Burning Thoughts

As a retiree with numerous projects accumulated over the years and a dwindling amount of time to complete them, I have been on the lookout for a writing assistant. To improve my story creation, I hired a developmental editor who pointed out my strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, several copyeditors have polished my stories and essays. Although I considered hiring a recent college graduate part-time, the advent of generative AI chatbots led me to subscribe to Microsoft’s Copilot Pro. This, in turn, introduced me to MS 365, which seamlessly integrates the Copilot AI into its Office cloud apps.

The Importance of Writing Assistance

Here’s a specific example of my raw prose that shows (and explains) some clunky writing.

    Writing is laborious to me for a few reasons that you might recognize, sympathize, or also suffer from.
    1^st Catholic primary school where following the grammar and syntax rules was a holy command. That stultified my writing sentences.
    2^nd My high school and college studies and interests were science and math. I never learned (even when I had good English teachers) how to stitch paragraphs together with logical transitions. 

I gave Copilot this prompt: Can you phrase the points (above) in a fuller, more compelling fashion? Here’s its response.

     Writing can be a challenging task for many, and I am no exception. There are several reasons why I find writing particularly laborious, and you might recognize, sympathize, or even share some of these struggles.
     Firstly, my early education took place in a Catholic primary school where adherence to grammar and syntax rules was treated with almost religious reverence. This rigid approach stifled my ability to write fluidly and creatively, as I was constantly preoccupied with following the rules rather than expressing my thoughts. 
     Secondly, my academic interests during high school and college were firmly rooted in the fields of science and mathematics. Despite having some excellent English teachers, I never quite mastered the art of weaving paragraphs together with logical transitions. This lack of training in constructing cohesive narratives has made writing a daunting task for me.

Copilot’s response sticks to my idea but expresses it more eloquently and completely. Although Copilot’s not free—discussed further in the Considerations section below—it is always ready to take on my next request.

Sprawling Website

My website, Burning Thoughts, features essays and stories that aim to present a meaningful collection of ideas and perspectives that reflect my worldview. Although I started the website in the late 1990s, I still haven’t covered all the topics I want to discuss. Despite being a Mensa member for 50 years with strong logical skills, I often find myself jumping from one idea to another. This tendency results in posts and stories with tangential ideas that can distract readers from my main points. I wondered if my new writing assistant could help with this issue.

I opened the Cloud PowerPoint app to a blank presentation. I instructed Copilot to create a slide deck. I described my website to Copilot as posts about my hottest interests—how we think, equality in society and politics, science-math perspectives, and writing fiction, both sci fi and contemporary.

The slides it created interrelated my stated interests in ways that I initially disagreed with. However, I soon realized that its interpretations were legitimate. This imprecision in my request highlighted that my sloppy phrasing, here and elsewhere, was a severe impediment to getting readers to understand the point I was attempting to make.

I rephrased my request to Copilot Pro with a concrete example in each of my interest areas. As you might have guessed, its new PowerPoint presentation more clearly represented my website goals.

Before I leave this point, let me mention a surprising benefit of MS 365. When you subscribe to it, you gain access to royalty-free images to use in your writing and posting. As a cherry atop the sundae, Copilot included in its slide deck stock pictures to augment the slides.

Considerations

I am thrilled with my new writing assistant of Copilot and MS 365, but as the Poison’s song goes, “Every Rose Has its Thorn.”

Cost is not zero. CoPilot Pro is $20/month, while MS 365 Personal is $70/year. Together, that is nearly $350 (including taxes). Yet that’s considerably less than the $500 I paid for a copyedit of 20 posts totaling 20 thousand words. Plus my new writing assistant is available around the clock with no limit on usage.

Also, on the down side, there is a decided learning curve. Full availability of Copilot’s features in MS 365 requires you to put your document on OneDrive. If you’re like me, you already have file structures on your PC, laptop, phone, and another Cloud service that I can’t just toss out without considerable effort. In addition, Microsoft heavily tilts the documentation for MS 365 towards the Work and School versions. As a MS 365 Personal subscriber, I have to dig through non-pertinent information to find what works for my version.

Of course, I can and do ask Copilot to explain to me how to perform tasks in MS 365. It does a good job, but it occasionally refers to a Work solution which doesn’t work for me. Another shortcoming appeared in its instructions on how to synchronize my MS Cloud apps configurations with those I use on my desktop apps. Although Copilot confidently gave me instructions to complete the task, I discovered Cloud apps don’t allow file updates of their configurations. Copilot had confused synchronizing files on desktop and cloud with the synchronizing configurations.

However, considering that I’ve asked Copilot a couple of hundred questions in the two months I’ve been subscribed, the value of Copilot assistance has far outweighed its costs.

Research Assistant at Home

Most of my experience with Copilot predates my subscription to MS 365 Personal. In the beginning, using the Edge browser, I relied on Copilot to research background information. For example, asked about the statistics of legal and illegal immigration in the United States, it returned a summary, several paragraphs long, with high-level facts and cautions about the short-comings of the information, followed by links to web sources from which it developed its summary. These links allow me to hop directly to the source and assess their reliability. 

Copilot’s research dramatically cut my time finding useful information to buttress my posts, and sometimes to make me rethink my working hypotheses.

Have I convinced you that MS 365 and Copilot might not make your writing mechanical, but help you make the most of your talents?

I’d love to hear your comments about AI and writing.

By the way, to dip your toes in the water, there’s a free Copilot version on Microsoft Edge browser. Its main shortcoming is that it’s slow and limits your number of requests per day.

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