How an Every Staff Writer Developed Compound Writing

Hello! I’m Kaushik Viswanath, the new managing editor at Every. In my first week here I’ve had the pleasure of getting to meet much of the Every team, including staff writer Katie Parrott. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to her work than the latest episode of AI & I, in which she’s interviewed by Every head of consulting Natalia Quintero about how she developed Compound Writing—a sophisticated approach for using AI as a writing partner.—KV

When Katie Parrott was laid off from her job as an editor and ghostwriter at a crypto firm in 2023, she couldn’t afford a career coach. So she signed up for a $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription instead–a decision that turned around her career, and nearly everything else, including her mental health, and the way she approaches writing. Two years later, the Every staff writer has turned that process into an open-source plugin that teaches other writers to think, draft, and edit the way she does.

On this episode of AI & I, Natalia Quintero talks with Katie, staff writer at Every, about how that improvised habit became Compound Writing, the codified writing system—and the plugin behind it—that’s the subject of Katie’s latest guide. It’s a conversation about what happens when you feed a model good ingredients instead of clever prompts, borrow the taste of writers you admire, and let AI handle the grunt work so you can fall back in love with the page.

Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also read the transcript.

Here are the highlights: