Stop Playing the Tambourine With Your Knee
by RJ Redden
I once tried to be a one-person band.
Not metaphorically. Actually, literally. I had a guitar strapped to my front, a kick drum pedal under my right foot, a tambourine somehow duct-taped to my left knee, and a harmonica in one of those wire holder things around my neck. I looked like a yard sale that had achieved sentience and was desperately trying to entertain a crowd.
Spoiler: I was eight. The crowd was my living room. The audience was my cat. I knew things were falling apart when… he left.
The cat left.
But I kept going! Because I was COMMITTED. I was going to play every part, handle every sound, be the entire show. I'd also appointed myself publicist, booking agent, and sound engineer for this one-person catastrophe.
You know what the music sounded like? Like someone falling down a very musical staircase. Lots of noise. Zero harmony. Every instrument technically present, none of them getting what they actually needed, which was someone who could focus on them.
I think about that disaster every time a writer tells me they're handling everything in their business alone.
Let's get real.
Because honey? Some of you are out there right now with a guitar strapped to your chest, a tambourine on your knee, and a look in your eyes that says "I'm fine, this is fine, everything is FINE" while the cat is actively leaving the building.
Here's what I hear from storytellers constantly, and I need you to be honest about how many of these land.
"I love the writing. I hate everything else."
"I spent six hours reformatting my reader magnet and forgot to actually write."
"I know I should have a website/email list/social presence/merch store/Patreon/newsletter/carrier pigeon network, but I'm JUST ONE PERSON."
(Three for three? Don't worry. I won't tell anyone.)
Because here's the uncomfortable math of being a modern writer: the actual storytelling — the part that made you fall in love with this whole gig in the first place — is maybe 30% of the job. The other 70% is admin, tech wrangling, formatting, scheduling, platform management, analytics, and trying to figure out why your email service suddenly decided you're a robot.
Nobody lay awake at age twelve thinking, "Someday I'm going to write beautiful stories AND ALSO troubleshoot a Mailchimp integration at 11 PM on a Tuesday."
And yet. Here we are. Playing every instrument. Wondering why we're exhausted and the music still sounds like someone falling down stairs.
Then. My brain rearranged itself.
Systems to the rescue!
Last December, I was on a video call with a potential client. Sharing my screen. Walking them through the systems I'd built for my business — chatbot ecosystems, automated workflows, content tools, dashboards that talk to each other, the whole interconnected backstage operation.
There was a pause. The kind of pause where you can practically hear someone's worldview recalculating.
"How many programmers do you have?"
Just me. And I don't code.
(I need you to understand: I genuinely, truly, absolutely do not code. I once described a database as "a fancy spreadsheet with trust issues" and three actual developers left the Zoom call.)
My client didn't believe me. I get that reaction a lot, but it's true. Every bit of it was built through partnership — a genuine, ongoing creative partnership with AI.
Not by asking AI to do my creative work. Not by handing over my voice or my ideas or the weird, wonderful world I've spent years building. But by letting AI handle the scaffolding — the admin, the tech plumbing, the mechanical stuff that was slowly eating my creative life from the inside out.
It's the difference between trying to play every instrument in the band and finally having a collaborator walk through the door, pick up a guitar, and say, "I got this part. You go sing."
Speaking of guitars.
There's a guitarist named Nancy Wilson. You might know her — she's one half of the band Heart. Her sister Ann is the voice. The power. The one whose name most people remember first.
But Nancy? Nancy built the cathedral that Ann's voice filled with light.
That opening riff of "Barracuda"? That's Nancy, cutting through a pitch-black arena before a single word is sung. The audience doesn't think about who's doing what. They just feel the music. They feel it in their teeth.
The best partnerships work like that. Not two people awkwardly splitting the spotlight, but two forces that fit together so seamlessly the audience never even questions it.
That's what AI can be for writers. Not Ann. Never Ann. YOUR voice is the whole point — your stories, your characters, your weird and wonderful creative brain that does things no algorithm on earth can replicate.
