So I was looking back at my stats, and I couldn’t help but notice that (not counting yesterday’s post) it’s been almost two months since I posted anything on this blog. What happened?
I could give all the normal excuses: time flying by, kids taking up the time, etc etc… but that would all be evading the main reason, which is that I’ve been working on a secret project for the last six to eight months now, and that’s sucked up all my time.
I can’t yet reveal exactly what the secret project is, because I’m still gathering data and revealing everything about it would screw that up. Also, I don’t want to overhype it, because it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to blow your mind and make you super excited when I reveal it… or maybe it will? I don’t really know.
But without revealing any specifics, I can say that I’ve been developing a method for writing AI-assisted novels, and I think I’m at a point where I can start using it to finish some of my open trilogies, like the Falconstar Trilogy, or maybe even write some new books.
I also really want to share some of the things I’ve learned, because I do think that AI is going to change everything when it comes to writing, and not necessarily in a bad way. Originally, I just wanted to keep my head down, because there are so many negative opinions and misconceptions about AI in the writing world. But now, I think it will actually be better to be more open about it and share some of the things I’ve learned.
So I will probably do a blog series about AI-assisted writing. I also want to finish a couple of other blog series that I started ages ago, and never really finished—maybe turn those into a nonfiction book at the end or something. And I’ve also been reading some old Hugo nominated books, in an effort to figure out how I would have voted in past years. That’s been a very interesting exercise.
So for the next few weeks, my goal is to post something new every Wednesday and Friday. My email newsletters typically go out on Thursdays, so that’s a pretty decent amount of content to put out there. And if I have something fun to share, like a meme or a picture or a video, I’ll try to post those on Mondays if I can. But if there’s anything in particular that you want me to blog about first, feel free to let me know!
Not sure that I like the idea of reading AI books, but I hope it works out for you! And I do love all of your old works, those are amazing stories!
Thanks JR. I can see that I need to explain things, because if my method for writing an AI-assisted novel works out, you won’t be able to tell that you’re reading an AI book… because you won’t be. The AI is really just for writing a crappy first draft that gets totally rewritten into the author’s own words, cutting down the writing time by as much as 90% but otherwise keeping all the elements of a human-written book. I’ll do another blog post soon about this.
Interesting, thank you for clarifying. I like the idea of the art of the story, but I suppose this is no different than authors who hire ghost writers. I look forward to future articles on the subject then!
My brother is also very interested in AI – he’s been taking classes in adjacent subjects (and his ultimate goal once he’s done with his schooling is to be able to make his own Iron Man suit complete with a helpful Jarvis). I do think it’s very misunderstood, so having someone who actually knows how it works and can explain it in layman’s terms would be very helpful.
As a writer, I feel like I would be willing to try AI-assisted writing; however, I also want to create my own stories. If I were to use it, it would probably be in the way you describe – getting the messy first draft out of the way so I can go on to dev and then line edits more quickly. Learning more about how I could incorporate such a tool into my writing would certainly be of interest.