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  • More Than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of AI
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More Than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of AI Audio CD – CD, July 1 2025

by John Warner (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Reader)
4.4 out of 5 stars 41 ratings

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A veteran writing teacher makes a strong argument that writing is a form of thinking and feeling and shows why it can't be replaced by AI

In the age of artificial intelligence, drafting an essay is as simple as typing a prompt and pressing enter. What does this mean for the art of writing? According to longtime writing teacher John Warner: not very much.

More Than Words argues that generative AI programs like ChatGPT not only can kill the student essay but should, since these assignments don't challenge students to do the real work of writing. To Warner, writing is thinking--discovering your ideas while trying to capture them on a page--and feeling--grappling with what it fundamentally means to be human.

The fact that we ask students to complete so many assignments that a machine could do is a sign that something has gone very wrong with writing instruction. More Than Words calls for us to use AI as an opportunity to reckon with how we work with words--and how all of us should rethink our relationship with writing.

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  1. Print length
    1 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Blackstone Publishing
  4. Publication date
    July 1 2025
  5. Dimensions
    17.15 x 17.46 x 2.54 cm
  6. ISBN-13
    979-8228499164
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Product description

Review

"Illustrate[s] that the act of writing is not about the production of words but is, rather, a complicated and deeply human process that involves a relationship between thought, memory, intention, and language."

-- "Washington Post"

"In lively prose and with many engaging personal anecdotes, he deftly explains...an impassioned plea for writing as a human practice and a social necessity in the age of AI."

-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"This lucid and compelling book gives us the tools to reject and resist what's noxious about generative AI and to meaningfully engage with what it means to write, as a human, in a world increasingly overrun by cheap and meaningless content."

-- "Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine"

"Warner offers smart commentary on the downsides of AI."

-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Warner takes what could be a dry, technical subject and enlivens it with plenty of personal experiences and real AI responses to prompts to illustrate his point."

-- "Christianity Today"

"Warner's book offers many reasons to feel hopeful about the future of writing."

-- "Porchlight"

"Writing is thinking--and if we allow machines to write for ourselves, then we've allowed them to think for us, too. And that is the sorriest thing a human could do. But Warner provides a better path."

-- "Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author "

About the Author

John Warner is a writer, speaker, researcher, and consultant. The former editor of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, he is the author of the books Why They Can't Write and The Writer's Practice. As "the Biblioracle," Warner is a weekly columnist at the Chicago Tribune and writes the newsletter The Biblioracle Recommends. He is affiliate faculty at the College of Charleston and lives in Folly Beach, South Carolina.



Eric is an Earphones Award-winner for his narration of Detroit: An American Autopsy. He has narrated over a dozen audiobooks in both fiction and nonfiction. Eric is also the host and producer of the award-winning This American Wife, a popular podcast and now webseries that features original comedy and stories, as well as interviews with authors such as Robert Greene, and Amy Tan. He also works as a theatrical producer, and is based in Los Angeles.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0F3ZSQH51
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blackstone Publishing
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 1 2025
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Unabridged
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 1 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8228499164
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 454 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.15 x 17.46 x 2.54 cm
  • 鶹 Rank: #41 in Language Arts Teaching Materials
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 41 ratings

About the author

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John Warner

John Warner

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John Warner is the author of seven books, including most recently "Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities" (Johns Hopkins UP) and "The Writer's Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing" (Penguin), which draw upon his 20 years of experience as a writer and teaching of writing.

John's first book ("My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George W. Bush" co-authored with Kevin Guilfoile) was written primarily in colored pencil and turned into a Washington Post #1 best seller. Since then he’s published a parody of writing advice ("Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant"), more politically minded humor ("So You Want to Be President?"), a novel ("The Funny Man"), and a collection of short stories ("Tough Day for the Army"). From 2003 to 2008 he edited McSweeney’s Internet Tendency for which he now serves as an editor at large, and writes a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune on books and reading as his alter ego, The Biblioracle. He is a contributing writer to Inside Higher Ed, and can be found on Twitter @biblioracle.

John Warner is a frequent speaker to school and college groups about issues of writing pedagogy and academic labor. You can find more information at johnwarnerwriter.com

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  • James Russell
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Condition
    Reviewed in Australia on June 2, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Great condition, well packaged
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  • aneibauer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful and intelligent book!
    Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    As a classroom teacher, it is easy to get caught up in the fervor of fads that promise to make teaching and learning easier. Teachers are too busy teaching to research and evaluate every edtech tool that arrives equipped to fix all the ills of public education. I am grateful for John Warner's meditation on AI in the classroom. He may focus on the act of writing, but his steady examination of AI is both reassuring and affirming. Teaching and learning and reading and writing are all innately human acts and to outsource them to AI, albeit attractive, diminishes our collective humanity. More Than Words is a thoughtful and excellent rumination; one I will be revisiting often when discussing writing in the Age of AI.
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  • Danny Murphy
    5.0 out of 5 stars ChatGPT has no idea of how to write.
    Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    ChatGPT has no idea of how to write. In fact, ChatGPT doesn’t have one single idea about anything. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t read, and it certainly doesn’t write. It doesn’t meditate, cogitate, or ruminate.
    It does calculate. What’s the next word, and the next, and the next? In the beginning, there was a prompt, and then a word, and then billions of words, and, eventually, all the words. Blah, blah, blah.
    In the introduction to More Than Words, John Warner writes, “What ChatGPT and other large language models are doing is not writing and should not be considered as such… Writing is thinking… Writing is feeling.”
    Further on, he writes, “Only humans can read. Only humans can write. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
    He doesn’t suggest that ChatGPT and other LLMs should be abolished. Instead, he writes, “There is no wishing away AI at this point, meaning it must be grappled with and done so in a way that preserves our humanity.”
    Oh, the humanity!
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  • Francis O Walker
    4.0 out of 5 stars Prose, By Any Other Name?
    Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Lytton Strachey once wrote “Facts relating to the past, when they are collected without art, are compilations, and compilations, no doubt may be useful; but they are no more history than butter, eggs, salt and herbs are an omelet.” I suspect James Warner, author of “More Than Words” would be of like mind about the relationship of the seemingly polished text produced by AI and human writing. His book unscrolls at a pace well attuned to readers and the style is lucid and informative. His years of teaching composition have given him useful insight into methods of writing and the distinction between information hunter-gathering, a task in which AI excels, and the cultivation of a taste and ear for prose, in which it performs woefully. His thoughts reminded me of Faulkner who wrote: “Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes people learn only by error.” Warner coherently highlights the positives and negatives of AI, exposes the profit motive of those selling it and the hype of AI doomerism, which is designed to distract people from prudent regulation. His last section, on the future of AI, is overly speculative, but to his credit he acknowledges its challenge--as in Yogi Berra's observation,"Its tough to make predictions, especially about the future. And, Warner sprinkles in a lot of pithy quotes as well. Thoughtful, well-written, and instructive, this book is recommended for those interested in AI, how to spot when it substitutes for original text, the pitfalls and potential of its use in education, and how to approach this new technology.
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  • Thomas J Marciniak
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
    Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Great read.
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