But the architecture underneath? The systems that keep your world running while you create? That's Nancy. And Nancy is ready to play whenever you are.
You might be thinking: Okay, RJ, that's a lovely metaphor. But what does this actually look like in my writing life? Where I have a manuscript due and a newsletter to send and a cat to convince to come back into the room?
Fair question, Grasshopper. Let me get specific about what this looks like — and notice that none of these involve AI writing your book for you. That's YOUR job, and I would never.
The admin graveyard:
You know that spreadsheet where you track submissions? The one you started with great intentions and abandoned somewhere around entry number seven? An AI partner can help you build a tracking system that actually works — one that reminds you of deadlines, flags when you haven't heard back, and organizes everything without you having to manually enter data like it's 2004.
The formatting pit of despair:
You've finished a gorgeous manuscript. Now you need it in three different formats for three different platforms, each with their own special little requirements that exist purely to test your will to live. An AI partner can help you set up templates and workflows so the formatting happens systematically instead of eating your entire weekend.
The marketing machine you wish you had:
You're not going to build a reader engagement ecosystem by hand. You're just not. There aren't enough hours. But what if you could build a chatbot that lets readers actually interact with your fictional world? Or automate your reader magnet delivery so you're not manually emailing PDFs? Or create a system that organizes your reader feedback into something you can actually use? All without writing a single line of code?
The "I should really get organized" pile:
Contact lists. Event tracking. Content calendars. Reader data. Review tracking. All those admin tasks that aren't writing but somehow consume 70% of your creative energy. An AI partner can help you build systems that handle the mechanical parts so you can go back to the part where you make humans feel things with words.
That's not replacing your creativity. That's rescuing it from the admin avalanche that's been slowly burying it alive.
Face the fear.
I know there's fear in the writing community around AI. I'd be a lousy fairy godmother if I pretended otherwise. Some of it's earned — the early days of AI-generated content produced a flood of soulless, generic slop that made all of us want to throw our laptops into the sea.
After spending more hours building with AI than my wife would prefer, here’s what I know:
AI doesn't steal your voice. Working yourself into creative exhaustion — THAT steals your voice.
The writer who's so buried in admin that they haven't touched their manuscript in three weeks? That's the real loss. The author who killed their newsletter because the tech was eating them alive? Nothing less than tragedy. The storyteller who has a gorgeous, immersive world in their head but no time or energy to build it out because they're too busy playing publicist, webmaster, and accountant?
That's the thing that should scare us. I know it scares the hell out of me.
AI isn't here to write your stories, my friends. AI is here so you actually can.
You're a storyteller.
That's your superpower. That's the thing that no tool, no algorithm, no amount of processing power can touch — the deeply human act of pulling something from your imagination and making other humans feel it in their bones.
And. You were never meant to be your own IT department, marketing team, booking agent, sound engineer, and tambourine player all at the same time.
Ain’t nobody built for that. And the guilt you feel about not being able to do it all?
That guilt is a liar. A well-dressed, very convincing liar — but a liar nonetheless.
So. Let the one-person show be over. Not because you failed. Because you were never supposed to be doing it in the first place.
And now you don't have to.
Here’s how to start with AI:
Start small. Embarrassingly small. Pick the ONE task in your writing business that makes you want to fake your own death every time it shows up on your to-do list. The formatting nightmare. The spreadsheet you've been avoiding. The email system that haunts your dreams.
Take that one thing to an AI tool and say: "Help me build a better way to do this."
Not "do this for me." BUILD a better way. Together. Like a partnership.
See how it feels to have someone else finally pick up a guitar so you can do what you were always meant to do.
Because here's what I know from experience: once you feel that shift — from drowning solo to creating with a partner — you don't go back.
The music's just too good.
Have you experimented with AI in your writing business? What's the ONE part of the one-person show you're most ready to hand off? Tell me in the comments — I read em all.
