Skip to content

Episode 60 – Beyond the Prompt: Exploring Agentic AI in Authorship with Steph Pajonas & Danica Favorite

Listen

Elsewhere Online

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio | RSS Feed

This week, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite are back to discuss the evolving landscape of AI in authorship as we move into 2026. They discuss new tools, agentic workflows, and how AI is changing the way authors approach their craft.

Meet Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite

Steph Pajonas is the CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where she helps authors integrate AI into their writing and publishing processes. Danica Favorite is the Community Manager at Publish Drive, assisting authors with everything from AI book covers to manuscript formatting and distribution. Together, they offer a comprehensive guide to navigating the world of AI-assisted authorship.

The Rise of Agentic AI Tools

Steph and Danica discuss the emergence of AI tools that are becoming increasingly “agentic,” meaning they can take initiative and perform tasks with minimal instruction. Danica shares her experience with Notion AI, noting how it can now create entire writing hubs with different pages and functions based on a simple prompt.

Steph elaborates on how Notion AI can now understand context from uploaded documents, allowing it to assist with editing by identifying and fixing repetitive sentence structures or inconsistencies. She highlights the shift from simply rewriting content to making surgical edits, preserving the author’s original intent.

Vibe Coding and the Power of IDEs

The conversation shifts to “vibe coding,” a concept borrowed from the programming world where AI tools can generate code based on a general description of the desired application. Steph explains how this agentic approach is now being applied to writing tools, allowing authors to instruct AI to perform complex tasks like researching topics or creating outlines.

She mentions Google’s Antigravity, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) initially designed for coding, but now being used for writing. This tool allows authors to input their existing work (chapters, series) and then ask the AI to write more content while considering that context.

Danica shares her experience using Antigravity to research and plot an octopus romance book, noting how it quickly gathered market research and identified popular tropes. She emphasizes that while AI can handle the heavy lifting, the author’s style and taste remain crucial in shaping the final product.

Favorite Tools and Workflows

Steph and Danica discuss their preferred tools for AI-assisted writing in 2026:

  • Antigravity (Google): For its agentic capabilities, research abilities, and ability to reference existing files.
  • Notion AI: For brainstorming, organizing notes, and context-aware editing.
  • Gemini (Google): For general chatting and brainstorming.
  • Typing Mind: As a general chatting tool for business and work-related tasks.

They emphasize the importance of finding the right tool for the job and leveraging each tool’s strengths.

Overcoming Obstacles and Embracing Progress

Both Steph and Danica share personal experiences of overcoming obstacles in 2025, including grief and divorce, and how they are re-engaging with their projects in 2026. They encourage listeners to embrace progress over perfection and acknowledge that it’s okay to take breaks and prioritize self-care.

Danica addresses the social construct of New Year’s resolutions and encourages listeners to align their goals with their natural rhythms and energy levels. She emphasizes that the tools are constantly improving, and it’s okay to start when you feel ready.

Resources for AI Authors

Steph recommends Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon for authors interested in learning more about AI. She also mentions Future Fiction Academy‘s various programs and the AI Writing for Authors group on Facebook as valuable resources.

Steph and Danica discuss the shift from a “tsunami of crap” to a “tsunami of excellence” in AI-assisted writing. They emphasize that AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated, making it harder to distinguish AI-generated content from human-written work.

They stress the importance of learning AI tools to remain competitive in the evolving publishing landscape. Danica suggests picking one tool and mastering it, as the skills will translate to other AI platforms.

Debunking the “Easy Button” Myth

Steph and Danica debunk the myth of the “easy button” in AI-assisted writing. They emphasize that successful AI authors still need to put in the work of crafting compelling stories, developing characters, and editing their prose.

They acknowledge that some tools may offer a more streamlined experience, but these tools are often the result of extensive effort and intentionality on the part of their creators. They encourage listeners to be wary of tools that promise effortless results without requiring critical thinking and skill.

Tools & Recommendations

Key Takeaways from This Episode

  • AI writing tools are becoming increasingly agentic, capable of performing complex tasks with minimal instruction.
  • “Vibe coding” principles are being applied to writing, allowing AI to generate content based on general descriptions.
  • Tools like Antigravity and Notion AI are transforming the writing process, enabling authors to brainstorm, organize, and edit more efficiently.
  • Embrace progress over perfection and prioritize self-care when navigating the evolving world of AI authorship.
  • Learning AI tools is essential for remaining competitive in the publishing industry.

Resources Mentioned

Here are some key links referenced during this episode:

Transcript

Speaker: [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 one of your co-host Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy Future Fiction Press, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. So we’re also using AI to help us write and publish books at the Future Fiction Press.

So there’s lots going on there. It is 2026. Yay. We’re back. And I’m here with my wonderful co-host, Danica. Danica Favorite is with me, and we were just chatting beforehand, so I’m excited that we can actually chat on camera now, right? 

Danica Favorite: Yes, yes. I think that it will be good. I think behind the scenes we’re doing a lot of cool stuff, so very excited to get in and talk about it. For [00:01:00] those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive where we help authors on every stage of their journey, whether that is getting their AI book cover, their AI book blurb, formatting your manuscript, and then getting your manuscript out there to the world.

So you know, the writing part, Steph and her team can help with. And they’ve got some really great classes at the FFA about marketing and all the other stuff you can do for success. So if you are here because you’re like, okay, 2026 is the year that we’re really gonna do the publishing thing, between our two companies we really have you covered and we can help you. Stay tuned. We’ve got some really great guests coming up, and I know today Steph and I have a wonderful show for you. So with that, Steph, tell me, tell me about 2026. 

Steph Pajonas: I know, right? I was just thinking the other day that the uptick of people coming into the [00:02:00] AI writing for Authors group, the people joining the FFA that has had a huge, huge uptick in the last like two months.

