Don't Worry About the Vase Podcast On Writing #2
Nov 17, 2025
Discover how AI is transforming modern writing, with a focus on practical editing tools. The discussion highlights the pitfalls of chasing influence and emphasizes the art of concise writing. Zvi explores the relevance of humanities in futurist writing and the importance of character-driven humor in fiction. Learn essential advice on clear messaging and developing voice through drafting. Plus, tips on leveraging unique expertise to effectively navigate paywalls make this an insightful conversation for any writer.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Selective Use Of AI
- Zvi uses AI sparingly for actual writing because models give bad, confident suggestions and tend toward generic outputs.
- He uses AI mainly for error checks, fact-checks, and tooling like search and transcription where it reliably helps.
Automate Repetitive Writing Tasks
- Build and use tools to automate boring publishing tasks like TOCs, cross-posting, and link fixes.
- Use a personal GPT to search your archive and a reliable transcriber to extract text from images.
Don’t Optimize For Influence
- Avoid optimizing deliberately for influence; grow as a side effect of doing other valuable work.
- If you optimize for influence you risk audience capture and slopification of your output.