AI and My Writing, One Year Later: What Changed

Over a year ago, I wrote about my initial opinions on AI, and I wanted to talk for a minute on how my use has changed since then. You can read the original post here: https://www.christineshuck.com/post/the-rise-of-ai

Now, first off, this past year has been crazy busy. The seemingly unending renovation projects held a significant amount of my attention, and I have struggled to produce much of anything since I finished the last two books in Gliese 581g series.

Part of it was being preoccupied with renovations, but another huge, unspoken part of it was spent trying to figure out how much I wanted AI to be a part of my writing process. Specifically, generative AI, where I struggled with whether or not AI could help me move past writing blocks. I had been blocked with several books for various reasons, but usually the key underlying reason was "something just doesn't feel right about this" - real specific and helpful, right?

The Generative AI Question That Froze Me

I was reading about a lot of authors who were not just dabbling in generative AI, but using it to write books. How good were these books? Well, I don't know, I only saw sales performance. And let me tell you, seeing others raking in $10k or $30k or even $80k per month in sales on AI written books had me wondering if I needed to jump on this bandwagon too.

And I dabbled. And I generated. And I read through it. And I would edit. And then I would turn away from each and every one of those "products" feeling that awful gut feeling of "something just doesn't feel right about this" while simultaneously being unwilling to dismiss AI altogether.

And it literally froze me in place. For MONTHS. Damn near a year, actually. I focused on finishing the renovations, and putting the second Airbnb/short term rental in place in time for FIFA and reveled in positive cash flow for the first time in years. To most it would have appeared that I turned my back entirely on my writing for nearly a year.

I'll often say to a family member who is struggling with a decision, "Well, just let it spin for a while, and a solution will come to you." And that's what I was doing, letting it spin, and spin and SPIN around in my brain. I wanted an answer, a decision, that felt right for me.

Where AI Actually Helped: Character Lists, Synopses, and Detail-Checking

Meanwhile, I expanded my use of AI in a couple of key areas recently that just had me exploding with excitement.

• Character Lists (including a brief description of each character and when that character first appeared by book/chapter)

• Synopses (broken down by chapter)

• Detail-Checking

• Agentic AI

Now the character lists and synopses were cool and very helpful, especially should I go forward with a series or even a spinoff series because they provide me with a good reference guide. But the gold was in the detail-checking and Agentic AI.

I suspected there were a few inconsistencies with my G581 series. Considering I wrote it over a course of maybe 16 years and six books, with other books in between, it wasn't particularly surprising I hadn't remembered every detail perfectly. But in late September, I sat down and asked Claude to review my entire Gliese 581g series for inconsistencies or inaccuracies and then advise where I would need to fix each one.

I was not prepared for the 36-PAGE CONSISTENCY ERROR REPORT it gave me! It had plenty of spacing, and at times was repetitive, but damn. The thought of having to go through that report and fix each and every mistake was, frankly, horrifying.

Agentic AI and the 36-Page Consistency Report

Until I realized this was exactly what Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn meant by agentic AI. I pulled up Claude and typed:

Recently, I uploaded my entire G581 series of six books and asked you to find any inconsistencies in it. I am attaching the document you provided me with and would like to have you change the manuscripts themselves. They are currently in Word format. Since this is a large job, I think we should tackle it one book at a time. Can you review the guide and then ask me questions and then fix the first book?

It gave me some options and then got to work. Along the way I realized I wanted changes to how the chapter titles appeared. Instead of just the chapter name, I wanted it to have the chapter # first, then the title, "1 - Code Red" for example. And then I remembered that in formatting the document from Word into an epub format, Draft2Digital AND Atticus stripped away the different fonts I had used to delineate between the main prose, and when the computer is scrolling, or newspaper headlines, etc.

So I asked it:

I'm going to go back through this entire manuscript and do line edits and accept the changes you have made, but I have another problem. When I upload this manuscript to D2D or Atticus to format into an epub, they don't have the capability to incorporate the different distinct fonts into the epub. This is a problem for me. Can you format a manuscript into an epub? And if so, will you change the table of contents to be clickable in a epub reader?

It explained that some fonts need to be licensed, noted that I had used Garamond for most of the book fonts, suggested EB Garamond instead, and asked me what other fonts I wanted to use, then suggested equivalent fonts that I could use in the epub without having to upload a font license.

Creating Bonus Content for Readers

At this point, I remembered that I wanted to create reader magnets at the end of all of my books that would provide downloadable bonus content for my readers in exchange for them being added to my mailing list. I knew it would be cool to have blueprints of the Calypso colony ship, and possibly some documents that detailed the ESH virus spreading like wildfire through Earth, but I asked Claude for suggestions based on the attached Book 1 manuscript.

Claude had a list of ideas and this is where I have ZERO problem with generative AI, because it came up with not just the blueprints for the spaceship, but also an ESH Outbreak Dossier and the Zradce Incident Report that showed the tribunal's findings in the wake of the Cryo Deck sabotage.