I feel like maybe a lot of authors have set resolutions around, AI, right? They’re like maybe this is the year that I actually figure it out, because it’s not going away. It’s just getting more advanced, definitely better at writing, definitely better at images, definitely better at videos, all that kind of stuff.

So it’s not as if it has gone necessarily or slid backwards. It has just gotten better. And I think that that kind of motivated a lot of people to come and, you know, learn something new, don’t you think? 

Danica Favorite: I think so, and I think too, we were just talking about this a little bit and the other day, gosh, I say it’s the other day, I think it was probably a couple weeks ago now, Elizabeth did a live on YouTube about Notion and how great Notion is, and I know Steph is a big longtime user of Notion, FFA [00:03:00] has always used Notion for a lot of things.

And I really was trying to learn Notion, and I let my paid subscription slide, because I wasn’t using the paid features as much and then in this class that Elizabeth did, and I know Steph will also talk a lot about this as well. It has gotten so much better and I went ahead and repaid for my subscription to the paid portion, because the AI tools in Notion have gotten so much better.

I think it’s no secret that organization is a problem for me. And I keep saying, help me get organized. And Steph has set up some things in Notion for me and I kind of use it. And then right now my Notion looks like this giant dumpster file of. Boom, I wanna remember this. Boom. I wanna remember that.

And I don’t know where anything is, which is exactly like the rest of my life, like my computer and my notebooks and all of that look like. [00:04:00] And now I can go into the AI and Notion and be like, tell me about this thing. What, what have I said about these things? And all of a sudden it brings me up this list.

And then the other day I was messaging Steph. I said, Steph. I’m blown away, because I said to Notion, I said, Hey, I wanna create a new writing hub and I wanna do this and this and this. Can you help me create it? And literally, that’s all I said. And the next thing I know, Notion had created this big writing hub with different pages and different things on it right there in Notion, I literally just said, this is what I want. And it did it. So I’m really excited about that. Steph, I wanna hear what that experience has been for you, because again, you’re kind of my Notion guru. I know that there are other people you turn to, to be your Notion gurus, [00:05:00] but you are mine and from talking to you, I know you’re doing some really cool stuff as well, so I wanna hear like the cool stuff you’re doing in Notion. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So part of the theme of this episode today is gonna be about all the different tools and the different processes that we’re gonna be doing in 2026, because I feel that there are a lot of authors that are coming into this space now. They haven’t been here before and maybe somebody says, Hey, go listen to this podcast because it’ll help you get all situated for 2026. And that’s what we’re here for. Right. Um, I think one of the things that we’re going to be seeing a lot in 2026, and this has to do with Notion, is a lot of ways that the AI is working agenticly. So Danica was just talking about the fact that she went into the Notion AI and said, help me build up a, a writing dashboard, a hub so that I can organize my work and I can get it all started. And then Notion went [00:06:00] and did that. It has the tools on the backend to say.

All right. Danika needs these things. They, if she needs a page that will have a database, and the database has these these parts of the database, the different functions of the database that it’s going to do, the different fields that I’m going to collect data on, and then and it will even choose icons for things and whatnot.

And it makes these pages, makes this database and then presents it to you and says, here you go. Here’s exactly what you need. Now Notion AI could not do this about like six months ago. Six months ago, they just had a tool that would allow you to create just a database. That was it, with their AI tool, right?

So you could say, I need a database that’s going to collect information about all the books that I publish. So you need to put fields in that database for a title and ISBN and genre and [00:07:00] pen name and those kinds of things. And the Notion AI could build that database and stick it on a page, which was pretty cool.

And we saw that happening and we were like, Ha, that’s great. I can’t believe that it can do that now. And now though the AI has gotten even better. Now it can create pages elsewhere. You can tell it what sort of things you wanna use as context in your in your workflow. So, for example, I’m working on the editing of a third book in a series right now, so I made a space in my Notion that’s just for that series, so it’s called, the whatever series. And inside there I uploaded the first two books of the whole series. They’re in markdown format, it’s just text basically. And I just stuck them in there. And then I had the third book in the series where I have all of the different chapters and I’ve got it all on one page. And so when I started editing this book with Notion in the AI tool on the right [00:08:00] hand side, I could say we’re gonna be editing this book together. I need you to go read the first two books in the series so you know what happened. And then that way you have context to help me edit this third book in the series.

And I was like, okay, great. I can go do that. Because I assigned it and I said, read book one. And then I chose it on the screen. Read book two, chose that one on the screen. Here you go. You have everything you need. And it came back and was just like, I understand what the series is about now, and together we can work on it.

Right? And as I open up each chapter. I noticed things about it that don’t necessarily gel with my style. Things that it does that had been written into this book. Um, one of the things was like, it’s, it’s not a something. It’s not a something, it’s something else. That pattern I see over and over again that the AI loves to do.

Danica Favorite: I hate that pattern so much. It’s the worst. And it’s everywhere.

Steph Pajonas: It’s everywhere. Some chapters have [00:09:00] five or six times in there. And then also this particular book, which I had used Your First Draft to make yourfirstdraft.ai, which is a tool that Future Fiction Academy made. I used an experimental model to write it, so I knew it wasn’t gonna be awesome or anything like that, but I was doing experiments at the time, so it was fine, but then I get this output and everybody sounds robotic, because it wasn’t using contractions, it was using, it sounded like data from Star Trek, The Next Generation. Wouldn’t use any contractions. And then there were these weird sentence structures and those sorts of things. And so Notion AI and I, we were chatting and I said, I really hate this kind of sentence structure.

I hate the fact that it does these repetitive things and there are too many words that can be made into contractions. It is, should be, it’s, and they are, should be they’re and these sorts of things. And by talking about it with [00:10:00] Notion AI and Notion AI was like, okay, I completely understand.

