8 Cool Non-Writing Ways to Use AI
Subtitle: (While Still Protecting Your Work)
by Jenny Hansen
AI tools like ChatGPT have stirred up plenty of discussion in the writing world this year. Some writers are curious, others cautious, and many a mix of both.
To be clear, this post isn’t about letting AI ghostwrite for you. I don’t condone that AT ALL. It’s about seeing whether you can use an AI tool as a creative partner to help you stay organized while YOU do all the writing.
For neurodivergent brains like mine, organization and staying in flow pose serious challenges. I don’t know about the rest of you ADHDers, but tools like ChatGPT have helped me immeasurably in keeping track of my tangled-up creative brain.
First Things First: Turn off the sharing!
In the title of this post, I promised to help you protect your work. I can't control all the pirates on the internet, but I can give you the following recommendation.
Before you put a single piece of your writing into any AI tool, I recommend you ask a question like this first:
What use is tracked in this program? What is used to train the program? Please show how I can use the program to ensure my content remains safe inside the program without being shared.
Doing this immediately in any type of GPT program will let you know from the beginning what the program will and will not retain or use for training.
Writers learned the hard way that the creators of AI didn’t always respect copyright. In the beginning (was it really only 1000 days ago?), those developers used the hard work of tons of writers to “train the tool,” which was infuriating to say the least.
I encourage everyone to block the option of unwanted-sharing your work before you do a single other thing in AI.
Two ways to protect your work in ChatGPT
Note: I did my research for this post in ChatGPT (aka OpenAI/chatgpt.com). Since I'm a brand storyteller by day, I use the paid version, but all of this works in the free version as well.
1. Use Temporary Chats
This is a great way to keep a chat private without having to change a single setting. Temporary Chats aren’t stored or used to “train future models of AI.” They’re like a quick creative sandbox for you to experiment and play without any consequences.
How to Create a Temporary Chat in ChatGPT
- Open ChatGPT in any browser.
- Click “+ New Chat” at the top for a fresh conversation.
(My favorite Windows keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl + Shift + O) - Toggle on “Temporary Chat.”
In the upper right of the chat, you’ll have one of the following icons (depending on your version): a clock, an hourglass, or a conversation bubble made of dashed lines. When you click it, it turns on “Temporary Chat.”
Remember: You have to do this EVERY time you want a temporary chat. It is a feature that must be chosen.
When Temporary Chat is active, you’ll see a notice at the top of your screen that your history, memory, and files won’t be saved after the session ends. Warning: this also includes refreshing your screen.
All the normal features will work, and you can even upload or download files. But nothing is saved, and nothing leaves ChatGPT. It’s a great way to play and try things in AI, without having to worry that your work will be shared.
2. Turn off the Data Sharing!
Like every software these days, there are hidden settings that benefit their company and not you. AI tools are no exception.
How to Turn Off “Help Train ChatGPT” Data Sharing
- Open ChatGPT in any browser.
- Click on your name or the Profile Icon in the bottom left.
- Choose “Settings” from the menu.
- In the box that opens, click on “Data Controls.” (see photo below)
- TURN OFF “Improve the model for everyone.” (some versions might show it as “Help Train ChatGPT.”)
- Then close the Settings box and work in peace.
If this option is one you haven’t yet heard of, I’m glad we’re talking about this. At least it will be OFF in your version moving forward. Note: Mine has never turned itself back on (like it does in Facebook and LinkedIn *blurgh*).
8 Cool Non-Writing Uses of AI Tools
Writers like me (with scattered brains) know that focus can be tricky. Perhaps, like me, you sit down to write and suddenly you're researching something nebulous or watching a string of pet videos.
In the past, I’ve scribbled ideas on Post-its and notebooks (that I invariably lose), or in software like OneNote or Evernote (although I sometimes lose those files too).
The goal of these tips below is to enhance your creative process and make it searchable when you need to rediscover your own brilliant ideas.
1. Make a Story Dump Chat or Project for your WIP
Dump your ideas, snippets, and dialogue sparks into a chat so nothing gets lost to the void. Once every few weeks, I review it and pull out any shiny gems I’ve forgotten so I can use them.
For me, this is way better than something on paper that I am bound to lose.