* * * * * *
If you're ready to build your own AI partnership from scratch, I'm running a 12-week workshop called No BS AI — no coding, no hype, just real building for creative entrepreneurs who are done playing every instrument. Details at nobsai.now. Come curious. Leave with something that actually works.
About RJ
RJ Redden is your digital fairy godmother for audience engagement. Her wand wields AI, chatbots, and augmented reality to create experiences so engaging, your readers will forget Netflix exists. She also speaks fluent human in a world obsessed with algorithms. Find her at The Come Write Inn.com. This article was edited with AI assistance, because this fairy godmother believes in using every tool in the workshop — ethically and transparently.
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30 comments on “Stop Playing the Tambourine With Your Knee”
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RJ, this is a fantastic article, and so desperately needed. Thank you. I certainly do not use AI as efficiently as I could, but having AI send me reminders alone is a boon! You have inspired me to look further into the possibilities and take fuller advantage.
BTW, I missed your beginning class date for NoBSAI course. Please let me know when the next go around begins.
Jennifer! The class is still open for all WITS people! Come on in my friend - we're ready for you. And you will see some familiar faces. [Link deleted]
I can do everything except publicize. I enjoy doing my own book covers, formatting doesn't faze me, I already know how to build newsletters (don't have anyone to send them to, but I can create them without a problem, I used to do it for work), but when it comes to advertising my work...just shoot me now. Not sure how AI would help with this, but it's my black hole.
I hear you, Heather. I sometimes have issues when it comes to letting people know about my work too. Here's what's helping me with my marketing: I've built things that help me focus on what I put out there, to whom and where. I'm no longer shouting into a black hole, wondering if my time is worth the effort.
The simple answer to your question is this: almost anything can be automated with AI. The deeper question - and this is something I'm covering in the class - what are the right things to automate for you? So that you can have more time to do what you do best, and feel like your advertising/publicizing is covered?
Does that make sense?
I guess you have a point, RJ, about AI doing the grunt work. Your post certainly sounds like AI could be helpful. Here's my problem that I hope you can shed light on. I'm told by some tech experts that whenever we use AI, the information we give it is then captured to be used for training the LLMs (known as scraping). I prefer to keep my writing AI-free for all the obvious creative and professional reasons. Also, I prefer to keep my work, and my life, AI-free as much as possible. So, if we use AI for our business tasks, aren't we feeding the AI bots and increasing their power and not human power? There are clearly risks, no? Identity theft, privacy issues, and data misuse are at stake, right? AI folks deny this privacy risk, but we already know not to trust AI. I see you mention that your article posted here was AI-assisted. Are you concerned that your work is being captured by AI? What can you tell us about the risks of using AI with our business information?
Hello Paula! These are fantastic questions, so let's dive in!
"I'm told by some tech experts that whenever we use AI, the information we give it is then captured to be used for training the LLMs (known as scraping)."
Answer - On most AI platforms, you can opt out of training the AI with your information. And I do. Every time. I'm working with proprietary information for both me and my clients. There's no way I'm handing that over to Big Tech to do whatever they want with it. That's a hard no from me. When I come upon any AI that won't let me opt out, I walk away immediately.
"So, if we use AI for our business tasks, aren't we feeding the AI bots and increasing their power and not human power? There are clearly risks, no?"
Answer: There are privacy risks for sure. Anyone who says there are no risks is to be avoided like the plague. Because that is absolute BS. As far as the AI using my information to train, I've opted out. I don't connect AI to my sensitive data. And I don't even go places where I know they are mining my data anyway, with or without AI.
Bottom line, AI absolutely has risks. And many people have chosen to avoid it entirely, which I respect. There are ways to mitigate all these risks, if you want to use the tool to accomplish business tasks.
"I see you mention that your article posted here was AI-assisted. Are you concerned that your work is being captured by AI?"
I'm not concerned about this, because I wrote the system that I use to assist me with first drafts.
"What can you tell us about the risks of using AI with our business information?"