Let me give you a report on this chapter about all the things that I can find, and it would be like, bloop, it just, really quickly, it gives me a summary of all the things that it thinks it can fix. And then I would read it through and be like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Love it. And I would tell Notion, fix ’em all.

And you could see it working, which is great. Over on the right hand side, the, the chat is going, it’s running, and then on the left hand side I can see it making all of the edits to the chapter, which is great. So I know that it’s working, and then at the end it’s like, Hey, I’m all done. Okay. So this is a very agentic workflow.

It is doing things for me that I have talked about. So it’s no longer just, taking the whole chapter and rewriting it and spinning it back. It is making tiny little changes as it goes. So I don’t have to worry about it changing an entire chapter, making things, changing the motivations [00:11:00] or the actual events that happen in that chapter.

It’s just making all of the little surgical edits. This is something that we’ve seen in the past year or so with coding tools. Okay. So there are a lot of coding tools on the market for people who are programmers. They’re writing Python or they’re writing PHP or whatever it may be, React, JavaScript, whatever it may be.

They’re making applications or websites. And they’re using tools called IDEs, which is like an integrated development environment, and that is basically like a text tool for programming purposes hooked onto an AI chat, and this is what people use to do vibe coding. And I was, now, you’ve probably heard this term before, vibe coding.

It’s like I tell the AI the kind of app that I wanna make. I wanna make an app that will track how much water I drink every day. Right. And that’s all you have to tell the AI. And it’s okay, I’m gonna go [00:12:00] out, I’m gonna make this file, I’m going to put this code in this file, and it does all of these things.

It actually makes files, it puts code in those files. It’s very agentic, it can make those things on your computer. You give it like a folder on your hard drive where you say, go put all the files in there and it can do it. This is like an agentic thing that wasn’t really being applied to writing tools until now.

And now we’re seeing it and 

Danica Favorite: I think it’s cool. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. Now we’re seeing it. It’s, and it’s 

Danica Favorite: cool. 

A lot of people have said, I wish the AI could do this. And we’re like, yeah, it can’t. It is coming, but it can’t, and it’s here. 

Steph Pajonas: It’s here. Mm-hmm. 

Danica Favorite: And it really is, like you were saying about the vibe coding and stuff like that, I think a lot of authors were intimidated by the coding piece of that.

And now that we have tools that make it as easy as saying, Hey, do this thing for me, and I don’t [00:13:00] have to know code, and I don’t have to understand how to do it. It’s oh my gosh, this is so easy. 

Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm. Right. And so now we’ve been seeing this for the last year with tools like Visual Studio, Cursor and whatnot.

These are tools that programmers are using in order to code and vibe code and do their business to make applications or websites or whatever. And then at the end of the year, it was like the end of November, 2025, Google launched their own IDE, it’s called Antigravity. And I was like, oh look, they have a Cursor competitor.

I’m gonna go check it out because my coding friends, I have a few of them, told me that they were trying it out and it was really cool. It was still in beta. So what Google was doing was they were allowing people to use all of the AI chat for free, and the models that were included were like Gemini 3, which was fairly new and very [00:14:00] robust and whatnot.

A Google, so that was the Google Gemini 3. They also had Claude Opus 4.5 was added in there, Sonnet 4.5, and I feel like there was another, oh, yes, and of course ChatGPT 5.2 is in there as well. And I was like, oh, all of these tools are available for free. All of these chat, all of this chatting is available for free.

Instead of getting it to write an application, I’m gonna see if I can get it to write a book. Now a book is complicated, right? We have lots and lots of words. If you consider each chapter like a file, lots of files to look at and, the AI has to know to go look at its code base, which is its context, to see what has happened already in the programming of something so that when it programs something new to add onto it, it knows not to break things that it made before. Right?

Same [00:15:00] thing applies with writing books. Obviously you don’t want to resurrect a dead character. You don’t want these kinds of inconsistencies in your narrative. And by putting everything into a tool like this where it can go and it can look at those chapters, it can understand the context for the entire book or even an entire series.

You could put your other books in there, right? Then you get a chance to finally have a tool that can reference files, reference your older material and write better for you. And that was a breakthrough mode for me. I was like, oh, wait a second. I don’t necessarily need Claude Projects or any of these other tools.

I can use this instead. So that was a really cool moment too, and I started talking about it with everybody. 

Very excited. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. No, I think it’s great because you were talking about it and so I thought, okay, I’m gonna check this out. I will say I had a [00:16:00] small little hiccup trying to install it. But, and then you said something about, oh I put it on my Dropbox as opposed to in my computer.

And I’m like, oh. And so now I’m in the process of moving it from my computer to Dropbox and all of that. Because, 

Steph Pajonas: Well, you can install it on your computer, but when… 

Danica Favorite: right. Your folders… 

Steph Pajonas: You go, yeah. The folders where all the code, or your book, go 

Danica Favorite: Yes. 

Steph Pajonas: Are into, are on my Dropbox, so that this way if I accidentally blow it away, which can happen and it has happened to people, you tell Antigravity to delete something and it goes and deletes the entire book, at least I know it has been backed up by Dropbox. And I can just go to Dropbox and be like, restore those files, please. 

Danica Favorite: Right? Yes. Yes. And I love that you gave that tip, because I was like, okay, I would be the dummy who deletes everything by accident. ‘Cause I do that anyway. So, um, I, I really appreciated that, because it [00:17:00] was amazing.

I just, I did a little test, I can just say that I’m doing this, ’cause number one, it will be released under pen name and God only knows when it’ll be done. But I’m writing an Octopus book, 

Steph Pajonas: Octopus Romance book, right? 

Danica Favorite: Octopus Romance book. Yes. Um, you know, I’m gonna get on I, I, I, for whatever reason TikTok started feeding me octopus content of like people like videoing their octopus in a tank.

