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Episode 13 – Breaking Down AI Misconceptions in Writing with Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite

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Welcome to another insightful episode of the Brave New Bookshelf podcast, where we explore the dynamic intersection of AI and authorship. In this episode, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite discuss the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry, address common misconceptions, and share their personal experiences with AI as authors.

Meet the Hosts

Steph Pajonas is the CTO and COO of Future Fiction Academy, where she teaches authors how to integrate AI into their creative processes. With her diverse expertise in science fiction, cozy mysteries, and romance, Steph is passionate about using AI to enhance storytelling. Danica Favorite, her co-host, serves as the community manager at PublishDrive. She is dedicated to supporting authors throughout their publishing journey with innovative tools like the metadata generator.

The Role of AI in Publishing

Both Steph and Danica are enthusiastic advocates for the ethical use of AI in writing. They emphasize that AI can be a valuable assistive tool for authors facing challenges like repetitive stress injuries or brain fog. By utilizing AI to brainstorm ideas or even draft portions of a manuscript, writers can streamline their processes without compromising creativity.

Addressing Online Bullying and Misconceptions

The hosts tackle a prevalent issue: online bullying aimed at authors who use AI. They advocate for respect and understanding within the writing community, highlighting that each author should have the freedom to decide how they incorporate AI into their work. As long as ethical guidelines are followed, using AI should not be stigmatized.

Crafting Stories with AI

Steph shares her experience using AI for various aspects of writing, from brainstorming to coding websites. She emphasizes that while she uses AI to assist with drafting due to physical constraints, every word is carefully reviewed and edited by her before reaching readers. This approach allows her to focus on storytelling rather than just writing words.

Danica echoes this sentiment, explaining how dictation and other AI tools have become integral parts of her process due to similar physical challenges. She recounts an experiment with FFA’s “automatic book machine,” illustrating that while AI can generate a story skeleton, it’s up to skilled authors to refine it into a compelling narrative.

Enhancing Creativity and Critical Thinking

Both hosts agree that engaging with AI has made them better writers and editors. By challenging them to rethink common phrases and expressions, AI pushes them towards more creative storytelling. The process also enhances their critical thinking skills by requiring precise communication with AI models.

Upcoming Innovations: Raptor Write

Steph introduces an exciting new tool called Raptor Write from Future Fiction Academy. This free tool allows authors to switch between different AI models seamlessly while drafting, catering to various writing needs. It’s a testament to the ongoing innovation within the field of writing technology.

Looking Ahead: Conferences and Community Engagement

The hosts are excited about upcoming events such as NINC (Novelists Inc.) conference in September and AuthorNation Live in November. These gatherings offer opportunities for authors to connect, learn from industry experts, and further explore how technology can support their craft.

As industries worldwide embrace technological advancements like artificial intelligence (AI), it’s essential for writers not only recognize but understand its potential impact on literature creation too! While there may be apprehension surrounding these changes initially – particularly concerning critical thinking abilities – this episode highlights how embracing new tools actually enhances creativity instead!

URLs Mentioned

Raptor Write – https://futurefictionacademy.com/raptor-write/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m Steph, Pajonas, CTO and COO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. We’ve been super busy at the FFA the last couple of months. We got some cool stuff coming out, which I’m totally excited about and I can’t wait to tell everybody about it when the time comes. Hopefully in like late August or so, and I’m of course, joined by my lovely co host Danica Favorite. How are you doing today Danica?

Danica Favorite: I’m good. Thank you. So I’m Danica Favorite, and I am the community manager at PublishDrive. And at PublishDrive, we are here to help authors on every stage of their [00:01:00] publishing journey through distribution, royalty splitting, and obviously creating our new tool the metadata generator, which is an AI generator to help you create metadata and keywords and everything for your book, which is Amazing and awesome.

So yeah, we had kind of our exciting thing. And I know our team is working on the back end of also some more cool AI stuff. So I love that you and I both get to do for our day job, a little bit of AI fun. Development stuff. I’m not the developer person. I’m just the person with the ideas who says, yes, I like that idea.

No, I don’t know. I don’t even get to do that much. It’s do you think authors would like this? And I say yes we would. Or no. Yeah.

Steph Pajonas: would. Not so much.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I think that’s a good point. Obviously, you and I are very pro AI. We respect author’s rights to use AI ethically and legally in any way they can to help improve their process.

