Shifa Saltagi Safadi is the National Book Award–winning author of Kareem Between, the Amina Banana series, and picture books such as The Gift of Eid. Her middle-grade novel in verse Sisters Alone is forthcoming from Putnam in September. In honor of National Poetry Month, Safadi reflects on the joys and struggles of the writing process, and all that is lost when we surrender our creative acts to AI.

I recently visited the school where I used to teach middle school English to judge a history project. And as I was standing in front of the posters and asking questions, I noticed many of the students reading off what was clearly AI-generated text about their topic.

I dug a little deeper, and the students were unable to answer even basic questions. I asked their teacher about it and was told that they were allowed to use AI for “research.” When I reflected on this “new way” of doing research that students are using to make projects and papers, I felt a deep sense of sadness.

The focus of these kids was so much on finishing the project, they didn’t experience the parts of the research process that required hard work. They didn’t move their minds to internalize the information or critically engage with it. They did not feel fulfillment at seeing the project come together with their words on a poster board. They reduced the whole project to a simple goal of finishing—and lost so much along the way. I wonder how much of that translates to the book industry, where AI has become a topic of discourse.

Without delving into the very real ethical and environmental issues of AI, but just approaching this creatively—are we stealing from our own selves and future generations when we view writing as the end result of a book, rather than a beautiful artistic and fulfilling process in and of itself?

Seasoned authors know one thing: writing is a journey. When I am first drafting an idea into a book, there is so much work that goes into it before I even begin putting words on a page. I build a solid base: the bones of a story and a character have to fit together into a narrative that makes sense, that moves the reader into feeling something. I write notes upon notes until I figure out what the idea looks like, what the heart of the narrative I am trying to write is, what the character's scar is, what their life was like, what their goal is, and how to get them there. And then I draft.

Funny enough, the words that I put down for the first draft are not the final words—maybe not even the ones in the second draft... sometimes not even the 50th.

I rewrote Sisters Alone, my second novel in verse, so many times that the draft my editor saw at the submission stage was vastly different from the one she eventually accepted as the final book. The story went from a single point of view to a layered dual point of view. The themes changed from survival to sisterhood. And I was able to infuse motifs of fire and water that brought the imagery of the winter story to life in a way I never even expected.

The truth is I needed to struggle through this revision process to create the best book I could. And with that struggle came sweetness: the delight of uncovering connections on the page that I may not have even realized I was subconsciously planting; the joy of using my editor’s smart notes to seamlessly thread plots and subplots together in a meaningful way; the magic of seeing a survival story about two sisters develop into a tale that even brings tears to my own eyes as I read over it.

And I know I will experience a deep sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when my readers tell me they enjoyed these words that I agonized over—when they feel a connection to my characters that I crafted from the deep parts of my soul.

AI could never.

Why would I ever give up this incredible feeling to a machine?

Sisters Alone by Shifa Saltagi Safadi. Putnam, $18.99 Sept. 8; ISBN 979-8-217-11109-1