It’s fascinating. It is so fascinating how smart they are. And now of course it’s feeding me more, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said TikTok, it’s Instagram. ‘Cause I’m not on TikTok, but like I I’m watching it and now I just, all I do whenever I’m doom scrolling is I just watch octopus videos.

So I’m like, I should write a romance about this. So that’s what I decided to do. And again. Don’t put high hopes on this one, but I started it in ChatGPT. I liked where ChatGPT was [00:18:00] going, but ChatGPT was like very sciency about it. 

Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm. 

Danica Favorite: And so then I got on Antigravity, and I said, Antigravity, this is what I wanna do.

Research it for me, et cetera, et cetera. Let me tell you what Antigravity can do. ChatGPT can’t do it because obviously it’s not that same agentic style. And none of the other systems have done it as well as Antigravity, where I go in and I told it what I wanted it to do. It went out to the web.

You have to give it permission to go out to the web. It went, it researched all the oc, the all the octopus books on Amazon. It gave me all of the popular tropes, all of the trending stuff. Like I had probably within five minutes, it opened 50 tabs of research, bringing me back specific books of exactly what I asked it for.

Steph Pajonas: Wow. 

Danica Favorite: Right. 

Steph Pajonas: That’s awesome. 

Danica Favorite: And I was like, oh my [00:19:00] goodness. It just did in five minutes all this market research that how many of you have done market research and done that deep level and it’s been hours and you still don’t have 50 books, but Antigravity found me these 50 books. It told me what it needed to do.

I plotted out this octopus book. It too went a little too sciency for my taste. And we had a discussion about that and then it went more towards what my taste would be. And then I said to it, okay, great. So we’ve got like this concept that’s to my taste. How will this do competitively against all these books that you’ve researched?

And it’s oh, okay, here’s what you need to do. And I was absolutely blown away, because all of that work that you and I would have done in all kinds of different models, all kinds of different ways, [00:20:00] it was all right there in that same wrapper. And I was just like, oh my gosh, it’s all here. 

Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.

Danica Favorite: And like we still have to have more conversations about what to do. I’ve got part of a first chapter, but I don’t like it. And I haven’t had time to really dive deep into it, but like this really is where the future is going and, when we talk about, did you write it or did the AI write it?

Yeah, the AI did a lot of the heavy lifting, but all of it was me going back and saying, okay, yeah, but let’s tweak this. Let’s do this. Like it was all my style. My taste, things that I prefer. And like you were saying about the contractions and things like that, like going back and having that conversation to say, Hey, this is great, but I need some contractions.

I had this conversation on something else I had written with ChatGPT, [00:21:00] and rather than just changing the contractions, ChatGPT rewrote the whole thing. Which is what ChatGPT does. 

Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm. 

Danica Favorite: And so part of this and why I love we’re having this conversation is really figuring out the right tool for the job.

And right now I know Steph, you’ve talked about what your tools are for this year in other posts online, but these are the top two right now because, and I just know you’ve said that, but these are my top two as well, because just the sheer power of it. And I will still use a lot of ChatGPT mostly because I have ChatGPT so well-trained that it mostly does what I want. 

Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don’t think a lot of people are gonna be giving up their main chat utilities to do. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: All of these things. Like I still, I’m a Gemini fan still. It’s the only subscription that I have, which is the Google one, which is [00:22:00] also very helpful for using Antigravity, ’cause it gives me more daily usage with their AI, by the way. So if you’re into this whole thing and you’re already a Google customer, I highly recommend getting Google One, which will give you Gemini Pro in their gemini.google.com chat. It’ll give you more drive space and a few other things, including more usage on Antigravity as well.

So I am, I’m not going to be giving up my Chat and I’m not giving up on Typing Mind either, which is also my general chatting tool. I use it for a lot of things when it comes to business and like my work and whatnot. But when it comes to writing, I’m doing the majority of it, either in Antigravity or in Notion, because they both have these agentic properties, the kinds of things that Antigravity can do, like going out and making files.

Danica could say, she did all that research with Gemini. She can excuse me, with Antigravity, [00:23:00] she can tell Antigravity. Now take all of that research and put it into files in this folder so that I have it for later, and I can go look at it if I need to. Also, the AI can go look at it as well and use it as context for writing in the future, right?

Same thing with Notion AI. You can do a lot of chatting with it. Brainstorming. I’m working on a series of books that will reference a previous series that I’ve written. I was like, okay, I’m ready to write a sort of like sequel series to the sequel that I, to this series that I had earlier.

It’s gonna take place 15 years after the end of the first series. So I, I had it all in Notion AI, and I had a brainstorming session with Notion AI. I showed it the original series and I said, here’s my ideas for this follow up series that I wanna do. And we had a huge brainstorming session, and I just kept saying, okay, write it to the brainstorming file, write it to the brainstorming file, and it would update the brainstorming file [00:24:00] with all of my information and then therefore, you know, if the chats should suddenly disappear or something someday, it doesn’t matter because that information is still in there. It’s still in Notion, and just go grab it and start a new chat if I want to.

I’m just, I’m really digging on all of these tools that are helping me, helping me s stay within one place, use information that I already have, instead of having to like reenter it like over and over again, and stops me from constant like copying and pasting. There’s so much repetitive motion with that.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I think that is the big advantage of not having to do that copy paste because like I said, it like, fortunately we don’t have to have a, show me your Notion type game, because I would win messiest most crazy looking Notion ever because, I have I’ve got Notion on my phone. And so a lot of times, like when you’re scrolling and I read an [00:25:00] interesting article, I will like snip it to Notion, because there’s a tool that you can do that you just share it right to your Notion.

And the downside of that is that the way that it shares the Notion sometimes is it will share to whatever last page you are on or anything if you’re not paying attention. And so I’ve had it share to so many weird places and, like now I can say, Hey, Notion, I’ve done all of these different pieces of research on this particular topic.

