I will admit Grammarly is my copilot when I’m writing. It helps me catch the stupid things I always sometimes do. Kind of like having your own personal English teacher pointing out your flaws, only without the bad grades. While it’s pretty good at business writing, you sometimes have to take its fiction advice with a grain of salt. (OK, how about a shaker full.)

Recently I was working on a particularly difficult passage in my novel, trying to get it just right, when the software perked up and made a suggestion. It completely broke my concentration. Laughing tends to do that. While it wasn’t exactly wrong, it wasn’t exactly right either. The poor software was just trying to be helpful in its artificially intelligent way, even if it was slightly beyond its capabilities.

This got me thinking about what the old master would say if something like this had happened to him. So I came up with a little thought exercise. I think he would have laughed too.