There's so much Paula. I've done a deep dive of research into this subject, and we go into it in the class. Right here, right now I can tell you this: I don't trust single sources of information, or information that appears biased right off the bat. I do research work up front. Then I experiment, and if that turns out well, I use it and recommend it.
Does that help?
Hi RJ,
You have given me a lot to think about. Will your course work for a total AI, technologically impaired novice?
Hi Ellen! Yes, this will definitely work for novices who are technologically impaired. I wanted to make a space where people could ease into working with AI. You don't have to know things in order to start. The only requirements are curiousity and willingness to experiment. We'd love to see you!
I'd like AI to do cover art for me but this seems to be controversial for copyright reasons...
Non-controversial would be formatting for e-book & print on various platforms...
How much does your AI cost you annually?
Thanks. Food for thought
Hi Matthew!
I build with AI for clients, for myself and I also teach it - so I'm up to my eyeballs in AI. Mine costs me - total - about 300/month.
That said, you can use a $20/month account to build useful things for yourself and others. I just need the max because that's my business.
Stuff that I have built with AI that is super useful:
A place where people can give me testimonials with text, audio or video. When people send me one of these, I hit one button and it goes live on my website.
I also redid my entire website with AI in less than one day. And now it's infinitely easier to add to/maintain, and I'm no longer paying for hosting - bonus.
I've built a task manager that I control, and that works with me how I work.
I've built playlists of replay videos for my audience that I never have to touch. I used to have to download each video, upload it to another provider, make sure the video is in the right place in the playlist, and then troubleshoot the playlist embed when it wasn't working.
I've relied on other softwawre to do contests for my community, have a signup for my email list, have audio players and video players, etc. All of those subscriptions I've been able to cut. I'm now saving more on subscriptions than my AI costs me per month.
That was a deep dive for sure! Does that make sense? Did it answer your question?
Hiya RJ!
Great article. I'm not happy with my newsletter workflow--you know the onboarding thingy. Ha! So can AI help with that, and how would I go about getting it to assist with that? Can it look into my Mailerlite account? Or do I cut and paste?
Oh, the questions...
Hello Kat!
Oh yes, AI can help you with that. I know because I've done it myself!!! You can connect accounts to many major software offerings out there. Another choice is to not directly connect to your MailerLite, but create an automation that connects with it instead, so the AI doesn't touch your account. Both ways are useful.
Gimme all the questions - I'll be here all day!
RJ - fantastic as always! And the class is amazing!
Your presence helps make the class amazing, my friend! And thank you so much for inviting me. I love love love writing these!
Sorry. No. And for one simple reason: EVERYTHING out of its lying 'mouth' must be triple checked agains real sources - if I don't have the time to do the job, I ALSO do not have the time to vet the results produced by the monster they keep trying to shove down my throat.
At least when I screw up, I can figure out how to fix things.
Glad it works for you - I don't have the bandwidth.
Hi Alicia!
Thank you for your comment. I respect your choice, and I'm happy that you've found a way that works for you.
Keep writing!
I've used AI for research, for taking my book description and culling it to the 400 characters a site wants. Draft2Digital takes my word doc and creates an epub that I can use for all ebook channels. For print, I have a simple template and am willing to pay someone a small amount to do the 'first chapters don't have headers or page numbers' formatting. Yes, I could learn it, but it would take me much longer. And, I'm giving a human work.
One thing I haven't seen addressed is the huge strain on resources--water and electricity. I'm from the 'conservation-minded' generation, and for that reason alone, I try to limit how much I use AI for anything.
I follow the advice I got at a conference once. "Do what you love, do what you're good at, and hire out the rest." If I put a few dollars into a human's pocket, I'm happy enough to hire out.
Hi Terry!
Thank you for bringing up the point about the environmental strain. It's an important topic, and one that I am keeping an eye on. I tend to put my resources into companies who are doing the right thing: researching less resource intensive alternatives.
Good on you for putting more money into human pockets! And for finding ways to make it work for you.
Thanks for writing in!
