How do I keep my own voice when I write with AI?

The worry is honest: if the tool writes part of it, is it still yours? Here is a way to see it. The tool can arrange words, but it cannot decide what matters to you, what you have lived, or what you are trying to say. That choosing is your voice, and it starts long before the first word appears. Your voice is not any single sentence. It is the judgment running underneath: what you keep, what you cut, what feels true and what feels hollow. As long as you are the one deciding, the work carries you in it. The tool is a faster pen, not a second author. Try this. Write the first messy version yourself, no help, so the bones are yours. Use the tool after, to polish or test ideas, then read it aloud. If a line does not sound like you, change it. Your ear is the line between your voice and the machine's.