2. Organize Tasks into Manageable Micro-Tasks
I’ve learned that when I’m stuck and frustrated, it’s often because a task is too large for me to see clearly.
If you read my post at Writers Helping Writers on Writing Tips for the Neurodivergent Brain, you know big things like manuscript-length Word documents break me. My brain needs tiny little scenes in Scrivener instead, or I get lost inside my manuscript, paralyzed and dejected...and not moving forward.
ChatGPT is really good at taking a huge ball of whatever ranting frustration I dictate into it, and breaking it into bite-sized steps or checklists that feel more manageable.
3. Act as “The Keeper of Continuity”
You can include a file in a ChatGPT chat or project. I often add a recent draft of my story into the Story Dump I made and use it as an all-around search tool.
Some examples:
- Can’t remember your character’s eye color or boss’ name?
- Or which chapter the wedding/funeral/graduation happens in?
- Or what all your neurotic character’s phobias are?
ChatGPT will hold those details for me so I can go to that chat/project later and ask about the thing I can't remember (and receive a fast answer). If I have to stop writing to find some detail out, it's guaranteed to break my writing flow. I rarely get it back. That's why I work so hard to minimize distractions.
4. Brainstorming with Boundaries
Endless options give me brain freeze. Or worse send me down the research rabbit hole for hours upon hours. That’s almost always a waste of my valuable writing time.
But if I ask ChatGPT for five possible weather-related conflicts that fit with a romantic suspense set in Glacier National Park in Montana, I will get five answers and that’s ALL. If none of them spark anything, I can ask for a new specific amount of examples. No rabbit holes. No reading through pages of search results. Just five quick ideas, and then staying productive in your manuscript.
This is a massive time saver for a wild mind.
5. Confidence CPR
A few months ago, I was having a day where I just felt like my manuscript was garbage. My inner critic was wearing a big ten-gallon hat and nailing me in the heart with the Shame Shooter.
I asked ChatGPT the following: “Please give me a pep talk about what's good about [Manuscript Title].”
It gave me SIX glowing and detailed reasons why my story was powerful. Phrases like emotionally intelligent, deeply kind, and honest about imperfection were used. It was awesome. And it was wicked effective. I was motivated enough to get back to it without all the negative self-talk.
Other Writers’ Input
After reading through the first draft of this article, one of my writing friends added three more great non-writing uses by giving her own free AI tool the following prompt: How can you support writers by sparking creativity without actually doing any writing or editing?
Below are the amazing answers it gave her (I’ve italicized GPT’s answers):
1. Character Discovery
I can guide you through character-building questions and naming ideas, such as:
- "What name feels like your character — elegant, earthy, mischievous, or fierce?"
- Exploring origins, meanings, or name vibes to match their personality.
- Helping you figure out their backstory motivations, contradictions, or inner growth arcs.
Note: I also use One Stop for Writers for this sort of work, because their character builder and various thesauruses are amazing, and have been around since long before all the AI tools.
2. World-Building Companionship
If you're creating a fantasy, sci-fi, or children's story world, I can:
- Ask the kind of "what if" questions that make a setting deeper ("How do seasons affect your world's magic?")
- Help you think through logistics like economies, geography, daily life, or rules of magic.
3. Creative Problem-Solving
When you're stuck, I can suggest writing prompts or mini-exercises to re-ignite inspiration.
A note of caution
AI tools try to be very very helpful. For example, it will offer to write things for you. Often they’ll sound just fabulous, but they probably won’t sound like you. In my personal opinion, AI isn’t remotely a good substitute for your own unique human voice.
But it’s a really great assistant for helping you keep your forward motion by doing tasks like:
- Answering research questions quickly. (Pro tip: always double-check the accuracy of historical or technical details during your editing phase.)
- Remembering the details of your writing, as I mentioned above.
- Offering naming or world-building ideas.
- Giving much-needed writing encouragement.
Final Thought
Used wisely, tools like ChatGPT can help you be better organized, more productive, and best of all. . .protect your forward motion and creative flow. The goal isn’t to let technology replace your imagination. The goal is to give your imagination more breathing room, especially if all the brain clutter is slowing you down.
Maybe I’ve embraced this tool because I’m a retired software trainer, or because this kind of organizational and editing work is challenging for me. But to me, every minute you save by organizing, brainstorming, or editing with technology tools like the ones I’ve mentioned is a minute you get back for storytelling.