Could you please pull this all together for me one page? And it will do it. And again, for someone like me who’s not very organized or has a hard time remembering where you filed something, like that’s the other big thing. If I have it all in Notion, Notion remembers for me and I say, remembers it doesn’t remember, it can just search it for me.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. 

Danica Favorite: And I really love that [00:26:00] because now that gives me the freedom to not have to worry, okay, how do I remember where I saved it? How do I remember how to do it? It remembers it for me. And that frees it up for me, because that’s, that’s the other thing, right? Is, like I said, I’ve got my phone.

How many of us when we’re out think about, oh, you’re thinking about a story and you’ve got a story idea, or, and I know a lot of people will chat with Claude or do stuff like that on their phone. I can do that in Notion. And going back to the octopus books, I also did this in Notion where I was chatting with Notion on my phone ’cause I was waiting for something.

It was like some really crazy long line and I was like, okay, I’m just gonna, oh, I know it was, I was getting my emissions done. So I’m just sitting in my car waiting for my turn. It was like a 45 minute wait and I’m on my phone and I’m just like, okay, Notion, well, what do you think about this and what do you think about that?

And it [00:27:00] becomes more conversational. And again, like it’s you as an author talking about what your desire is for that book or for whatever that is that you’re writing. You are driving the bus, and so it’s your thoughts, your work, all of those things that you are doing. It’s just doing what you tell it to do, and now because it is so much more conversational in the beginning, you and I would talk about being prompting ninjas. You don’t have to be a prompt ninja. I, because I had, I had no idea how to prompt how to make me this table and this organizing thing, because I don’t even understand how to do tables and organizing things anyway, and so to say, could you please do this for me?

It was like. Boop. Here you go. Have a nice day. 

Steph Pajonas: Thank you. 

Danica Favorite: It didn’t say have a nice day, but I may start training it to say that. 

Steph Pajonas: Boop, here you go. Have a nice day. [00:28:00] Right? I um, I think the 2026 for me is going to be a year where I pick up where I left off on a lot of things. 2025 was a little rough. It was a very, it was a tough year personally.

My father passed away in October. It was just a lot of work and a lot of hustle, and I was traveling a lot and I was glad to see my friends and everything, but traveling does take a lot out of you, whatever. So there were a lot of projects that I started either in 2024 or 2025 that I like abandoned.

But they still were living in the back of my head, and I was thinking about them a lot. And I’m ready this year to take them on. A lot of them, I am able to do that now, because I kept my notes in Notion for so long, right? Now the tools weren’t that great last year or the year before, but now they’re ready to take on these bigger [00:29:00] projects that I have, that I’ve been working on.

Let’s just say for example I have a Substack, right? So it’s spajonas.Substack.com. I talk about AI and authorship there, and I was pretty steady about it May through October and then my father passed away. And I wanted to take some time off to, to grieve, spend time with my family and do all that kind of stuff.

So I let that Substack go. But I had been writing the the articles in Notion as I was working. So I was working with Typing Mind and brainstorming out my articles for Notion, and then I would copy paste them over into Notion. And then I would, you know, revise them a little bit there and then copy paste them into Substack from there.

So then my workflow was Typing Mind to Notion over to Substack, so I had all the articles in Notion already, and [00:30:00] instead of going back to Typing Mind, now I can just do it all in Notion. So I opened up a, an AI agent again, in Notion the other day and I said, Hey, you know, I took some time off for personal reasons and I really wanna start up my Substack again.

So go read all these articles that I read, that I wrote, and they are, they’re in the database. So go look at them, read them through, understand the way that I talk, the way that I write in my Substack, and give me some ideas for how to come back. And it was just like why don’t you talk about coming back after a break.

I was. Great idea AI. I love it. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah.

Steph Pajonas: So it, it helped me write that article, helped me hone in on my themes and the things that I wanted to talk about, and we wrote it together there in Notion, and then boom, it went straight over to Substack and I was able to start it right back up again. These are the tools that I’m gonna be using this year to, you know, get back to writing, [00:31:00] to get back to old projects that I had left behind. And that is truly exciting to me. I’m, I’m really excited about 2026. 

Danica Favorite: And I’m excited for you because I, again, we’ve been friends for so long and I’ve heard about these projects.

I’m like, where are, you know, um. And I’m also the same way, because as a lot of you know, I got divorced. The divorce was a lot harder on me than I thought it would be. And it’s still um, I was just telling Steph it was a very hard holiday for me emotionally. And I had a lot of really cool plans of things I was gonna do over the holidays.

I had some time off. I thought, yes, I’ll get all this stuff done. I didn’t, I grieved. And that’s okay. And that’s also gonna be a theme for me in 26 is I’m not really setting resolutions and goals and things. And it’s so funny that you’re talking about your Substack because my Substack, which is danicafavorite.substack.com [00:32:00] is also kind of on the, I’m doing the same thing where I had this really great plan and I was gonna move forward. And I was gonna build all this cool stuff and I just couldn’t. But like Steph, um, back in the early days of Notion, I got on the Notion bandwagon, and even though my Notion is way messier than Steph’s, and it seriously, you guys have no idea how bad it is.

But I still suck with it. Even when I got to that point, and I had a conversation with Steph about this, I said, Steph, I don’t know if I should renew my subscription ’cause I don’t feel like I’m really using this piece. And Steph was like, you know what? I wouldn’t. Because you can do everything you want with the free subscription.

And it was like, okay, cool. And now I’m picking back up the paid, because the AI has gotten so much better. And that’s something I really want people listening [00:33:00] or watching on YouTube. Please like and subscribe us on YouTube. Watch us on YouTube. We’re adorable. Steph’s got a really cute Duolingo guy behind her. Who doesn’t wanna see that.

