Life’s Unexpected Detour

The four-part Write, Publish, Profit webinar series sponsored by the Halifax Community College Small Business Center and presented by Martin Brossman, Richard Grassi, and Dr. Justin Rose was an unexpected detour. Taking myself seriously as a poet was part of the Arrowmont Experience. These webinars helped me transition to incorporating poetry into my early-morning practice.

One of the most valuable aspects of the webinars was learning how AI can serve as a research assistant rather than a replacement for the author. We explored ways to use AI to:

• Generate topic ideas and chapter outlines.
• Identify target audiences and reader needs.
• Organize research into logical categories.
• Brainstorm titles, subtitles, and marketing concepts.
• Draft preliminary chapter structures.
• Create interview questions and research prompts.
• Summarize large amounts of information for further review.

The instructors repeatedly emphasized that AI should support human expertise rather than replace it. The author’s lived experience, professional knowledge, and unique voice remain the most important ingredients in any successful book. AI simply helps reduce the time spent staring at a blank page.

As someone who writes about Indigenous Geechee Gullah textile traditions, indigo dyeing, healing through cloth, and cultural preservation, I immediately saw applications for my own work. AI-assisted outlining can help organize large projects such as Indigo as Medicine: Living the Blues, Healing Through Cloth, while still preserving the stories, memories, and teachings that only I can tell. It can also help structure workshops, create companion workbooks, and repurpose content for blogs, newsletters, and educational materials.

At the same time, the webinar prompted me to think critically about the costs of these technologies. Every AI query is processed in a data center somewhere. Those facilities consume enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling. Across rural America, communities are increasingly grappling with the environmental impacts of large-scale data centers, including concerns about water consumption, groundwater resources, energy demands, and land use. As someone whose work is rooted in stewardship of the land, water, plants, and cultural traditions, I cannot ignore those realities.

The Indigenous Geechee way I was taught is to use what we need and waste as little as possible. That teaching applies to technology as much as it applies to cloth, dye plants, and food. For me, this means using AI intentionally rather than constantly. I want it to be a tool, not a habit. I want to spend more time listening to the wind, making music, sitting with my journal, stitching by hand, and paying attention to the natural world that inspires my work.

There is a tension here that I continue to wrestle with. AI can help me organize ideas, preserve stories, and reach people who may benefit from cultural knowledge and healing through textiles. Yet I am mindful that convenience often comes with hidden costs. As a person of faith, I pray for wisdom in how I use these tools. I pray for forgiveness when I fall short of living in a right relationship with God. And I pray for discernment to know when technology is serving the work and when it is distracting me from it.

Perhaps the lesson is the same one my elders taught around the quilt frame and dye pot: use every tool with respect, understand its consequences, and leave enough for those who come after you.