I feel like this post was meant for me. The one thing that has been on my to-do list for, like, maybe a year, has been to start a newsletter. I don't know how, I don't want to, I'm scared, etc etc. But I'd also be happy to hand off all marketing. I just don't have time. I became a writer because I love writing, not because I want to promote myself.
Greetings Michelle!
I'm happy you like the post! Starting a newsletter isn't easy, but it has allowed me to truly engage my audience in my world. Rather than being another thing on my to do list, I think of it as a part of an ecosystem.
If you need a helpful nudge, I'm in!
Thanks for commenting, Michelle.
I love everything about this post, RJ! Plus you're analogy up-front of the article is brilliant.
I have wicked ADHD that makes several areas of my writing life challenging. And I am GOOD at tech. So when writing is really hard, I have a tendency to go get some dopamine hits from success in other areas.
But tech that runs itself makes me focus more on the right things. And without the stress of "all the details," I write better.
Hi Jenny!
That's where I'm at! I've been an entrepreneur for many years, and sometimes it seems the admin work takes too much priority. One of my biggest frustrations has been seeing my creative side die on the vine because I have more copy-paste-push this button-no that button stuff to do. Every admin task I get rid of is more time for worldbuilding!
Thanks for commenting Jenny. 🙂
Nancy sings lead on many Heart songs, including their first #1 hit, "These Dreams."
There are questions as to whether AI owns the work produced in response to your prompts. Think about it this way. If I write you a letter asking a question, I own the copyright to the letter. If you write a letter with the answer, you own the copyright to your letter.
Then there are questions as to whether the companies producing the AI are trustworthy. You can opt out, but how do you know they are following through on that? I realize I'm being cynical. But I also know these companies have done other things they pretty well knew were morally ambiguous.
Hi Debbie!
You are so right, not all AI companies are trustworthy. I did a lot of research to find a company that in my opinion, is doing the right thing. And that's who gets my money.
Thank you for writing in, Debbie!
I'm not comfortable using AI in any form with my writing. I want to honestly state no AI was used when asked.
Hi Denise!
You're not alone. You have every right to make that decision.
I'm so happy you found a way that works for you. That's what it's all about. Thanks for writing in!
HAHAHAHA....RJ!
THEY GOT YOU HERE?!???
Oh, this was awesome.
Course, how else would it go, right?
Looking forward to class...um,...today!
Okay, actually, I'm writing this while you're teaching.
SORRY.
(...but not.)
Love you to pieces and look forward to learning more about AI, so I can stop feeling paranoid.
Jaime!
Greetings, my friend. Great big hugs from Nebraska.
Your presence lights up the class, and I could not be more grateful to have you. Even when you use class time to do other things... 🙂
Thank you, RJ. Just this morning , I wished I had a good system for sorting through my email. Your article provided that beautifully.
I love AI for all the wonderful things it can do with systems and building. I've learned much from my son, who is an AI miracle man, but there's so much more I can do to "get back to world building." I'm reminded of a short memory that is apropos (I'll share it at the end, for any who are interested).
I would love to enroll in your NoBSAI course! Do you still have room for WITS folks?
Thanks again, -- Gale
----------------
A memory of my sculptor ex-husband:
He carved wax patterns, pressed them into damp sand, and poured in cement to make the wall pieces he sold. One design—a stagecoach crossing the desert—always stopped short of the sky. Every time, he had to shape the clouds by hand in the sand.
I used to ask why he didn’t just build the sky into the original. More work once, less work forever.
I think about that now when I avoid building better systems—when I do things the hard way, again and again, instead of letting tools like AI carry the weight.
Today, I started making my own sky.
Greetings Gale!
Your story made my day. Thank you. This is all about making our own sky, so we can get back to doing what we do best.
I welcome all of you reading this into my class. The doors are open for you, Gale, and anyone else who wants to come in. If you're curious, come take a look.
It's time we all had an opportunity to sweep clean ways that don't work, and fill them with sunshine.