But anyway if you are like me and you’re like, oh, I stopped this subscription. That’s okay, because the tool just gets better. And the nice thing about Notion particularly is because it has that free tier, all of your stuff stays on there. You haven’t lost anything and, even after I let go of my paid subscription, I was still adding stuff to it.

And like Steph, I was putting my Substack ideas into Notion. Um, I was, I was, you know, if I find the interesting article, it goes into Notion, everything is in there. Everything lives in Notion. And so now that I’m like, Okay, I feel like I finally have that bandwidth. I’ve let go of enough of the grief that I can start moving forward on all these projects [00:34:00] um, here by the side of my desk.

Um, There have been parts of me that say, oh, I just need to take this down. And now I look at it. I have this kind of diagram of all of the writing that I had planned on doing, kind of pre-divorce at the very beginning of my divorce when I was excited and I had like new divorce energy, um, and it was all organized and this is what I was gonna do and then I just couldn’t.

And of course, also as Steph and I talk about a lot, we have perimenopause brain and that adds another layer of complexity to our ability to handle all these tasks. And now I’m like, okay, I can handle these tasks. And it’s funny ’cause I’m looking at this little chart of all the stuff that I wanna do.

I’m like, oh, there’s probably like 20 more books on that chart that I will probably be able to accomplish. Maybe not all in one year, ’cause that’s, there’s a lot of books on there. But I [00:35:00] can at least start making headway and start making progress, because I have a plan of attack and, one of the things I’ve been talking about lately on my Substack is this idea of 2026 and that I currently do not have the go-getter new year, let’s set some goals, let’s push ahead energy. And, part of that I have figured out, because I’ve been doing some really weird deep dive studies into this. This will eventually be a Substack post. So you may listen to this and then read it on Substack, or you might read it on Substack and be like, oh yeah, I remember her talk, she talk, she wrote about this already, ’cause we’ll see when this comes out. But January 1st is this social construct created by the Gregorian calendar and, it isn’t the way the natural year falls. And so a lot of people keep talking about, oh, it’s the year of the horse. No, it’s not the year of the horse, because that’s Chinese New Year, which doesn’t [00:36:00] happen until February 17th.

And so also like the natural new year, the way that the natural rhythms go, that isn’t until the spring equinox, you guys. And so some of you are gonna look at this title and you’re gonna start hearing all the New Year’s plans and you’re like, I don’t feel this New Year. You know what? It’s okay. You don’t have to ’cause I’m not, I’m totally, even though I’m telling you some of these things I’m excited about, I’m also not in push forward energy.

I’m in, okay, I’m gonna lay on my couch for a while, watch the Death in Paradise Christmas special, which was excellent, by the way. Oh God, I love Selwyn. Oh, he’s my favorite. And. That’s what I’m gonna do. And I might pick up my phone and do a little bit of, okay Notion, Hey, let’s research some more octopus stuff.

Cool. Put that octopus stuff in my file. And then when I [00:37:00] finally write the octopus book, if I do write it, it’s gonna have a thousand pages of stuff that I’ve pre-done, because that is how I tend to work. And so some of you are like, yeah, I’m not ready for all this, and I just wanna encourage you and say you don’t have to be.

Because like I said, a few months ago, Notion couldn’t do this. Antigravy is two months old at this point, not even two months old actually, I think. 

Steph Pajonas: No, I think it’s less. Yes. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And so these are brand new tools, and we are just now seeing these pieces, which as we’ve been telling you all along, it’s only gonna get better.

And so by the time you feel ready, maybe it is, you’re, you get that Spring energy like I’m hoping for, and in the Spring you’re like, oof, push forward. Or maybe you’re dealing with a death in the family, maybe you’re dealing with a divorce or some other life change. Maybe you have a health crisis.

Both Steph and I were [00:38:00] sick over the holidays. We didn’t do anything. And so this is your big permission slip. Not to do all the things. 

Steph Pajonas: It’s totally fine. They will still be here. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I definitely have a lot of New Year’s energy. My birthday is January 18th, so it’s coming up. We’re recording this on January 9th. I will be 50 years old. Hurrah. Yay. Dana’s giving me the thumbs up. So this is my season. I’m Capricorn, I’m in Capricorn season. I get a lot of excitement and energy during this season. It was funny that you mentioned the whole Chinese New Year thing. Everybody says, oh, 1976, you were born in the year of Dragon.

I have to tell them. I was born in January and that’s actually a rabbit. And so no, I’m not a dragon, I’m a rabbit. But anyway. So I have a lot of energy for this right now, and so maybe you’re listening to this or watching this and you’re thinking, oh, I definitely [00:39:00] do not have Stephanie’s energy when it comes to this, and that’s okay.

It’s all right. You’ll come into your season. In general, I get a lot of energy at the very beginning of the year, and then at the very beginning of the school year, which is like September here in North America. So I. I get like a real big peak of energy and then it slowly comes down, and then it peaks again.

So probably like around May or June, I will start being, I will be much less exuberant at that time and probably looking to, do a little bit more of a relaxing time. And that’s great for me too, because I love the summer. So it comes around in the summertime, and I’m like, yeah, great. It’s time to sit on the beach.

It’s time to get a little bit of a breather and be a little bit more relaxed. So it’s totally fine. But let’s talk about a little bit about some resources people can use to get through their 2026 using AI. I wanted to bring up the awesome Joanna Penn, with the Creative Penn Podcast. [00:40:00] She also has a Patreon where she talks a little bit more about AI, because that seems to be what her audience wanted.

They wanted a little bit less AI on the podcast podcast. And then a little bit more AI in the Patreon. So I wanted to encourage people to go join her Patreon, because she is showing off a lot of the AI tools and whatnot. And that’s really great because she has a lot of excitement as well for these tools, just like we do.