And you and I were talking a little bit earlier [00:02:00] about how we’ve both seen a lot more of the online bullying for people who use AI or, oh no, this AI use is bad, this AI use is bad, et cetera. And I just wanted to take a few moments we’ve been on break for a little while. Take some summertime. So we’re back from our break.

And I want to reiterate our position that it’s not okay to bully an author or anyone in the publishing industry for using AI as an assistive tool to help make their jobs easier. Now, obviously, we do not support plagiarism. We do not support anything that’s unethical or illegal. But when we’re talking about generative AI, and as we’ve talked about it in the context of our podcast. We really are talking about legal and ethical ways of using it. And so if you ever have questions about that, please go back and listen to some of our episodes because we have experts sharing their opinions on that. And again, just want to reiterate that stance [00:03:00] because it’s really important that even if I’m not using AI for one particular piece of my process, that doesn’t mean that it’s not okay for someone else to.

I want everyone to use AI in a way that’s comfortable for them. If it’s good for you to use it to write your blurbs, but not write your text of your book, you can do that. But please do not be down on someone who’s going to use it for the text of their book. And so I’m going to send that back over to you, Steph, because I know you also are pretty passionate.

So I’ll give you a chance to share some of that passion as well.

Steph Pajonas: yeah, it’s interesting that we saw that a lot this past week or two. Very interesting. A lot of people coming into the AI safe spaces on Facebook and in other places and saying Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine to use AI if you want to brainstorm your books or characters. But no author should ever use it to write their books.

This is what I hear a lot. And the judgment that comes with that phrase is pretty damning, right?

It makes me very sad to hear [00:04:00] that because there are plenty of people who use it to help them actually get text down on the page for their books. This is something that I do now.

Like I do a very wide range of stuff with AI. I do use it to brainstorm. I use it for marketing. I use it to, I was just using it to help me code a website the other day, But I also use it to help me get down words on the page because I have often suffered from a lot of hand and arm pain and I believe it’s probably a repetitive stress injury . It was that way before I got COVID in 2022.

And after having COVID and then long COVID, which left me with brain fog I need the extra assistance. I need it so that I don’t have to type every single word that ends up on the page. Definitely everything that the AI generates. If it ends up in the final version of the book, it’s because I wanted it there.

I read through every single sentence, every single word, I [00:05:00] hemmed and hawed over maybe a word that the AI gave me that I didn’t like, but it had the meaning that I wanted. But I didn’t like the word, so I would change it. That sort of thing.

At this point I feel like I’m more of a storyteller than an author. And I actually like that because I feel like stories come in a lot of different packages. They could be words on the page. They could be an image or a video. It could be just something that I sit down and I tell my girlfriends on Zoom. It can be anything, right? And I really love being a storyteller.

The medium of how It gets to my audience, doesn’t really bother me so much. I just want people to understand that there are lots of different ways to use AI, and some of us are using it extensively. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. We’re, we still care about story. We still care about the way that our work is presented.

And we want everyone to understand that you. You know, if it’s for [00:06:00] you, great. If it’s not, then you can just silently pass by. You don’t necessarily have to give us all of your judgment on that. Yeah, it’s been a tough week.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I understand that because I also have repetitive stress injuries with my hands and everything. And in fact, hilariously, I was just in my yoga class this week, and I was telling my yoga instructor some of the challenges I was having, and she was like, okay, I want you to do this, and this stretch, and just so you know, I cured my carpal tunnel with yoga.

I’m like, okay, that’s awesome, but in the meantime I’m still really struggling with my wrists and my hands, and for the day job, I obviously have to type a lot. When I first started having these problems about, oh gosh, eight years ago now my solution was to go to dictating. And I still do. I still use a lot of dictation.

I’ve realized that now my storytelling process is telling the story vocally. That actually makes sense to me because I’m a verbal thinker. I have a friend, she and I were talking and that was one of the things she and I both [00:07:00] realized is that It hasn’t been until later in life that I realized I’m a little bit neurospicy, which I didn’t know that.

And now I’m like, Oh, wait, that’s okay. That’s what that is. Okay, cool. I got you. And so it’s been helpful for me to realize that, okay, some of this is just my way of thinking and I need to talk out a story first. I have it in my phone, just a recorder app. I sit there and I just talk to my phone all day and she and I tried an experiment.