And this seriously blows my mind because it makes my ability to provide really cool bonus materials to nerdy readers like me affordable and accessible.

I loved paging through the pdf's, noting changes I needed made, and even asking Claude to create logos for the TUPG (Terran United Planetary Government) and one for the Calypso ship.

Are they perfect? No. But they satisfy that nerdy quest for more. Visually appealing, with little nuggets of details. Super cool. If you are geeky and want to dive further into a world you just read about, this is material you will enjoy.

I can also, with the help of AI, create epub and pdf manuscripts with multiple fonts, images, and more while saving days, weeks, even months of little fixes and adjustments and research and more.

So where does that put the anti-AI crowd? And should I be concerned?

AI Book Covers: Can Readers Even Tell?

A few days ago, I was gardening in my front yard and one of the departing guests approached me. He said he had noticed that I was an author and would I be open to some "modern advice?"

I told him I was and he basically said, "My generation won't buy anything that they think contains generative AI - even if it's just the book covers."

And this amused me because I have maybe two covers out there that weren't designed by a cover designer. Winter's Child and Fate's Highway. Everything else has been created by a human. And so I asked him, "I'm curious, which covers do you think are AI?"

And here's the rub. I could tell from his expression and fumbled response that he literally did not know. Why? Because it is quickly becoming indistinguishable from human-designed book covers. And forgive me for being blunt, but if you can't tell the difference, why shouldn't I use AI?

I live in a lovely old 1899 Victorian. In two of the connected rooms, are built-in floor to ceiling bookshelves, and a beautiful old mantel and non-functional fireplace. I hired a talented artist to create a mural that depicted a dam of books and surrounding greenery. It's absolutely magical and I was over the moon to have her create it. This is something AI can't touch, at least right now, and that makes what she does absolutely marketable.

And for anyone who is an artist and who has been designing book covers - Honey, it is time for a career change or pivot. Even if it is simply to change your marketing to "human-made" and ride the wave with those who want and love you to make those covers.

When computers rose in prominence, secretaries had to learn how to use word processors or lose their positions to those who could. Much of human history has been like this.

Papyrus to paper

Horses

Instruments of war

Electricity

The printing press

For that matter, writers are also on the chopping block. Soon, I may be completely irrelevant as well. But until then, I'll keep writing.

I recently attended an author fair that repeatedly over and over in their emails mentioned that there would be no AI anything allowed. That any author discovered using it would be asked to leave without getting their booth fee back. I attended, displayed all of my books (even the two with AI covers), and surprise surprise, no one said a thing. Why? Probably because they could not tell which ones were AI covers, and which weren't. And I know I wasn't the only one.

Zradce case files

After all, I paid $600 to a designer for the original cover of Winter's Child. It suffered from extremely lackluster sales until I changed it to the cover it has now. And while that might not be true for every ebook cover, my experience has been that people buy books with AI covers just as often (if not more so) than they do human-designed covers.

When digital photoshop and digital art programs first came out, artists were incensed. "It's not real art."

Yeah? Well, look at it now. There are those who specialize in it. Who is to say that there won't be those who become AI whisperers who know just how to craft an inquiry to get the best result possible? And wouldn't folks be willing to use those people to provide them with a product as well? Because it is certainly already happening in more than a limited fashion.

And for some wild reason, this reminds me of the hippies in the 60s and 70s. With their long hair, Birkenstocks, acid trips, and free love. Where have all the hippies gone? Where's their anti-war protests, sit-ins, etc?

The hippies didn't go away, they just, changed, assimilated, maybe even (gasp) grew up. And honestly? That's what I think most of the AI-haters are going to do. It's everywhere, and it is in damn near everything. Google has it. Amazon shopping has it. Your cell phone has it.

My job (and everyone else's as well) is to use AI judiciously, thoughtfully. Not for world domination or dozens of dark and terrible ways, but for good and positive things. Things I can now afford to dream up and make real for my readers, like the bonus materials, or faux newspaper articles I'm putting into The Retirement Home that enrich the content and immerse the reader in the story further.

My Decision: I Write My Own Prose

And back to the question of generative AI in my actual book writing, which is how this whole post started out - I've decided that I far prefer generating my own prose. Yes, it feels like it takes dog years to crank out and yes, that means I'm limited to three, possibly less, books per year. But when I sat down last month and wrote a chapter, and then another, and then another - I felt something rise inside of me. Joy, excitement, a thrill of discovery as my fingers led my mind, and my mind led my fingers to create concepts, thoughts, ideas, and a story that only I can create. And that, my dear reader, is exactly what I needed to feel.

I feel like I can fly now. The drudgery, the minutiae, has been fobbed off to the AI, and I, well, I am free to write my dreams into reality.

p.s. Be sure to be polite to your favorite AI!

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