28th – 30 July:

I have had a group of AI information stacked up on my desk all year, and this week it made it to the Doing Now List.

The first upshot right now is that my ProWritingAid sub is now leaping into this website editor and overriding me like a child grabbing my pen. I use that as it is more UK based re punctuation and grammar than Grammarly or set piece checkers without me needing to correct it or tell it  – so at least I may have gained a little more consistency and saved sometime – as frequently I have to either write these else where and copy in or visa versa which is a bore and a half. Mostly, the mistakes anyone thinks they see are my writing style which tends to be ‘as I am and as I speak’ here.

I finally sat through Jo Penn’s lecture I bought earlier in the spring about the Artisan AI Novel  – I use her Patreon to keep me in the loop as well – using AI tools is pretty unavoidable now and I have picked up the hows and what nots as I have gone along  – but Jo is doing this stuff deliberately with a big enough back catalogue of fiction and nonfiction and marketing needs to make this worthwhile – not that I wouldn’t support Jo if I could anyway – as she has been a candle in the storm and then a lighthouse for many at sea in the vastness of the ocean of indie writing – me included 🙂 Until now.

This week that has all changed and after listening to her Q and A on her Patreon, I realise she is bailing on the idea of an Indie fiction writing career as peddled the last 15 /20 years – so last week I listened to Johnie B Truant talking about those of us who ‘fell for’ ‘write a series and rapid release’ as we don’t stand a chance against AI and both he and Jo seem to spout the phrase ‘5books to 50K is dead’ – well I’m one of the idiots there then. I’d also spotted Nick Stephenson was just finishing a sales run about a basic AI course, and as the seconds were ticking down when I saw it, I bought it straight off. It is basic ChatGPT stuff and a lot more about basic story structure, so very suitable for total beginners in story writing and with AI. I’d rather know a little about what’s going on than ignore all this. They’ve all done very well from their hard work over the years, and I am proud of them – and have benefitted enormously from their generosity – but I feel a creeping depression that I am wasting my time with what I am doing with the books I have been trying so hard to get done. People talking about detaching income from creativity are living in a very cushioned cell and are lucky they made the most of their opportunities and they found a way through their own problems quickly enough to have a choice now. 

I do not need to use AI to generate new stories. I already have a back catalogue of drafts and a list of ideas in a file that I don’t have enough life left to ever write. The learning curve to get AI as it is now to help me beyond Pro Writing Aid is likely too steep to save me time

What I do need is help to process the first two Luckshill Series’ and even more to the point the Luckshill Riders Seies that is on my desk now in many bits where I am in the pit working to get the engine back in and the wheels on.

AI may help me in peripheral ways that at the moment I haven’t identified exactly, but I’ll take useful and pertinent help where I can; and no single human could assist me with this in any time frame I might want  – I’ve employed folk in the past and if I’m not paying for a specific skill set I don’t have – I at least need to know how to direct that person – and at the moment I can’t organise all that only to find they are off sick or their internet is down – AI tools are just that  – tools – not people I get to care about and value for their humanness – but when it comes to Editing it will be human all the way 🙂

But after listening to Jo tonight, I’m just not sure I see a way forward. Do I want to give up? Hell no. Do I see an ROI? No, and that matters too…Is this fun? Hell no. Why am I doing it? I said I was going to. I really don’t know.