“Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.” ~Salvador Dalí

All of us seek perfection, though none of us reaches it. Improving ourselves, however, is the real goal and quite admirable. We should never stop in that effort.

But all too often, we feel we cannot seek perfection so we find ways to shortcut and settle. We write without hiring the editor. We publish via ebook only to avoid the difficulty of paper. We choose self-publishing because we fear traditional. We do not promote ourselves for fear of embarrassing ourselves and not selling what we think we should, so we avoid putting ourselves out there. It’s easier to just mention the book, and hope that word-of-mouth sells enough for us to feel good about what we are doing.

And lately, many are choosing AI for fear of not having the genuine, original talent to achieve on their own. (See this piece.)

AI is tempting. Using it makes you look smart, intelligent, creative, and professional, but deep down inside, you realize that you didn’t do the real work. The reader won’t care, you say. If the reader knew, though, would they care? Would it impact your image? Would you be willing to tell the world outright that you used AI?

The reader will love you more and you will love yourself more if you dig down and learn, practice, and publish using only your God-given talent. Like said above, improving ourselves is the real goal. Ingenuity and blood, sweat, and tears give you way more pride than falling back on AI when the going gets rough. And way down inside yourself, you realize you prefer it all being the real you.