61 Years to Clear My Head: How AI Opened the Door to My Story
· William L Hartwick
AI is not just artificial intelligence. For me, it has been absolutely incredible.
I did not come to AI looking for someone to invent my story. I already had one. I had years of words written in scribble, books waiting to be read, and ideas I could explain out loud even when putting them into typed sentences was another matter. For 61 years, so much of what I wanted to say stayed in my head.
I spent 27 years as a teacher and principal. I knew how to speak from the heart. But the usual way of making a book or building a website still asked me to do the part that had always been hardest: sit down, type it all out, and make every line behave. My words were there. The doorway was wrong.
The books were already mine
The books did not begin with a machine. They began with me, in my own handwriting and my own rhythm. With AI, I could take what I had already written in scribble and work through turning it into readable text. Then I could hear it, question it, and say when it was not right. The words had to remain my words.
I could talk through what a cover should look like. I could look at a change, say when it was not the cover I meant, and recognize when it was right. I could keep making decisions until the book in front of me reflected the book I had carried inside me. I was able to publish books that were already written; the technology helped me get them out into the world.
I learned to tell the tool what would not move
Working with AI was not one perfect conversation. There were trials, wrong turns, corrections, and times when I had to say the same thing again. I learned that if something was nonnegotiable, I had to call it nonnegotiable. If a sentence, a photograph, a cover, or a part of my website was right, I could say: leave it alone.
That changed how I worked. I did not have to get emotional about a mistake or worry that time had run out. I could stop, name exactly what was wrong, and ask for that change only. I could reject an answer without rejecting the whole idea. I could come back to it and keep going. Learning the rules did not limit my voice; it let me protect it.
Speaking became part of the work
Through Lovable, I could speak about the website I wanted and work through the result. I could listen to words instead of depending on a screen full of text. Auditory access matters to me because hearing something gives me another way to understand it, decide whether it sounds like me, and change it when it does not.
That is also why my website offers a way to listen. My voice can be heard in more than 27 languages. I know what it is like when a page does not meet the way your mind works. I wanted another door for the person who needs to hear instead of read, or who needs to hear in a language that reaches them.
What opened up
The books that sat in scribble could become readable books. A cover could become a conversation rather than a decision made without me. A website could grow from what I said, then change when I said it was wrong. My educational work, my books, and my voice could live in one place. More of what was inside my head could finally be shared.
AI did not write my life, live my career in schools, or decide what mattered to me. It gave me a way to work with what was already mine. I stayed the person saying yes, saying no, and saying what could not be changed.
For 61 years, the words were there. Now they have a way out. That is what “allow your ordinary to become extraordinary” means to me.