I also wanna mention that we have, of course, the Mastermind, Accelerator, blah, blah, blah, at Future Fiction Academy that we’re all rolling underneath. Uh, Just like one membership. It’ll just be called. FFA membership by the time you watch this or whatever. That way it makes it easier for people to find things.

I’ve been getting emails from people being like, is the Accelerator the thing I signed up for? No problem. We’re gonna make that a little bit easier for you to understand and also the AI Writing for Authors group on Facebook that [00:41:00] Danika helps me with where she’s one of our moderators.

She’s in there. Talking to people, helping them out, along with me and Kevin and Heather and Elizabeth Ann West as well, one of my coworkers. So we have a lot of tools for you besides these ones we’ve been mentioning here, like Antigravity and Notion, and of course, there are always the standbys of Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini.

There are also all of the writing tools out there like Raptor Write, Novel Crafter, Pseudo Write, et cetera. So there’s lots of things for you to go and check out. Now there are a lot more mature than they were in the last year or so. Things have gotten really exciting and actually Joanna Penn just talked about this.

She was saying that back like 10 years ago, Joe Conrad had a blog post about the tsunami of crap and about how people [00:42:00] feared that they would get the tsunami of crap from Independent Authors, Indie Authors. Of course, it didn’t turn out that way. He was saying people were worried about that, and they didn’t need to be, and now.

We are not getting the tsunami of crap, we are getting the tsunami of excellence. Right? Because these tools are actually really good writers now, and I think, unless you work with them consistently and understand their little quirks and the way that they write and all their little AI-isms, you’re probably not even gonna know that you’re reading AI work.

So all of those books that are coming out are probably going to be pretty good as long as the author has taken the time to go through, make sure everything makes sense, make sure that the, the prose is well edited and whatnot, you are never gonna be able to tell. So now is time to really learn these tools because you’ll be able to be competitive in the same market with all of those [00:43:00] people.

Danica Favorite: Exactly. And I think that’s the important thing too about when you’re saying, okay, I’m not ready. I don’t have time to learn all these things. One of the things that Elizabeth said a few months ago, and I can’t even remember, if it was like in a post or in a class or just her and I talking, but she said, just pick something and learn how to use it and just be good at something, because those skills will translate into other AIs.

Like I know ChatGPT really, really well. I know Gemini really well. I never did much with Claude, because it just was not… I didn’t have the bandwidth to be very honest, and when I tried it, it didn’t work as well as I wanted it to. And I was like I can get the results I need out of all these other tools, so I’m not gonna learn it.

But you know, once I started to pick up Notion and Antigravity, I knew how to use them, and that’s [00:44:00] all you wanna do is play around. And so here’s what’s gonna happen. This is my prediction for me and Steph. And it may be 2026, it might be 2027, who knows? But at some point you are gonna see this avalanche of content from me and Steph.

Although a lot of mine will be a pen name. ‘Cause I have again, and Steph too, but like on this chart I’ve got like me and a couple of pen names that I wanna do stuff under and, the flood of content isn’t going to be because we popped a prompt into AI and it made us 20 books. It’s gonna be because she and I have been behind the scenes slowly and steady, plugging along, learning what we can, putting in different notes about different projects and different ideas, and so that when that time comes, it’s all gonna come out and like she was saying about the tsunami of excellence, that’s what it’s gonna be, is it’s going to be really well written. It’s going to be very [00:45:00] well conceived, because we’ve spent so much time in the backend doing all of this stuff that people may not be seeing or noticing. But it’s there. And so don’t beat yourself up if you are not coming up with the stuff.

And the tides are changing. It’s so interesting, because we were talking about a potential guest and I had told Steph, I said, you know, it’s really weird that this person wants to be on the podcast, ’cause I didn’t think they were very AI friendly, but clearly this person has come around and so I’m gonna be having a conversation with this person and they may or may not be a guest, after the conversation, we’ll see. But that’s what I’m seeing is a lot of these people who were staunchly anti AI are now quietly learning it, quietly picking it up. And honestly, the ones who are still staunchly anti AI, A, they’re using it without knowing it. B, they’re secretly using it because, [00:46:00] I can tell.

And C, they’re at some point they’re going to have no choice but to use it. And it’s going to be a case of, okay, now they have to use it. They don’t know how. And now they’re left behind, because they fought it for so long. And I read an article about this, about, this adoption phase of different products and different ideas and things like that, and the people who fight it the most end up not succeeding, because they spent all of their energy fighting while everyone else was learning. And, they’re putting AI in everything. I, in a previous episode, I was talking about how my mom was like handing me her phone saying, take this AI stuff off of it. And I’m like, mom, you can’t. And yeah, you can start going out. And I see these posts in writer groups all the time. Well, what’s a Word [00:47:00] Processing software that doesn’t have AI? Well, I guess you could use Notepad at this point. 

Steph Pajonas: I mean, Scrivener still doesn’t have it, but I can’t imagine it’s gonna be long before they cave. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. And Scrivener is its own learning curve. 

Steph Pajonas: Oh yeah. 

Danica Favorite: And this isn’t me saying, Hey, you have to do this.

But for those of you who are scared and you’re afraid of backlash, you need to know you’re not alone. And what I have found is that rather than being the tsunami of crap, AI has made me a better writer. It has helped me become a more critical thinker because, you know, how many of you have seen the posts about, Ooh, the AI tell is the em dash um, a uh, em dash lover pre AI.

Steph Pajonas: Same. Same. 

Danica Favorite: And, but now, because I know that every time I use an em dash in my writing, whether it’s I’ve written it myself, or AI has helped me write it, I’m gonna be accused of using AI. First of all, I don’t care if you [00:48:00] think I’ve used AI or not. I, it just, I don’t care. But. Now, when I want to put in an em dash, I really think, is this the best punctuation choice?

