University of Kwazulu-Natal

Ai Writing And Drafting As A Skill In Defense Of The First Draft

Bonisiwe Shabane
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ai writing and drafting as a skill in defense of the first draft

Something I gleaned from Doug Wilson’s Wordsmithy is that the generation of new tools and the death of old workflows should not be the cause of an excess of sorrow. Many lament the loss of beautiful handwriting and yearn for the days when one would write a substantive letter in one go. But, the skill of nailing your first draft in a letter has been replaced with the twin skills of drafting and editing. This is not necessarily bad. Different tools call for different workflows, and AI as a writing tool means the multiplication of this effect. Drafting is now lightning quick.

You can draft a blog post or chapter in mere seconds. Chances are the draft will be quite bad. Hence the editing. There is a new writing skill by which drafts are made quickly and iterated on quickly. In this approach, that editing step becomes even more important. Just as people mourn the days of hand-written letters in elegant cursive, many will yearn for the days of the word processor.

They will refuse to use the new tools because they like their word processor workflow. Microsoft Word will maintain the same spot in some hearts as grandmother’s elegant calligraphy. And I’m certainly not against reliable workflows or nostalgic memories. Rekha Thomas, Principal at Path Forward Marketing, advises high-growth companies on GTM strategy and provides fractional CMO services. "AI for first drafts" has rapidly become one of the most frequently touted use cases by marketers for B2B content workflows. Marketers often point to saving time as a value prop of using AI, but this messaging oversimplifies the benefit.

After all, not all content serves the same purpose. With the right inputs (messaging and positioning docs, brand and style guides), AI can quickly generate first drafts of product data sheets, proposals and technical assets to save significant time. Coupling these primary sources with prescriptive prompting about audience and channel empowers marketers to automate content creation at scale. While AI excels at speeding up drafts in these examples, it falls short when content demands originality, nuance and authenticity. Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone, spoke on the Writing Excuses podcast about the idea of muddling through as part of his creative process, saying: "I think we... You just can't adopt someone else's method and have it work for you.

It doesn't always happen that way." How will people compose text moving forward, now that every author working with a digital word processor and internet access can use generative AI? Many will likely opt to write traditionally as they did before, but some will use AI in partnership to draft. At this point, the methods a writer uses to develop a first draft feel like a dealer’s choice dilemma—ask AI to generate the draft for you, or bring some of your writing to the... If students use AI in their drafting process, I’m increasingly drawn toward advocating for the latter method. I don’t like the idea of students going to AI and prompting a first draft.

I know some have argued that this could be a helpful method to fight the blank-page anxiety most writers feel. Others view this as helping maturing writers by giving them a template or outline to help them organize and scaffold their ideas. I think there may be some value in those approaches, especially in terms of helping struggling students who might otherwise balk at writing, but all of these approaches assume a maturing writer will then... Those of us who’ve taught first-year writing likely raised a questioning eyebrow at that idea. Students struggle quite a bit when writing. For many, that struggle is a productive one, helping them exercise habits of thinking and self-inquiry, testing ideas, taking creative risks, and often failing.

Anne Lamott’s Shitty First Drafts lays bare this process with frank elegance. I wish developers of LLMs would read it because as Lamott puts it, there’s a profound disconnect in how many fail to divorce the reality of the writing process from the end product: People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million... But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. That fantasy of the uninitiated doesn’t see the often maddening process that goes into shaping and forming the words and sentences on the page. Lamott does a wonderful job of articulating this struggle and demystifying it:

In this episode, explore why generative AI excels at creating first drafts. You’ll discover the key difference between first and final drafts in the writing process. You’ll understand why AI’s creative, probabilistic nature makes it ideal for getting initial ideas down. You’ll learn how to leverage AI for the messy “ugly first draft,” saving you time and effort. You’ll find out how to best integrate AI into your writing workflow for maximum efficiency. Watch now to master AI-assisted writing!

Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for watching the video. In today’s episode, let’s talk about writing, first drafts, and final drafts. Why is AI better at the first draft than the final draft?

It’s not because AI can’t write. We know it can. Properly prompted, it does an amazing job. If it’s not, then it’s time to improve the prompts. Essays Exploring Craft and the Writing Life “Shitty first drafts,” says Anne Lamott, “are how writers end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”

Alexandra O’Connell calls it the Ugly Duckling Draft. Austin Kleon, The Down Draft (just get it down). In Seven Drafts, I call it The Vomit Draft, but also quote Jenny Elder Moke, “y’all quit calling your first drafts garbage. What you’ve got there is a Grocery Draft. Put everything you bought on the counter and figure out what’s for dinner.” My own writing process doesn’t involve an entire shitty first draft, because I don’t write to the end before I go back and fix.

Each day I work on a novel, I start by revising what I wrote the day before, cleaning up that scene and feeling the rhythm for the next one. At the end of a writing session, I leave rough notes for the next scene—scraps of dialogue, action details, character development that must happen. Yesterday’s writing is the springboard to a better draft. When I sit down to those notes and fragments, Yesterday-Me has left a glorious gift for Today-Me: the gift of knowing where to start. Like that Dutch thing where they abandon their children in the woods in the middle of the night to make them find their way home (not kidding!), but with a compass. We’ve all been there.

Staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking with mocking persistence. That initial hurdle—the first draft—is often the most daunting part of any creative or professional endeavor. But what if you had a co-pilot, an assistant capable of transforming a simple prompt into a structured, coherent starting point? This is the promise of “Draft AI,” a concept that has moved from a niche tech fantasy to a mainstream business reality, fundamentally altering how we write, code, and create. First, let’s clear up a common misconception. “Draft AI”; isn’t a single brand or product.

While you might find tools with that name (some now defunct, like Draft.co’s former AI service), the term has evolved to describe a *category* of technology. At its core, Draft AI refers to the use of generative artificial intelligence to produce a preliminary version—a first draft—of written or visual content. Think of it as an intelligent assistant that takes your instructions and generates articles, emails, legal documents, marketing copy, or even patent applications . Unlike a simple template, a Draft AI tool leverages complex algorithms to create novel text that mimics human writing. It’s designed to handle the “heavy lifting” of initial creation, allowing human professionals to focus their energy on refinement, strategic thinking, and adding nuanced expertise. The magic behind Draft AI is a combination of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs), the same technology powering tools like ChatGPT.

NLP allows the machine to understand and interpret human language—your prompts and instructions—while the LLM generates new text based on the vast patterns it learned from its training data . However, for specialized fields, the most advanced Draft AI tools go a step further. They employ a technique called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Instead of relying solely on general internet data, RAG systems first retrieve relevant, verified information from a specific, trusted knowledge base—like a law firm’;s internal case files or a company’s brand style guide. The AI then uses this curated data to “ground” its response, ensuring the draft is not only coherent but also accurate and contextually appropriate. This is crucial for mitigating the risk of AI “hallucinations” in high-stakes environments like legal drafting .

AI is fast. Humans are smart. The magic happens when you combine both. Startups today are moving fast. Building things. Testing ideas.

Raising money. The last thing most founders want to do is slow down to write a perfect draft—whether it’s a pitch deck, a product description, or a patent application. When it comes to writing for your business—whether it’s a technical doc, a go-to-market pitch, or an early-stage patent—the hardest part isn’t writing. It’s organizing everything you already know in a way that’s clear, useful, and fast to produce. Most of the key ideas are already in your head, your meetings, your whiteboard sketches. What slows you down is getting those thoughts onto the page in a usable form.

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