I Wrote a Book in a Weekend. Here’s What Actually Happened.

By Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

If you’ve ever said, “I should write a book, or another book,” and then looked at your calendar and laughed, you’re not alone. I’ve written a lot of books, 14 so far, and I know the process. Outlining, writing, rewriting, editing, second-guessing. It’s not a weekend project. Except… this time, it kind of was.

Before you roll your eyes and think this is one of those “AI wrote my book for me” stories, let me stop you there. That’s not what happened. AI didn’t replace me, it amplified me. And the biggest difference wasn’t the tool. It was how I used it.

A couple of years ago, I wasn’t using AI at all. I thought it was for creating generic content from scratch, and I already had plenty of my own material. Then, I went to a conference I wasn’t even planning to attend: Thrive, in Albuquerque. In the very first session, led by Terry Brock, CSP, CPAE, Cavett Award Recipient, and Robert Kennedy III, CSP, they showed how to use AI with your own content, not to replace your voice, but to extend it. That was the catalyst. I went from AI skeptic to daily user pretty quickly. Last year, OpenAI said I was in the top 3% of all ChatGPT users! Crazy!

Last year I built my own AI assistant, trained on all  my books, hundreds of podcasts, and transcripts of presentations and workshops. I call it Ask Alan Anything. It doesn’t “know everything.” It knows what I know. And that changed everything.

I had been thinking about a new book, with ideas scattered across notes, presentations, podcast episodes, and half-finished outlines. Normally, that’s where the long process begins. Instead, I tried something different. I asked my AI: “What have I spoken about on my podcast and in my presentations that’s not in any of my books yet?”

It returned a list of topics, with AI being one of them. I told it “I won’t write an AI book unless it can be evergreen. It can’t be about a specific tool that’s in use today, as that can and will change.” It came back with “That’s great, because that’s the way you wrote your two website books.” Cheeky, huh? But correct.

So, we started brainstorming, keeping in mind that Ask Alan Anything has guardrails that prevent it from going outside its training. That gives me confidence that we’re working with my own content. So, what AI things have I spoken about on my podcast, presentations, and workshops? Where am I repeating myself, and what does that say about what matters most? What questions do I answer over and over again for clients about AI? How am I and others using AI? What would be a logical structure for a book based on this content?

In minutes, I had clarity, and an outline, that would have taken hours, maybe days. Then I used it to organize chapters from my existing material, pull examples from things I’d already said, identify gaps where I needed more context, and suggest transitions between ideas. I was still writing, deciding, and editing, but I wasn’t starting from a blank page, and that’s the part that changes everything.

By the end of the day, I had a solid first draft. Not perfect or finished, but real. The kind of draft that normally takes weeks or months to assemble. Every idea in that book was mine. The stories, the frameworks, the voice, all mine. AI just helped me find it faster, organize it better, and move forward without getting stuck. The next day I used ChatGPT with its cynical, critical voice, to help me find what’s missing, redundant, etc. By the 3^rd day, I was already editing.

If you’re a speaker, you’re sitting on more content than you think. Every keynote, workshop, coaching call, blog post, article, and podcast interview is material. The challenge isn’t coming up with ideas; it’s capturing, organizing, and turning them into something usable. That’s where AI shines. Not as a replacement for your thinking, but as a way to surface it, connect dots you didn’t realize were connected, and help you move from “I should write this someday” to “I have something real to work with.”

If you think of AI as a content generator, you’ll get generic content. That’s why I was initially resisting AI. If you think of it as a thought partner, you’ll get better thinking. That’s the shift. I didn’t write a book in a weekend because AI is magic. I did it because I finally had a way to access, organize, and build on what I already knew without the usual friction. And once that friction was gone, the work moved a lot faster.

You probably don’t need more ideas. You need a better way to leverage the ones you already have. Instead of asking, “Can AI write my book?” try asking: “Can AI help me turn what I’ve already written and said that’s worth turning into one?”