I do want to share this because for those of you who brainstorm with your friends, she and I have a new rule that when we start talking and brainstorming things, we turn the recorder on my phone. And then when we’re done, I send it for, I just hit the transcription thing and clean it up. The stuff that we’ve brainstormed, because the blank page scares her to death. I sent her that transcript the last one was 44 pages, because we do talk a lot. But now she has that transcript to go back through and say, okay, cool, oh yeah, here’s the [00:08:00] things that I really wanted to talk about, and now out of that 44 pages, she’s at least got two usable pages. Where she can go from in that story and that’s life changing for her because she’s always wanted to write a book and didn’t know how to do it. Just that tool with dictation has really helped her being able to think through the story. What’s been great for me is I’m trying an experiment. We’ll see how this goes. The FFA has this tool. It’s not really a tool. It’s a process called the magic book machine.

Steph Pajonas: The automatic book

Danica Favorite: Oh, automatic book machine, Okay.

Steph Pajonas: We try to think that it’s automatic, but it really is

not.

Danica Favorite: right. It Really?

isn’t. Because you go through this whole process where you brainstorm different elements and you stick it in and then you hit run on the program.

And once the program’s done, you have basically a book. Now I say basically because as an author, I’m going to tell you it’s not a very good book. And this is why when people complain [00:09:00] about, oh, all those AI books out there, you cannot put a prompt into an AI tool and get a sellable book. You just can’t.

It’s not that quality. Like you really have to think through those steps. But what it did for me, and this is where I’m at now, is it gave me the gist of a story. And I went with a completely new genre, a new idea. I really wanted to test this as a theory, how this works. Now what I can do is go back through and do some editing, and get something semi usable.

But the other cool thing that I started doing with this, because again, my process, verbal, Is, I’ve taken those, and rather than saying they’re trying to do it I actually read through it and I dictate back what I think the story should be. Ultimately, I don’t know, like I said, I don’t know what the result is going to be.

Brand new genre, Purposely did that so that like people don’t listen to the podcast and go is this crappy book. [00:10:00] She just wrote. Hey, I You know stop When I have an ai book out there, i’ll tell you right now i’m not there yet But again, I do use ai For dictation for cleaning up my dictation. Of you have heard my love story with gemini I just need to tell you that since gemini became public on everybody else’s phone Gemini has not done a very good job for me, and I’m very disappointed in him. Just saying Gemini. We’re not friends right now

Steph Pajonas: I’ve been getting it to write some good first drafts of chapters and it’s actually really funny. And this is Something I often come across with Claude. Claude’s funny. Claude is funny sometimes,

so it’ll say like the weirdest thing, but then Gemini sometimes is up there, too.

It’s

Danica Favorite: Yeah, it is weird like sometimes Gemini is really good and sometimes Gemini is just not and I and again It just depends on the day like Gemini is moody, that figures you know Gemini the twins So someday it’s good twin someday it’s bad twin, right.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, some days [00:11:00] it’s the good twin and some days it’s the bad one. Ha. That’s right. I wonder if they realized that when they named it Gemini that we would, ha, evil twin, good twin.

Danica Favorite: But yeah I think that’s an important point that, you know, for people like us who have different physical issues or different mental issues or the brain fog, I’m dealing with a lot of brain fog too different reasons, but I’m seeing also a new doctor and the doctor’s yeah, dude, of course you have brain fog.

Stop beating yourself up for having brain fog. And I’m like, yeah, but I got to write.

Steph Pajonas: I have so much to do. Ha

Danica Favorite: I’ve got a day job. I’ve got writing. I’ve got all this stuff. And my doctor’s you know what? Just give yourself a break. I’m like, I am, but I want to fix this so I can write because I love to write and that’s never going to change. And I love that creative process. And I love. Looking at the stuff that AI gives me and saying, You’re cute, but you don’t know how to write a book. Let me fix that for you. And sometimes I’m like, Wow, that’s really good. And it really is that [00:12:00] balance of being able to think through it for yourself and being able to think through it as an author. And to anyone who says that it doesn’t take talent to write a book with AI, I would challenge you to try it. Because You might be able to get it to write a book. Like I said, the automatic book machine, I have a book. It’s terrible. But that isn’t the point. The point is that me as an author, when I go in and I work with that book, it’s going to be a good book by the time I’m done with it, because I’m an author and I know how to write and people who don’t know that are not going to produce good quality books.

Steph Pajonas: I was just saying this, literally, maybe even this morning. I think I was. I have a everyday writing time that I do. Danica has shown up for it once or twice 8 to 10 o’clock in the morning. And a good friend of mine has been showing up every day and we’ve been chatting beforehand. And I was just saying that it’s really important to know craft.

