn of phrase, the fear that someone might misunderstand me. Like I did writing this.

That part it can't do for me. I checked.