Your unique story is an important gift that only you can provide. My vote is to let the tools handle the noise, while you handle the magic.
Where do you stand on using AI tools like ChatGPT to stay organized? Do you have other cool non-writing uses for the program? Please share your tips and opinions down in the comments!
* * * * * *
About Jenny
By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.
All photos created in Canva Premium.
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27 comments on “8 Cool Non-Writing Ways to Use AI”
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Great advice, Jenny. Like you, I also use AI for organization—especially when I’m wrangling my story into a workable outline. It’s amazing how quickly it can take a rambling synopsis and turn it into something clean that I can easily adjust.
I recently read about a study where participants wrote an email, a composition, and a story. Each piece was run through AI repeatedly—up to ten passes—while participants noted the point at which the writing no longer sounded like them. Emails and compositions held their voice until about the sixth or seventh pass. Stories, though? Their voice slipped away by the third.
AI clearly shines more in nonfiction than fiction. Our writerly voices really are like fingerprints—and here’s hoping they stay that way.
Oooh, that is fascinating research, and I absolutely believe it. Writer voice is such an integral part of any story, and it's chucking it out the window to lean on AI for the actual writing.
Looks helpful. Hopeful.
Right now, I'm just a shade above troglodyte level when it comes to using AI like ChapGPT. Clearly, I need to investigate it and I have been considering some of the "15 minute-a-day" training courses/methods to build some confidence/achieve some useful results.
I've always been a champion for using new tools for efficiency, but somehow placed myself in a position, after retirement, of not feeling there's enough time to both learn and DO everything I've set on my plate. Maybe I'm just afraid of Father Time closing in....
I think technology feels more daunting once you leave the workplace because you're not seeing all the incremental changes that you see when you're using tools regularly. It's like seeing a niece or nephew after a few years away. . .the changes are astonishing.
I maintain my story bible in Word. It's a searchable document with the details I need to keep straight. I have another doc that acts as a timeline and outline. Also, searchable. There's a third doc where I pull cut text with info that might need to appear elsewhere. But I also put that in a comment at the top of the next chapter or scene where the character appears. I move the comment as I move forward until I reuse the item or realize it's not necessary. This is all revision. Writing (drafting) is done with as few interruptions as possible. Sometimes in revision, I need to break flow to hear what's there clearly instead of having it be what I think is there.
I worry AI use could be a slippery slope and I don't necessarily trust that what they say is private is.
I hear you, Debbie. I tried doing those things in Word, and the "bigness" of the documents defeated me. It's totally an ADHD problem, I'm sure.
You should never use any tool you're uncomfortable with.
I'm using AI as my VA--virtual assistant. Anything I would hand over to a VA, it performs for me. Searching for the best keywords, brainstorming titles, character names, locations, comparing programs I'm considering purchasing or using, and providing pros and cons about possible titles and the audience that would be attracted.
I've given it a full synopsis and asked for a couple of event ideas to create humor, tension, or mystery. It takes my taglines and blurbs and provides improvements. Sometimes I see things I've forgotten or where I could be using a better word or phrase.
It provides promotional help, too. Eye-catching words for headlines, or suggesting colors to use while providing the why behind those colors. I see AI as a brainstorming partner, an assistant.
I create all of my own original content. AI is nothing more than a helpful tool like ProWritingAid, Grammarly, Autocorrect, and others that I use. It allows me to spend more time writing and less time brainstorming, researching, and other endless tasks we writers engage in.
Agreed! And I think it is a tremendous boon for authors to get those uses out of the tool. Most of us HATE doing a synopsis or book blurb. To be able to just write the story and hand over some of that short copy frees up scads of time.
One thing I've found useful: When I'm uploading metadata for a book and I've written my description, and then I find the site also wants a SHORT (as in 400 CHARACTERS, max), I feed the bot my description and tell it to distill it to 400 characters for me. I can tweak, but it saves a lot of time.
Terry, I'm now using it for those metadata descriptions as well. A great time-saver and no guessing about the length!
What a fantastic use of AI, Terry. That's the stuff that we writers have been forced to spend our creative energy on over the years, and it wears most of us out. Bravo to you!
Hi Jenny,
I've been tip-toeing on the edge of trying #AI. For now I use a character and story bible, but you may have won me over.