Story craft. This is the thing that we’re trained as [00:13:00] authors to understand, to outline and plot our books around story craft, Whether it’s I’m teaching right now, I’m teaching some elements of structure to stories, understanding the three act, four act process, the outline, the structure of a story and telling students how to ask for these things from AI.

You actually have to know craft and know craft terminology, know how it all works in order to ask for that stuff from the AI. You need to be able to say, I need help with my opening disturbance. It’s just not strong enough. Give me some ideas for that.

You really do need to understand how to tell a story in order to use AI effectively, to put your story together. Just like you’re saying authors are trained how to tell stories, and we’re the ones that are going to benefit the most from using these tools because we actually understand story and we know [00:14:00] what we’re doing with these tools, right?

So sometimes we see some people come into the AI Writing for Authors group on Facebook. They’re excited. They’re newbies at this whole thing. They’re like, Oh, I’ve got this story. I’ve wanted to tell and I’m going to use AI tools to help me with it. And I’m always cheering them on. Great. I’m excited for you. Go out there and write your story. Inevitably, somebody always comes back and it’s just I wrote my horror story and it’s 10, 000 words long and I don’t know how to make it longer. And that’s because they didn’t understand the craft of storytelling before they got out there, right?

I’m still encouraging these new authors go read about craft, go pick up Save the Cat, go pick up James Scott Bell, go pick up all these epic books about story crafting and understand your work before you go in and start using these AI tools for them. And that’s exactly what you’ve done here with the automatic book machine.

You’ve given yourself a skeleton of stuff, and you’re going to [00:15:00] use your craft to go in there and make it shine.

Danica Favorite: Yeah, exactly. I was thinking about that because, so true story prior to my using AI, I did not know what three act structure or four act structure or any of that was. I really didn’t. Because that’s not how I write. Now, what I have realized is because I know all of the other writing things, I actually intuitively do that. Like I went through and I put some of my books into AI and said, okay, what’s the three act structure of this book? And then I realized, oh yeah, I’ve been doing this all along. But for me I like to do sort of the hero’s journey, but not really because I write romance and that’s not fully a hero’s journey plot structure, but I use Deborah Dixon’s goal, motivation and conflict.

And that’s really important to me as a writer. Here’s the thing. AI knows that. AI understands that when I start writing, it understands to put it in that kind of [00:16:00] structure for me. And what’s great about that, and this is, again, knowing how to work with both that writing tool and the writing knowledge. Which is I always start out when I’m plotting a book or I’m talking to AI about a book idea, even with this whole magic, automatic book machine, I’m always going to call it magic book machine, but it’s automatic book machine.

Steph Pajonas: It’s magic.

Danica Favorite: It is magic.

but like I do start with talking to the AI, Hey, are you familiar with Deb Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict? Great. Here’s this idea. Could you please analyze it in terms of what my story needs and what it’s lacking and it can do that because I’ve given it all of the information to say, this is what I’m looking for. This is what your job is. These are the parameters. And so it knows that, but it also knows that from me giving it that instructions.

If I just say. Write a romance novel. I very well could get so and [00:17:00] I have I’ve gotten some really dumb answers from the AI because that’s too broad. If I say can you write a romance novel with these elements that are important to me it can do that But it can only do that because I, as an author, have that knowledge and have that skill to tell it that.

The other thing we talk about, we’ve talked about this. I don’t know if we’ve talked about it in the podcast, but I know we talk about it a lot. Just you and I in conversation, but how many of you have seen A I writing where it’s like pages of exposition before you get to the inciting incident.

Who wants to read that? I sure don’t. But again, the way AI is trained, it’s trained on the entire body of literary work, and we know the great literary traditions start with pages and pages of exposition. So we, as authors who have been trained in authoring, can say, hey, please start this at the inciting incident. Please start this in media res. We have to have that language to be able to tell [00:18:00] the AI to write that way. But that’s something that we have to do. And that comes from our skill as authors.

The other thing I want to say, too, about what we say is AI writing tells, and this is something I figured out a while ago. And I’ve been waiting to say it, so I’m excited I get to

Steph Pajonas: Okay,

Danica Favorite: It is that we laugh at these are common AI phrases. You know why they’re common AI phrases? Because they’re commonly used in the vast body of literature used to train AI. Guess what? Every single one of those phrases I have used in my own writing at some point or another prior to the advent of AI as a tool for writing books.

