Just Write: Seven Ways Authors Can Use AI to Save Time

We've talked before here at Embers about how to find time to write. But for authors, there always seems to be a million things to do other than writing. All of these lovely tasks take up time too.

What's a busy author to do?

If you like the idea of using AI to save you time and effort with the things you aren’t passionate about so that you can spend more time writing, then look no further. There are ways to use AI to be more productive without outsourcing your creativity to it.

I’ve spent the last several months trying out various AI tools as I work on my current writing project so that I can pass my experience along to you, Embers fan. Here are the top seven ways that I have found AI to be useful to writers who just want to write.

1. Research
Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you’ve surely found yourself doing research for your books. Sci-fi authors must learn about outer space, fantasy writers might need to know how swords are made, a financial guru will likely need to look up some statistics, and murder mystery writers have to dive into topics so harrowing that we need not list them here. For years, we’ve turned to Google for this purpose.

However, the sad reality is that Google is now a monetized slush pile of uselessness. In fact, the top results from any particular search are spam or scams. As a writer, it takes me a long time—sometimes hours—to parse through the junk on Google to find the information I need.

However, with tools like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Copilot (which is built into MS Office), I can type in extremely specific search topics and get results which are precise and (for now) ad free.

For example, I’m currently writing a sci-fi series that features a fictional planetary system. I entered the basic design of this system (a binary star system with seven planets, etc.) and asked ChatGPT to tell me how long it might take a ship utilizing an advanced fusion drive to travel from one particular planet to another. It performed complex mathematical calculations and theorized an answer. This is simply incredible.

Just about anything you can think to ask AI, it can answer. Now, fair reminder here—AI is still the Internet, and we are responsible for checking the validity of its replies as we would be responsible for checking any source. But the instant, specific answers sans spam is truly remarkable and saves tons of time and effort.

2. Brainstorming
I’ve been blessed with close writer friends who I often bounce ideas off of. Questions like, “I have this character whose motivation isn’t clear. How can I fix that?” or “I’m trying to come up with names for a race of aliens from an entirely ocean-covered planet. Any ideas?” However, not everyone is blessed with such fantastic creative cohorts in their lives, and even I don’t want to text them when I’m writing at midnight on a Tuesday.

AI is a fantastic sounding board for these kinds of questions when other humans are unavailable. If we’re happy to consider (and sometimes adopt wholeheartedly) the ideas of our friends, why shouldn’t we consider the ideas of a machine?

For example, I was recently writing late at night and got hit with writer’s block. I needed to come up with a unique futuristic weapon, and for whatever reason, I was struggling. I shared my rough design with Copilot and then asked it for more ideas along the same lines. It came up with some cool stuff, which I used bits and pieces of to enhance my original concept. I was then able to push past the writer’s block and keep plugging away.

When people aren’t around, AI is a great stand-in for a writing buddy.

3. Marketing Ideas
As an author, I’m often overwhelmed by the (essential) burden of marketing on top of writing. All I want to do is write, not come up with newsletter topics and back cover copy. Thankfully, this is one place where AI can really shine.

Want to plan out your next year of author newsletters? Just enter your newsletter’s frequency, the various topics you want to talk about, what your publishing plans are this year, etc. into an AI tool, and you’ll receive back a lovely list of curated newsletter topics and ideas to play with. Sure, you’ll likely need to tweak them, but this is a headache-free way to plot out your newsletters.

For back cover copy, there are some brilliant humans out there who can help you write it. However, if that just isn’t in your budget or if you’re simply looking to improve your current draft, AI can help. Some of my favorite resources are the Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator and, if you’re up for becoming a patron, the Book to Blurb tool by Author Media. Entering your book’s synopsis into something like Grok and asking for a blurb (under 200 words is best!) is also helpful. It won’t be perfect, but it gives you a starting point to work with.

4. Creating a Writing Schedule/Timeline
I don’t know about you, but I’m a planner—I like to plot out a timeline of my writing goals for the upcoming months so that I have something to work toward. However, creating a detailed timeline that includes writing goals, marketing strategies, book launch tasks and dates, and more is a huge use of my time.