Ellen, I never ever tell anyone they HAVE to use a tool. But I do love to point out some great uses of the tools that are available. Most of us have so little time, which makes it incredibly precious. Especially creative time.
Every year, writing friends tell me: "It's all the minutiae, the marketing, the promo, the cover copy, etc. that made me quit writing." That makes me incredibly sad. All that incredible writing talent laying dormant because the non-storytelling tasks became too oppressive.
This was excellent! I love Chat GPT and had no idea about the temporary chat or how to protect my privacy. I've also used it to generate title ideas. Thanks, Jenny!
You are very very welcome, Debbie! I'm glad you're finding helpful uses.
Wise words.
I'm not comfortable using it.
I hear you, Denise. And there's no reason to use something like this if it's not your cup of tea.
We're not new at this, but I have friends who do really worry about the new writers. It's so easy to say yes and then yes again to something that offers to fix your manuscript problems. . .until it's not your manuscript at all.
That's the downside of AI.
The upside is how much time it saves on the marketing and minutiae types of tasks.
What a great article, thanks Jenny!! Like you, I'm (undiagnosed) neurodivergent - I supect I'm AuADHD like my daughter. I share your issues with losing notes, scattered thoughts, losing focus and getting brain overload. I currently just use Word files to keep my notes and WIPs as I can't cope with more complex systems, but the ideas you've given here seem manageable and something I could really buy into and find useful. Great tip about how to turn off sharing - something I hadn't even considered!! Thanks again!!
You are very welcome, Becky. I found out I had ADHD when I was 46 years old, and the more I've dug into what that looks like for me, the more I've realized I can make up some of my deficits with great tools. My snarly yarn ball of a brain has really made the road to publication harder than it needed to be.
You and I both have very distinct writing voices, which saves us from any allure of letting AI help with creative work. But man, the organizational power has saved me bunches of times already.
Plus, I write out of order, which means I often have continuity issues. I was very happily surprised to see that AI could find those for me in under 2 minutes. Here's what I did: (With all sharing off) I created a new Project, uploaded the latest draft, told it the problems I wanted to find, and it gave me 7 very actionable to-do's. That was a happy day.
This is great, Jenny! I have found AI to be an excellent writing companion. My favorite use is to brainstorm with it while driving. I can't take notes, but it can. I treat it like an executive secretary. I'm still the executive making the decisions, but it can take all of my notes, organize and summarize them, then present them to me in an organized way when I get back to my desk. I can say things like, "remind me... which ideas have I had for WITS articles that I haven't written yet?" And it'll give me a list. Then I can have it go through my notes about different topics and give me all of my notes on a specific prompt, which often becomes an outline for the post. From there, writing it is much easier!
What a wonderful benefit! I do something similar, but with Otter.ai in the middle taking the notes. Then I upload that into ChatGPT so it can organize and make sense of my huge dictational morass. LOLOL.
Nice essay. Good ideas. I tried it once asking for a story idea with certain boundaries. It came up with one much better than anything I'd been running thru my mind for days! Scary! 😱🙄😫
Isn't it so annoying when that happens? However, it's not plagiarism if YOU take the great idea and tweak it for your characters and your voice.
As an IT specialist who is forced to study and use AI, and who is in contact with other IT friends who programme AI, I strongly advise against using it for writing, even if you use Temporary Chats, even if you use anonymous windows, even without a registered account. Any type of AI. Did they ask our permission when they used the entire internet to train the first models? No. Did they ask publishers for permission when they used ebooks of novels, from pirated archives no less, to train the models again? No. Are you really convinced that it is now safe to put your manuscript, your draft, your idea into an AI chat? The answer should be no. Because of the way an AI platform is built, which by definition must “learn by itself”, the text that is part of the question automatically ends up in the AI's own archive for further training. Therefore, your texts risk appearing as a response to someone else, perhaps someone who might ask, “Can you write me a story like this...”? How will you then prove the copyright of your unpublished text? AI is only good for scientific or historical research, without ever letting it know what you are really writing.
I hear you, Barbara. We always appreciate people stepping up to add their knowledge here.
Great tips. Very similar to how I use Chat. Although I was not aware of the Temporary Chat feature. Thanks!
You are very welcome, Lissa!