Write and Publish Your Own Story or Poems
Maps to: Author/Writer · Editor · Screenwriter · Poet
You're going to write and publish a short story (1,500 to 5,000 words, and a whole story under 1,000 counts too) or a set of 8 to 12 poems, every line of it yours. The skill is sounding like yourself: at the end you hand it to an AI editor, and every change it suggests, you say yes or no to. The no's are the point. Correct writing is usually writing that sounds like nobody.
You're done when: Your story or your poems, out where anyone can read them, every line written by you, and you can point at a change an AI suggested that you turned down because it made the writing sound like anyone. Not 'the writing is clean,' but 'it sounds like me, and I kept it that way on purpose.'
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I wrote and published a story / poetry collection, using AI as an editor without letting it write for me, rejecting the suggestions that flattened my voice. I learned how to use AI to sharpen my writing while keeping it unmistakably mine, which is harder than it sounds.
When you finish, BuildMe drafts your Common App activity description from what you actually built.
Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as a author/writer first and see how the work feels.
The plan
- 1
Step 1
Write your first lines, then build around them
Write the opening lines right now, in your own words: two sentences of a story, or the first few lines of a poem. They can be bad, they just have to be yours, because it gets much harder to sound like yourself once AI text is on the page. Around those lines you build your opening page: what you're writing (a whole story under about 1,000 words, a longer short story, or 8 to 12 poems together), what it's about, and the one thing you're actually trying to say. That page is a real thing you keep. And if you're worried you don't have a style yet: it's just how you'd tell this out loud to a friend. You already have one.
- 2
Steps 2-5
Write the first version, yourself
Write it, yourself. This is the long stretch, and the hard part lives here: around hour three, everything you write starts feeling flat. That feeling is the wall, not the truth about your writing. Plan on 2 or 3 sittings, not one heroic push. If you get stuck on what happens next, you can talk it through with an AI chat, but every sentence stays yours. The whole point is writing that sounds like nobody else.
- 3
Steps 6-7
Go back through it, and keep what sounds like you
Now you say yes or no to changes, one at a time. An AI editor suggests small changes to single lines (cut this word, this sentence drags, this image repeats) and never writes for you. You decide on each one. Take what makes your meaning sharper. Turn down anything that makes it sound like everyone else, because these tools edit towards correct, and correct is usually the same as everyone. Judge every suggestion against the one thing you set out to say.
- 4
Step 8
Put it out, send it round, read it aloud
Lay it out cleanly, put it up at a real link, send it round, and if you can face it, read it aloud to one real person. That last part is the scary one, and the reward: watching someone react to your own words in real time tells you things no comment ever will.