Charlestown, Rhode Island. July, 2026

NOT USING AI FOR BIGGER WRITING JOBS

Many friends suggested I write my father's eulogy with artificial intelligence.

I laughed at their well meaning.

A year later, I'm glad I didn't use AI. When I grieve my mother and father's absence, it helps to open the handmade wooden boxes where I keep their eulogies, dried flowers and prayer cards.

Since my father's death was more recent, I often re read the words I chose to draw his portrait.

It helps to remember the emotions I used to describe his unique life to family and friends. I still laugh at the idea that I would have left this job to an artificial intelligence. AI did not experience his love nor his unusual way of being.

I don't know what will happen to a society, much less a culture, that relies on AI to do its writing. All I know is that I am grateful that I can think critically and if a day passes when I have not written from the recess of my heart and mind, it feels incomplete.

USING AEO, GEO and SEO TOOLS

Can you imagine going to college without a wordprocessor? We used typewriters and Liquid Paper for mistakes. Can you imagine working without the help of Google Search? Yes. I know how to evaluate a Bibliography. I know how to write an Annotated Bibliography. Best of all - I know how important they are to credibility and veracity.

In graduate school, my dog literally went into my backpack and ate my floppy disc. Good thing it was backed up on a USB stick. Sam knew what was keeping him from a walk.

Writers have always relied on tools - my favorite is EB White's Elements of Style. I have a library of books on grammar, punctuation and writers' on writing.

Today I like that you can copy and paste writing/copy/content into AI tools and ask it to put it into MLA (fiction) or Chicago Rules of Style (nonfiction).

I like knowing that verifying nonfiction sources is a writer's job.

Recently a good friend who is a website developer told me about AEO. Of course this is over a year old now. I'm excited to deploy "schema" on this website and for my client websites.

Writers need to know about SEO, AEO and GEO widgets as technology moves faster than the speed of light. Why? It is better if your reading has a chance at getting read.

My client recently said, "People don't read anymore." My colleague asked, "Please don't send me 'walls of text.'"

I try not to listen to this type of discouragement. I edit well. I edit again. It is on them if they cannot read.