Steph Pajonas: Furrowed brows. I keep getting his facial expression was a mix of excitement and trepidation or a mix of, surprise and something.

It’s always a mix of something and something. And we, I think it’s going to be interesting, [00:19:00] the evolution of writing after AI. Because there will be this certain segment of authors who see those phrases and just start getting rid of them, which is basically what I do.

I like delete, delete, delete, and then we’ll be left with a totally almost different style,

right?

It will be different from how things were prior. And so in a way, AI is It’s evolving a new style.

Danica Favorite: Yes,

and I was thinking that because I think it’s actually making me a better writer. Because now we see these so called AI isms and I feel super called out sometimes because I’m like, ah, I say that all the time. But, now I’m like, okay, crap, how can I say that differently? How can I be more creative in saying this same idea yeah, his brow furrowed, okay. Dang it, I use that all the time. If you go through my writing, you’re going to see a lot of furrowed brows. But now, I’m like, okay. Let me think about how can I say his [00:20:00] brow furrowed a little bit differently.

What are different ways I can convey that expression, that emotion, and suddenly what I have is a much more creative and unique way of writing that I would have never been able to pick out had it not been for AI doing that.

Thank you AI because as much as I’m really mad at all the ways I keep getting called out, I’m also really excited because it’s showing me areas where I can improve and be better as an author. So I’m super excited, even though I’m also pissed. I see that mixture of emotion right there. I’m

Steph Pajonas: There’s that mixture of emotion.

Danica Favorite: pissed.

Steph Pajonas: She’s excited but she’s pissed. Yeah, it’s so true. So true. I do feel like AI has made me a better writer. It’s made me a better editor, too over time, and I considered my editing skills to be pretty high before I started editing AI, and now, though, I feel like it’s gone a whole nother level up because I’m paying more attention to [00:21:00] repetitive phrases.

I’m paying more attention to things that feel cliche. I want to get rid of them. I’m going to delete as much as possible. Delete delete. I do it all day at this point, right?

You know, it’s one of those things where we’re evolving, we’re seeing patterns in the storytelling of the last hundred years, right?

We’re seeing all of these patterns that are emerging, and now is our chance to turn the tables and do something else, do something cool. And you can do that with the assistance of AI, absolutely.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And here’s the other thing I was thinking of as you were talking, is that I’ve read a lot of articles and I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the fear that AI is making us less of critical thinkers. And the truth is, like what you were saying, I think it makes us more. If you are willing to accept the challenge of using AI as a learning tool and what can you learn from AI. [00:22:00] I think it actually does make me more of a critical thinker because like you were saying in the editing and the choices that we make as authors, what I’m finding is that I’m looking even more deeply at what’s going on here.

Okay. I just had, again, in this automatic book machine book that I’m working on like what the AI came up with, I thought was really illogical and weird, but it came up with that because that’s what I instructed it to do.

Where in my thought process did I not convey that attitude correctly? And I’m like, okay okay, I see that. This is where I can fix it.

But even in blurbs I was talking about how PublishDrive has its new tool for analyzing metadata and creating blurbs out of your writing. And sometimes I see that and I look at some of the results, and I think, Why did it come up with that? And what I realized, and I’ve had this criticism in some of [00:23:00] my edits from my editor, where it’s okay, you may have been thinking that, but that’s not on the page. And so what I’m realizing is when the AI is reading my work and coming up with a blurb for my work that is not what I want it to be, Sometimes that’s, to me, a message, that’s actually not on the page.

I thought it was there. I thought people would assume that it was there, because I do sometimes really like to not connect all the dots so that people can think through it and come up with a conclusion for themselves.

But the truth is that they won’t. And so sometimes the AI reading through your work and pulling out this blurb and you think it’s about X and the AI is no, it’s not. It’s about this. Why? And what that teaches me is, okay, here’s where I need to communicate better.

And I’m excited about that too.

Steph Pajonas: Same. Same. I like the fact that AI forces me to look at the way I’m communicating and re evaluate [00:24:00] it. So if I prompt for something and I get like a really strange result, that’s the time to go back and comb through my prompt to look at every single word that I’ve put in there.

Because sometimes I’ll say help me revise this chapter. I’ve got some editorial notes here for you, et cetera, et cetera. And instead of revising the chapter, the words that are on the page, it completely rewrites it. And then that was my key to say the word revise is not working here,

It thinks It needs to rewrite everything.

