Is AI changing how we write? Meet the novelist exploring how tech shapes our creativity

You may expect an award-winning writer to spend her years studying at university penning novels. But while Associate Professor Lucy Neave spent a lot of her spare time writing, her degree also had her assisting with stitching up and examining animals in the veterinary clinic.

“I studied veterinary science because my parents wanted me to have a solid degree,” she says. “I always liked animals, but working as a vet could be confronting – especially in the countryside.”

For two years, Neave witnessed the relentless cycle of life and death, seeing animals born and die before her eyes. To cope, she began channelling her emotions into writing.

“I started publishing short stories and poems in my university’s literary journals. At some point, I realised maybe I could write, and I just kept going,” she says.

A few years later, a Fulbright scholarship took her to New York to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Writing.

But at the beginning of the second year, the terrorist attacks on September 11 sent a shockwave through her world.

“At the time, I didn’t have a TV or a radio or a mobile phone. I didn’t find out about the attacks until the afternoon, when my landlady called me on the landline,” she recalls.  

Neave could hardly believe the news. Her landlady, stranded in the chaos, came to stay with her until public transport resumed.

This catastrophic event reminded her of the need to buy a TV, but most importantly, it was a sign of the times – a world before smartphones and social media.

Much has changed since 2001. We now live in the age of hyperconnectivity, where technology has transformed almost every aspect of life.  

Today, as an English and creative writing scholar at the Australian National University (ANU), Neave is researching how these same technological shifts have reshaped the very act of writing itself.    

Writing among robots

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said our writing tools shape the way we think.

This idea inspired Neave to explore how technology has influenced human expression over the past 65 years – from the typewriter and early word processors like WordPerfect, to mobile note-taking apps, and more recently generative artificial intelligence (AI).

“There’s been a lot written about how social media and smartphones affect our attention spans and how we read,” she says. “But much less on how these technologies have shaped how writers compose works of literature.”

“If we don’t pay attention to how writers are using technology, we’ll never understand how it shapes their thinking, creativity and the form and content of what they write. Without that knowledge, we’re flying blind.”

Recently, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that using AI tools to write reduces brain activity and can be detrimental to young people’s learning.

While Neave is critical of the risks AI can bring, she is not trying to condemn technology. Rather, she wants to document the diverse and inventive ways writers have adapted their skills to new devices –whether it’s the latest tech or something beautifully outdated.

She points to A Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who wrote the best-selling series on an offline 1980s computer using the vintage word processor WordStar.

“A lot of people who write incredible fiction use technology in off-label, strange ways. In a sense, it’s all about figuring out how it can work for you – and that might be unconventional,” she says.

“There’s a lot to learn from the lived experience of successful writers who have adapted to technological change. Creative writing courses in Australia are often seen as a vehicle to make money for universities, but with my research I’m hoping to strengthen how the discipline is viewed from the outside.”

Juggling facts and fiction

Between research, lectures, and supervising students, Neave still finds time to write novels – one of which won ACT Book of the Year in 2022.

“I tend to work on things sequentially,” she says. “I do a whole bunch of academic stuff and then I flip back to fiction for a while.”

Her award-winning book, Believe in Me, follows a daughter trying to piece together her mother’s early life. While readers often assume this is an autobiographical story, Neave insists it’s not.

“Even my publisher assumed it was a personal story because it’s written in first person. There are always traces of me in my books, but it’s all fiction,” she says. 

After two celebrated novels, Neave now regards her earlier books with a mix of affection and distance. Quoting filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, she likes to think of her past work as exes.

“I loved working on them so much– but now it’s over,” she says.  

Instead, she is focused on the release of her recent scholarly book, Infrastructures of Crisis: Literature in the Twenty-First Century, in which she explores the pervasive presence of crises in contemporary fiction and why such stories so often capture our attention.

“Human infrastructures are often designed in ways that allow crises to happen,” she says. “Think about our institutions after the COVID-19 pandemic, or nuclear plants like Chernobyl.”

Her work reminds us that literature has the power to outlast the worlds that gave it life.

“A lot of the physical and digital systems that we rely on are temporary,” she says. “But weirdly, art and cultural products seem to prevail.”

The end of writing as we know it?

As Australia debates how to integrate generative AI into classrooms and workplaces, Neave wants to ensure creative writing keeps its footing.

In an age of ‘infotainment’ and ‘doomscrolling’, our brains have learned to skim, swipe and move on. But amid constant technological change, Neave always reminds her students of a timeless skill at the heart of good writing: editing.

“You could write something terrible, but if you keep working on it, stay flexible, and remain open to revision, your craft will improve,” she says.  

While people may increasingly rely on AI tools for professional or public writing, she believes personal writing – the kind that cemented her love for the artform back in veterinary school – will remain uniquely human.

“Making something out of nothing is deeply satisfying. It can keep you going in tough times. Losing that would be a real shame. But I don’t think we will.”