Eric J Ma's Website

In recent months, I've been dealing with wrist pain that made typing increasingly difficult. What started as a limitation, though, led me to discover something unexpected: a better way to write that not only solved my physical constraints but revolutionized how I capture my thoughts.

The challenge: When typing becomes your enemy

The frustration of having ideas trapped in your head while your body won't cooperate is real. Typing had become tedious and painful, creating a genuine barrier between my thoughts and their expression. But beyond the physical limitations, I realized typing itself was always a bottleneck – my fingers simply couldn't keep up with my brain.

Finding freedom in voice

The solution came through dictation. While macOS's native dictation works, it left me with a lot of manual cleanup work. Through a class by Jason Liu, I discovered Better Dictation, and I also found VoicePal for my phone through Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel. Both tools are game-changers – they can handle spelled-out words intelligently, returning the correct spelling of technical terms or names without showing the letter-by-letter dictation. With either tool, I finally had a system that could truly keep up with my thought process while minimizing the need for manual editing.

What makes this approach powerful isn't just about avoiding physical pain – it's about capturing what I call "nonlinear ideas." When I'm typing, if I go down one train of thought and something else bubbles up, I face a frustrating choice: either lose my original thread while trying to capture the new idea, or lose the new idea while trying to finish my current thought. Speaking allows me to quickly address new thoughts and return to my original path without losing either.

My current writing stack

Here's what works for me:

1. I use VoicePal for initial dictation, which automatically cleans up filler words and makes the raw content more readable.
2. This cleaned-up text goes into Claude (Anthropic's AI) for initial editing while preserving my voice and style.
3. Final edits happen in Cursor, where I can make minor tweaks if needed.

The AI question: Keeping it authentic

The common concern about AI writing tools isn't quite that they strip away personality – it's that they tend to generate generic, templated-sounding text. I've found two key elements that help me avoid this. First, through in-context learning – showing the AI examples of my writing style – I can keep the tone and flow that I've developed through years of debate, public speaking, and blogging. This foundation of finding my voice through traditional means, without AI assistance, has been crucial.

But style is just the surface. The real key to authentic writing with AI is in the editing process. When I critically review and edit AI-generated drafts, I'm not just proofreading – I'm actively shaping the text to match the true substance of what's in my head. This is where ownership really happens. The AI helps get ideas on the page, but through editing, I ensure the final text genuinely reflects what I'm trying to say.

So yes, you've been reading AI-generated text – but not for the reasons you might think. I'm not trying to be another content creator churning out quick posts for monetization. I'm using AI because I have real physical constraints now, and I need to find efficient ways to keep writing while managing my wrist pain. Sometimes constraints lead us to better solutions.

The freedom to think

What started as a solution to physical pain has become something much more valuable: a way to write at the speed of thought. It's not just about accessibility – it's about removing the barriers between our ideas and their expression. For me, that's absolutely huge. Being able to capture my thoughts painlessly and naturally has significantly improved not just my writing, but my quality of life.

Embracing new ways to create

Sometimes our greatest innovations come from working around limitations. While I started this journey looking for a way to write through pain, I've ended up discovering a method that's actually superior to my old way of working. The combination of dictation and AI assistance hasn't just helped me continue writing – it's helped me write better, think more clearly, and express ideas more naturally than ever before.

If you're facing similar challenges, whether they're physical limitations or just the frustration of thoughts moving faster than your fingers, I encourage you to experiment with these tools. The technology exists now to remove the barriers between your thoughts and their expression. All that's left is to find the combination that works for you and to let your ideas flow freely.