Thankfully, I can type my goals into an AI tool like Claude and ask it to create this timeline. I can even link to a blog post like this brilliant one from Author Media about how to publish a novel in 2025 and add in my specific goals, then have AI plot those goals according to the guidance given in the blog post.

Part of the beauty is you can request as much detail as you want. Interested in weekly goals? No problem. Monthly milestones? Of course. Daily tasks? It can plot those out for you too. You can then take that AI-generated plan and modify it to meet your precise needs.

5. Quick Grammar Checks
Even the most AI-averse writers have most likely been using AI when they write whether they realize it or not. The truth is that AI has been in word processing tools for years now. Grammarly? Yeah, that’s AI. MS Word’s grammar checker? Yep, AI. Back in the day, that annoying little Clippy guy in MS Word was also (terrible) early AI.

AI is not good at preserving or enhancing an author’s voice, but it is pretty good at helping with straightforward grammar issues. One thing I often use AI for is answering quick grammar questions.

For example, I might have an idea of what I want to say, but I might not be sure about a particular aspect of my sentence. E.g., should I use “lay” or “lie” here? I can enter my sentence into an AI tool and ask it if my use of “lie” is correct in that sentence and get an immediate answer.

Could I look up this rule in the Chicago Manual of Style or another grammar guide? Absolutely. But it would take a bit of time to do so. If I look up several things in Chicago when I’m revising my work, that adds up to valuable time. But when I outsource these grammar checks to an AI tool, that tool checks Chicago (and online forums like Reddit) for me, meaning I can use that time I saved getting down and dirty with Chicago to write more.

Is AI infallible with the suggestions it makes? Absolutely not. But it’s great to make a quick call on something, allowing me to move on in my revision rather than going down a grammar rabbit hole.

6. "Read Aloud" Functionality
Even if you don’t plan on creating an audiobook version of your book, listening to it read aloud is an invaluable revision tool. For years, we authors have relied on listening to ourselves read our stories aloud to see if the dialogue is natural and if the rhythm of the writing is smooth. If we were very lucky, we might have been able to enlist the help of a loved one to read a particularly troublesome passage to us out loud so we could hear it read from outside of our own head. Now, AI will read your writing aloud to you.

You can use a free online tool like NaturalReader, but this functionality is already built into MS Word. Within your document, go to the “Review” tab and then select “Read Aloud” for a surprisingly natural-sounding AI to read your work to you. This gives you the opportunity to listen to the flow of your writing and pick up on clunky phrasing or dialogue.

7. Marketing Graphics or Concept Art
Not too long ago, having original graphics to use in promoting your book was an expensive dream for indie authors. However, images unique to your story’s world and the characters that live in it can pull potential readers in immediately. Furthermore, creating concept art to help you pin down the world you’re building is also super helpful. What’s an indie author (perhaps with little visual art talent) on a budget to do?

For website graphics (like those in this blog post), social media images, and other pictures, AI is a godsend. Tools like Midjourney and even Copilot (which has made some significant improvements in its image generation, in my opinion) create beautiful, tailored images upon request. It can be a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to craft the perfect prompt for these tools, but once you get the hang of it, you can create infinite images that you can use to promote your work even before it’s published. Note: be sure to check the licensing permissions on any particular AI tool you use to see if “commercial use” is included. Most paid tools like Midjourney include commercial use for images you generate. But free/trial tools may not allow you to use images commercially.

But what about artists, you say? Won’t they be out of a job? The short answer is, no. Not really. In much the same way book editors aren’t suddenly jobless because of AI, there is no substitute for the human soul in art. Therefore, human creators are irreplaceable. Here’s a bit more on this topic from design expert Damon Freeman at Damonza.

Besides, we’re not talking about whole book covers or other major graphic endeavors here, which are often best left to human professionals (many of whom use AI in some capacity, BTW). We’re talking about concept art or other marketing graphics that likely won’t live in perpetuity with your brand.

As an editor who has yet to lose work because of AI, I promise, the artists will do just fine even if you use AI to generate some marketing images once in a while.

Perhaps you can try one of these uses for AI to save some precious time. After all, we writers? We just want to write.

~Madeleine Mozley