So then I changed my prompt from saying, revise to expand. I want you to expand this chapter based on the editorial notes that I’ve given you. Make sure that you’re not rewriting everything, you’re just expanding what I’ve already got here. And then that led to better results, right? So it just gives you a chance to not only understand what you wrote and whether or not you thought it was X and it was actually Y but also the way that you’re speaking to AI.

And that [00:25:00] actually helps you in real life too. Like I’ve been a lot better about communicating in real life about the things that I want, things that I need, by giving plenty of context. Not just saying, go and pick up the dirty laundry. Can you pick up the dirty laundry? Because if you leave it there, the dog is going to go lay in it,

Leave her fur all over it. And then it becomes like, oh, there’s an actual reason for that. Because when we prompt, we can’t just say, give me a romance novel, you have to say, please give me a romance novel where it’s a grumpy sunshine trope.

And they’re on a trip in North Carolina and, you know, and you give it all the context.

This is all important parts of learning how to communicate. AI is actually helping us understand the process and the art of communication.

Danica Favorite: And part of that too is who are you communicating to. I was joking about, you know, Gemini having its two sides, but one of the tools that Steph turned me onto that I’m starting to really become a [00:26:00] huge fan of is TypingMind because what I can do, and this is a good way for me to tell if it’s my prompt or if it’s the model, because I’ll run something through TypingMind and I’ll say, okay, do this for me. And it comes back with a terrible answer. And what the heck? And so then I just click a button to switch the model, hit rerun, and it’ll give me a response from a different model. So I can get Gemini and Claude and ChatGPT to all answer the same question. Then if they all come up with a really bad answer, I know it was me.

Steph Pajonas: Right.

Danica Favorite: What I found is they all come up with slightly different answers in slightly different voices. Like you were saying with the differences in the humor between Claude and Gemini. It might be that for this particular purpose, you want the voice of Claude. It might be for a different purpose, you want the voice of Gemini. It’s really cool for me to understand that’s going to happen when you switch the models, and sometimes you do need to speak to them a little bit differently and, [00:27:00] It’s all part of that communication.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I learned pretty recently that if you want to use a lot of open source models, you want to use like Mistral or Llama or, any of these other open source models, you actually have to be very explicit with your prompting. You have to make very robust prompts. You have to give lots of context because you can’t just, you can’t just, faff off and give it like a one sentence.

Help me with this. You actually have to be very explicit with your content and ask for things in a very detailed way. We’re learning about the different models and how they work and how they can help us, and this sort of leads me into talking about a little bit about the FFA’s new tool that’s coming out hopefully on August 19th, which means by the time this podcast is out, it should be out there.

We’re creating a free tool for authors called Raptor Write because we love dinosaurs at the FFA. I was like, it works for us. I don’t know. So Raptor Write it is just a text [00:28:00] window and a few buttons and the ability to hook up to OpenRouter and do your writing and your prompting straight on the page.

And it allows you also to switch between models, which is one of the things I really like about it. Because there are some times I write romance sometimes I gotta add in some not safe for work content. So what you can do is you can write with Claude up to the point that you need that not safe for work content.

And you can just do that. Switch over to an open source model that is not going to clutch its pearls at your Not Safe For Work content, right? And then move on from there. And that’s one of the things I like about this tool. And I’m looking forward to seeing people play with it and use it because it’s going to be free.

We’re going to make it available to anybody who wants to come in. We’ll see what people do with it, which will be a lot of fun.

But I want to say that there’s just a lot of innovation happening in this space right now. There’s a super a lot of innovation happening.

But a lot of people are saying, I’m just waiting for that AI bubble [00:29:00] to burst and then we can go back to doing whatever. I’m like it’s just not.

It’s still rolling. It’s not going to burst anytime soon. And these tools are going to be used by pretty much Every business, including publishers, guys, no, there’s not one publisher out there who has said that they won’t use AI.

They’ve either been mum about it, or they’ve talked about the fact that they’re going to use it for backlist on their audiobooks, or they’re using it internally, or these sorts of things. And I don’t see why we should put it all on the shoulders of indie authors to shun this technology when major publishers are going to be using it.

Why do we have to shoulder this responsibility of saying no to AI when our competitors will be using it pretty much all the time? So what I tell people is, know it. Understand it. Use it for the things you want to or don’t, but do [00:30:00] understand that everybody else is going to be using it eventually.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s really important to say that because the truth is every other industry is already using it for all of these different ways. We can’t in the publishing industry just, oh, we’re just not going to use it because the fact is every other industry does and at some point like we just have to say, okay, it’s fine.

