In my blog’s 20th year, I finally have an editor

I used Claude AI to help me write my recent essay about Carmel, Indiana. Before you get out the tar and feathers, let me explain why this isn’t AI slop, and why I think it’s still my writing even though I didn’t choose every word. Here’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t type “write me an essay about Carmel, Indiana” and publish whatever came back. That would have produced something competent and hollow — a limp assembly of what’s already been said about roundabouts and visionary mayor Jim Brainard and Hamilton County wealth. Instead, I used Claude as a partner in developing my ideas. I fed it the deer on Spring Mill Road, the night Margaret and I stayed at the Hotel Carmichael and felt like royalty, the weird everyday-people statues, the two young mothers on the corner, and especially Carmel Welding. I told it of my 30 years of experiences there. I asked it to help me see my unresolved feelings clearly. I also told it things that didn’t make it into the essay but rounded out all of my…