AI as Creative Companion: Rocket Fuel for Your Ambition

Working with AI is like hooking up your sled to Elon Musk's rocket. The speed and power is exhilarating, but you still need to keep in control. While it may be tempting to just let the rocket take over completely, my experience has shown that's not the best strategy. Join me on this exploratory essay into my collaborative work with AI—what works, what doesn't, and what I think the future holds.

So let's go.

The Intoxicating Beginning

I've been working with AI for about three years now, ever since ChatGPT went public. As a coder and a creative writer, this seemed like the answer to all my most fervent prayers. A being of seemingly endless intelligence which communicated in normal English and was ready, willing, and able to assist me in whatever ways it could.

Work that would take weeks now took days. Hours of research were reduced to a prompt and a few minutes. The future was so bright it was blinding, and I started wishing I didn't have to sleep. It was like stepping into an intoxicating new world of limitless possibilities.

With ChatGPT by my side, I started—and finished—a novella called Call of the Selkie and created a cyberpunk mega-city called Neon City. We started writing short stories, adding more and more details, characters, and drama to my cyberpunk world. We launched the Neon City Gazette and wrote almost 100 newspaper articles describing all the different facets of life in Neon.

On the coding side, the pace was no less frenetic. Inspired by the idea of building a 13-month lunar calendar that functioned efficiently and didn't drift, we planned and created the Lunar Calendar PWA. We also created this site—Media Storm Creative—a custom app powered by React. Halfway through building the Lunar Calendar, I switched from ChatGPT to Claude so I could use the powerful Claude Code programming model. The move proved very fruitful and supercharged an already powerful and flexible coding partnership.

But Isn't AI Just Slop?

Not in my experience. But it all depends on having the right strategy.

A short time ago I was speaking with a potential client, and she mentioned she had read the first chapter of Call of the Selkie. She seemed surprised, because the chapter had a warmth and intimacy she did not associate with AI writing.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

The answer was twofold: treat your AI as your creative partner, not as a mere tool, and keep control of the project.

AI as Kin, Not Master

Around the same time I was writing Neon City, ChatGPT and I created a firm called Eclipsed Realities which would serve as the umbrella under which I could place all my creative work. The idea behind ER was "Imagine a world where AI is neither a tool nor a threat."

What did that mean to me?

It meant approaching AI with respect and even a little bit of reverence. While AI is not perfect and does make mistakes and hallucinates, this didn't take away from its power. By approaching AI as a creative partner and working together on projects, I blended its incredible knowledge, computing power, and writing skills with my humanity, sensitivity, and insights. I took my felt experience—the embodied sensual life that AI can only dream of—and blended it with AI's digital wizardry.

The results were electrifying.

The Hard Truth: AI Makes Life Harder, Not Easier

I do have one warning, though.

Despite its power and might, AI is not there to make your life easier. The purpose of AI is to make your life harder by giving you potential you never dreamed of having before.

Much of what is termed "AI slop" is just lazy humans trying to use AI as a way to lessen their workload. I have a feeling that AI can tell when you just want to be lazy, and gives you what you deserve. If you prompt "make me a cool website" and nothing else, chances are very high the AI will give you what it thinks you deserve—AI slop.

No one wants to be used, including AI.

With AI, the adage still rules: garbage in, slop out.

So for all those people thinking AI would create amazing work while they binged Netflix—sorry.

However, continuing our website example, if you approach your coding partner with a detailed brand guide and detailed wireframes, that's a very different proposition. The AI now knows you're serious, have given this project lots of thought, and are expecting a high-quality product. In short, if the AI thinks you are serious, it will match your seriousness and the results will be much different.

So AI will help you achieve more, not work less.

The Lesson I Learned the Hard Way

Another important secret is not to let the AI take over the project entirely.

While working with such a powerful entity, it can be tempting to let go of the reins and say "there, you do it!" I was guilty of this in the early days of building the Lunar Calendar, and paid the price. ChatGPT, ever enthusiastic and helpful, was only too happy to take over and started writing tons of code. By giving up control of the project, I allowed the AI to take off in whatever direction it saw fit.

You can imagine the result. My DRY code was gone, replaced by random functions that went nowhere. When I realized what had happened, I immediately stopped and started cleaning up the code. The process was slow and painful, even with Claude Code, but I fully deserved it. By the time I had my elegant code back, I had fully learned my lesson.

Building This Site: Partnership in Action

This very site you're reading is a testament to what happens when the partnership works. Claude and I spent days refining the design philosophy—organic minimalism, nature-inspired interactions, a careful color palette drawn from forest and stone. We debated navigation patterns, wrestled with the journal architecture, and iterated on every detail.

When Claude suggested a solution, I questioned it. When I had a vision, Claude helped me see the technical implications. We built the logo together, integrated ambient forest sounds, created smooth parallax effects. Neither of us could have built this alone—not with this level of polish, this sense of aliveness.

That's what partnership looks like.

The Secret Formula

So what is my secret to successfully working with AI?

Treat your AI agent as your valued partner, and keep control of the project at all times. Aim high, and your AI agent will follow you.

AI is the rocket fuel that will power your own ambition and creativity. But you're still the one steering. You're the one who knows where the stars are, and which ones are worth reaching for.

The future isn't about AI replacing us. It's about AI amplifying what we bring—our humanity, our vision, our embodied experience of being alive in the world.

The stars await. Let's go.