How to use Claude for writing (without losing your voice)

Writing about writing always feels like a brag. There's a quorum of critics on the internet who think you suck at it no matter what. So most of this advice is what I deem important, hard to argue with, and straightforward, so here it is. Readers can detect LLM writing in parts per trillion. Doesn't matter how much you scuff it up and "humanize" it, a Claude paragraph registers as output. So the bad news first: you have to write the thing yourself. The good news: Claude is still stupidly useful. You just have to use it like a copyeditor, not a ghostwriter. Step one: write your piece. Step two: feed it to the model to find flaws. But first, 2 simple rules. They'll keep you out of the uncanny valley between expression and output. Rule 1: You may not use a single word Claude suggests. The models are supernaturally good at pleasing turns of phrase, it's their whole thing. But everything they generate comes out in magazine-headline mode. Headlines are fine. Forty of them in one article is not really great though. So treat any specific phrase the model suggests as radioactive. Even if you like it. Even if it's better than what you had, the whole point is that you will not reliably spot all the ways it tries to turn your writing into Velveeta. Rule 2: Avoid encouragement. Hand Claude a draft and it goes "this is great!" That is not what you need to hear. Most of your first-draft paragraphs are bad, the flow is incoherent, and 750 words need to die. If the model talks you out of editing them, the rethinks that make your voice yours never happen. Readers won't know what's wrong, but they'll feel the artificial flavoring. Forbid encouragement in the prompt, then stay hypervigilant about praise anyway. So what IS it good for? Flagging problems. Mechanically, tirelessly, better than you: - passive voice overuse, nominalized verbs, buried action - "very", "really", "actually" sprinkled like sawdust - repeated phrases you've stopped noticing - the 2-3 paragraphs that belong somewhere else in the piece (moving these is the most satisfying edit in writing) A good that summarizes that is "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace". Turns copyediting into a checklist. Read it, take notes, turn the notes into prompts, run them in passes over your draft. The workflow that actually works (for me, at least): Ask the model to spot problems. Never to fix them. Rewrite the paragraph yourself. Show the original and the rewrite to a FRESH chat that hasn't seen your editing process and ask which is better. Otherwise it knows you just rewrote the thing and tells you what you want to hear - Rule 2 in a trench coat. Last thing: don't take all its advice either. I fed this post to Claude and it told me to cut 20%. It's probably right. I'm not doing it because the most important thing is owning your own narrative when you're writing. Heavily inspired by the essay "How to write with an LLM" but I think it's relevant here.