And it’s been really interesting because I’ve met so many different people lately. And of course, you know, they want to know what I do, blah, blah, blah. And so AI comes up and it’s really interesting because I just met a guy who was working in AI development back in 1995. And I was blown away by that. I’m like, wait, you mean 2005? No, 1995 is when he started working on the development of AI and the LLMs and all of this stuff and It was just mind blowing to listen to him talk [00:31:00] about how the industry has innovated and how much faster, like with every development, like it just exponentially gets faster and faster. And I think about that and realize that even though we as the general public are just now seeing AI at the forefront of everything. It’s been in the background for a really long time. And to be perfectly honest, I’m really glad that it’s finally out in the open. Because people understand what’s actually happening and what’s out there and how these decisions are affected because again, going back to the idea of AI thinking for us and critical thinking skills. I think this really helps me as a critical thinker to be able to say, okay, wait, Is this information being presented to me? Because it’s the truth. Or because it’s what an algorithm in the background has been telling me is the truth. And so then I’m allowed to dig deeper into that topic and [00:32:00] really see what is actually happening here?

I’m not going to get too political other than to say for me, as someone looking at an election coming up, that gives me the ability to say, okay, wait, here’s this information being presented. Is this the truth? Is this something I need to think more critically about? Is this something I should do more research on rather than just accepting what the algorithms feed me and again, I realize not.

Everyone’s going to rise to that challenge. But for me, I’m like, yes, I’m going to get to think deeper and. Learn more and actually understand an issue before I check a mark on the ballot. And that’s 1 of the things that. Again, you can see that con of, oh, the is taking over, or you can say, okay, no, this is good. Because it’s always been in the background. We just didn’t see it. Now that we know it’s there, we know to look more critically at what’s happening.

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. [00:33:00] Absolutely. And I think that’s a great note to end this particular session on. We’re excited because we’ve got a bunch of people on the calendar. We were just looking at the calendar before we started talking today. We wanted to do this , I say solo, but it’s like a duo.

It’s the two of us, right? Just the two of us, talking. We want to do a couple of these. But we also have a great lineup of people that we’re going to be interviewing in the next few weeks. The fall is looking really exciting for lots of author stuff too. We’ve got the NINC conference coming up in September. I will actually be abroad. I will be in Japan with my husband and then AuthorNation Live is coming up in November as well in Las Vegas. So I think you’re going to be hearing a lot from

us in the next couple of months.

Danica Favorite: Will be at NINC. So if you’re going to NINC, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to grab a drink have a meal together, anything like that. And we both will be at AuthorNation. So that’s going to be super fun. And also just

Steph Pajonas: Maybe. Maybe we need some buttons or some stickers or [00:34:00] something. Let’s think on that. That would be

Danica Favorite: That We’ll brainstorm that. Yeah. Yeah. And so I am excited because we’re really looking forward to having a lot of guests who can help you and help all of us really spread the word about writing and how we can all be better as writers.

Because ultimately, Putting our head in the sand isn’t going to work. So let’s find all the resources we can so that we all can get better together. For those of you who are listening and you’re like, okay, you haven’t covered this topic and this is an important topic to me. Please feel free to reach out brave new bookshelf at gmail.

com.

Send us an email, leave a comment on one of our video posts on YouTube.

Steph Pajonas: We’ve got a contact form on the website. I mean, we’re pretty available , so please let us know.

Danica Favorite: Yeah.

Please let us know because ultimately the reason we’re here and doing this podcast is we want to be able to change with the times and take advantage of this unique opportunity for us all to get better. And [00:35:00] however you want to use the tool, totally fine, but at least you have the information and the knowledge to move forward with what ever that is so I think that is really our goal and we hope we can support you in that.

Steph Pajonas: 100%. All right, everybody, come check us out on our website. It’s brave new bookshelf.com. We’ll have a full transcript from this particular episode plus a blog post, and we’re on YouTube and all of the major podcasting services. You know, all that good stuff.

Let other people know that we’re here. And if they want more information on AI, they can come check us out. All right. Wave to Danica. There she goes. All right, great. All right. So we’ll see you guys soon in the next episode. Bye now.

Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at BraveNewBookshelf. com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show [00:36:00] notes.

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