Steph Pajonas: Same. I was just doing the same thing. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Whereas before I would sit there and I didn’t care. I would just em dash all over the place and, it didn’t bother me. And now I’m like really thoughtful in my punctuation choices of, okay, does this need an em dash? Can I make this more clear? Can I do it this way?

How can I do it? And we were talking about sentence constructs that in the past, I thought was a really nice construct, but now I freaking see it in every ad. I like I, I know people, if you are using AI for your ads, I guarantee you the construct will be there. It isn’t this, it’s this, okay. I, it’s a [00:49:00] tell in my opinion, but I also know that there are people who are going to be using it intentionally, but the people who choose to use it have done so with the care and intention of this is the best sentence construct for this place, and that’s okay. But because it’s requiring me to more critically think about my writing and what I’m choosing to put in my writing and why, I’m a much better writer. And I am really grateful that I’ve taken this time to learn. And so I hope that’s what other writers do too, because you know, let’s bring on that tsunami of excellence and really show people what we can do now that we have mastered, and I don’t think you’ll ever master it, master it, there’s always something to learn. But now that we’ve mastered those basic skills of how to work with the AI. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, go out there and be excellent with it. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: Right? [00:50:00] Progress, not perfection people.

Danica Favorite: Absolutely. 

Steph Pajonas: Let’s remember that. Progress, not perfection. It works if you’re working out and you’re lifting weights. It works if you’re trying to write a book as well. All right, so let’s try to remember that a lot of this is progress. It’s progress too as well for AI companies to be making better models, being make better chats, make better applications that use these things.

It’s also the same for us. We’re making progress on our journey towards being better writers. We’re not trying to be perfect about it. But we are trying to be intentional about it. And you can be intentional and use these tools. Absolutely, a hundred percent. A lot of people out there think that we’re pressing a button and that’s it, and we’re not giving any critical thought to things, but that is not true.

We are definitely excited about the process, excited about the brainstorming and the actual output that we get, and then editing that to our perfect, [00:51:00] to our level of perfection and then publishing. So it is not an easy button in any way, shape or form. And I think that this year we’re gonna be working really hard on that.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I do think to add to the easy button piece, there are people who have created easy buttons. And I know we’re gonna have a few of them on the show coming up, but, the reason they have created this easy button and the reason their easy button works is because of the level of thought and intention they put into creating the easy button, into training the AI, into learning how to work with the AI, into learning all of the things that we’re talking about.

And so again, those easy buttons required a lot of thought and training. Are there people out there who will claim to have easy buttons that are absolutely terrible, [00:52:00] because they don’t have that thought and intentionality? Absolutely. But I think what Steph and I really advocate and the people that we have on our show are gonna be those people who have put that intentionality and that excellence into what they’re doing. And really take that and understand that if we’re talking to you about someone, if we’re telling you about a product it is because we know the excellence thought that’s going behind it. 

Steph Pajonas: Nothing comes from a vacuum. The yourfirstdraft.ai that we work on with the Future Fiction Academy, that’s the result of many months worth of prompting and like understanding processes, understanding automations, and our easy button that you press runs like a whole bunch of systems in the background that didn’t just come out of nowhere.

They came out of a lot of intentional work on our part. And even, even, so, yourfirstdraft.ai is not easy either. You still have to fill out a huge worksheet, [00:53:00] understand your characters, give the AI direction, and do all that kind of stuff. So even the stuff that we say is easy is not always easy.

What you gonna do? 

Danica Favorite: I think that’s also a good point too is you know because I, I’ve played with Your First Draft, I haven’t gotten results I’ve liked from it. But it is because like I assumed, oh, this is gonna be so easy, and then I got into the weeds of doing all this stuff. I’m like, oh wait, I still have to do the work.

And that is also what’s really important for people to realize is you’re still gonna have to put in the work. And the people who I see succeeding with AI as authors who are selling very well with their AI generated books, they’re people who know how to be authors, and they’re people who know how to write a book.

And again if you’re not ready, that’s okay. And if you’re never ready and you never use AI to write a book, that is okay too. It’s all [00:54:00] about honing your skills and doing what’s best for you. 

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. All right. I think that’s a great place to end our conversation. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, yeah. Go out and be excellent.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. We want you guys to go out there and be excellent. So we’re not gonna hold you up any longer. You’re gonna be done with this podcast uh, today as you’re listening to it, and you’re gonna be like, oh, I wanna go out there and write. I’m gonna go out there and use these tools, and we’re gonna help you do that.

So why don’t you close your little app on your phone and whatnot, and go over to bravenewbookshelf.com and check out the show notes from this particular episode, because we’ll include links to all the stuff that we’ve been talking about, like Antigravity and Your First Draft and, and of course, Publish Drive and Future Fiction Academy and all that great stuff so that you guys can go out there and get that, get that work going. I’m sure you’re just as excited about it as we are. 

Danica Favorite: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So make sure you are going out also on all the socials, liking and subscribing, you [00:55:00] know, Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, Publish Drive. We haven’t really, we just have the Facebook page and YouTube for Brave New Bookshelf, but really the more likes, subscribes, shares that you guys can give, the better because that helps spread the word. And that’s what we’re here to do because… 

Steph Pajonas: That is. 

Danica Favorite: We really want everybody to succeed. 

Steph Pajonas: We do. We want y’all to succeed and go out there and really just bang it out in 2026. You’ve got this. We know you do. 

Danica Favorite: Yes. 

Steph Pajonas: Okay. So from Danica and me, we’re gonna say goodbye now and we will see you guys in the next episode.

Okay. 

Danica Favorite: All right. 

Steph Pajonas: Bye everybody. 

Speaker 2: 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 notes.

Tags:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Brave New Bookshelf