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This week on Brave New Bookshelf, Steph and Danica welcomed Jessica Waldron, also known as Connie Clark, to discuss AI for writers just starting out. Jessica, a romance author with six pen names and the founder of The Invisible Pen (formerly Clark Publishing House), shared her journey into AI and how it’s transformed her writing process and business.
Meet Jessica Waldron, Romance Author and AI Guide for Newbies
Jessica Waldron is a seasoned romance author who writes under six different pen names across genres from Regency to Mafia Dark Romance. Through The Invisible Pen, Jessica coaches and guides new authors through the confusing world of AI, making it more approachable and less intimidating, especially for those over 50.
Jessica’s AI journey began when she was struggling with writer’s block on a book called “Wild Reckoning.” She fed her existing 30,000 words and outline into ChatGPT and was amazed by the results. Since then, she’s experimented with various AI models, including Grok, Gemini, and Claude, sharing her findings and insights on her Substack.
AI for Authors Over 50 (and Over 40!)
Jessica initially focused on helping authors over 50, but after pushback from her over 40 friends, she expanded her reach. She emphasizes that age is just a number and that people of all ages have stories to tell. She notes that Gen X, having grown up with rapidly evolving technology, may find it easier to embrace AI as just another tool. She wants to help people understand that AI isn’t replacing them, but helping them, especially those struggling with things like the brain fog of perimenopause.
Jessica’s AI-Powered Workflow for Writing Books
Jessica shared her detailed workflow for writing books with AI:
- Idea and Tropes: Start with an idea and identify 3-4 tropes that fit the concept and how they’ll evolve across the series.
- Character Development: Define character names and individual tropes (e.g., grumpy sunshine, big bear).
- Setting: Ground the story in a specific setting that aligns with the genre.
- Premise and Codex: Use Claude (or another model) to establish the premise, codex (character and setting information), and overall book map.
- Outline: Generate a 25-chapter outline and tweak it to align with your vision.
- Prompt Creation: Have the AI create prompts tailored to the book, turning it into a “ghostwriter.”
- Writing and Feedback: Review the AI-generated content, provide specific feedback (e.g., “She would never be caught dead downstairs in her nightgown. Good Lord, this is a Regency romance!”), and request revisions.
Jessica emphasizes that this is a collaborative process, requiring significant direction, oversight, and editing.
The Importance of Collaboration and Critical Thinking
Steph and Danica highlighted that working with AI is a collaborative process that requires critical thinking and sophisticated writing skills. It’s not about pressing a button and getting a book; it’s about guiding the AI, providing feedback, and making creative decisions. AI can also help writers maintain their critical thinking skills, examine their work from new perspectives, and combat cognitive decline.
Exploring Different AI Models for Spicy Content and Beyond
Jessica shared her experiences experimenting with different AI models for various genres:
- Regency Romance: Gemini seems to excel at capturing the nuances of this genre.
- Spicy Content: Experiences with spicy content varied widely, with some models refusing to generate it and others requiring careful coaxing. Grok was the most willing to generate smut.
- ChatGPT: ChatGPT used to produce decent results with spicy content but has since dialed back its capabilities.
She found that creating custom GPTs for specific tasks, like writing spicy content, can be effective but may require adjustments as models evolve.
Recommendations and Resources for Newbie Authors
Jessica recommends Gemini as a great starting point for budget-conscious authors. It offers a good balance of features and affordability, especially if you’re already paying for a Google One subscription. She also encourages experimenting with different models to find the best fit for specific tasks.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- AI is a powerful tool for authors of all ages, but it requires direction, oversight, and critical thinking.
- Experiment with different AI models to find the best fit for your specific needs and genres.
- Focus on collaboration and feedback to guide the AI and create high-quality content.
- Don’t be afraid to embrace AI as a tool to enhance your creativity and productivity, especially during challenging life stages.
- There is no one right way to use AI in publishing, and finding what works best for you is an ongoing process.
Resources Mentioned
Here are some key links referenced during this episode:
- The Invisible Pen Substack
- The Invisible Pen at Skool
- Jessica Waldron Facebook
- Clark Publishing House Facebook
- The Invisible Pen Facebook
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. Welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their business. And on the Press we use AI to help us develop books and publish them and do all great things with them. It’s a publishing house. What we do, it’s the publishing of books. It’s putting them out there, you know, making other stuff for them. Hopefully we’ll do translations soon, we’ll do some YouTube stuff. I don’t know. The Future Fiction Press is a, it’s a thing that is constantly changing.
We come up with new priorities for it all the time based on the stuff that we pioneer in Future Fiction Academy, [00:01:00] including Your First Draft, which is our tool for writing first drafts of books. And we have been pioneering new prompting on that using our Narrative Physics Engine, which we’ve been working on, and we’ve, had it on YouTube a bit too. So if you’re fans of the Future Fiction Academy, you’ve probably heard about that already, which is great. I’m glad that we’re doing some cool things. And it is mid-January here as we’re recording this episode. It’s like 14 degrees outside, so I really am not doing much except for staying at home.
And staying at home is great for reading books and talking to my friends, including my awesome, awesome co-host, Danica Favorite. How are you doing? Is it cold where you are? I would imagine so, right?
Danica Favorite: Yeah. So it’s cold here, but it’s been interesting because Colorado weather is so weird right now. We finally do have snow on the ground.
It is cold. But we’ve had like an unseasonably warm and dry winter, like fire danger has been off [00:02:00] the charts. And seriously, there are days like I’m going outside, I don’t even need a coat. But we finally do have a little bit of cold. Not that I like the cold, but I’m really grateful for hopefully getting some more snow, even though I think that that is one of the swear words.
But we really need the moisture. Spoken like a true Coloradan. We need the moisture. But yeah, doing good here. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive. And we help authors at every stage of their journey, from getting their book formatted, to finding the perfect metadata and book covers with AI, to getting your book distributed out to the widest audience possible, and then various promo tools, and finally splitting the royalties once you have royalties, if you need to split them with other authors or something like that. So we have a lot of really great tools. Very, [00:03:00] very excited about all the things we are doing. And, I’m kind of getting in gear for different conferences, which is weird. It’s not conference season, but we’re putting together conference proposals, so if anybody needs a speaker for a conference, I’m your gal.
I know FFA isn’t doing a lot this year, but Publish Drive is trying to get out there a little more telling people about all of the great ways to distribute their books. One of the things that we’re constantly updating is we’re AI friendly and, we have been noticing like different stores are continually changing their policy and whether or not they are accepting AI content.
And so we’ve really been making sure that we stay up to date on who is accepting what and why and all of that. And so it’s really an interesting and exciting time to be in publishing. People get really nervous about all the different AI stuff out there, [00:04:00] but you know, AI is here to stay, and it’s really just a matter of making sure that people are using it responsibly and ethically, which is something that we talk about a lot here on the podcast. And that’s something that Steph and I are both really passionate about, especially if you listen to last week’s episode. Very, very excited. And one of the things we’re passionate about is making sure we also have something for people at every stage of their publishing journey.
And so I’m really excited today to have Jessica Waldron with us. For those of you who don’t know her, or maybe you’re thinking, wow, she kind of looks familiar. She was on our podcast a few months ago as her alter ego, Connie Clark, and she was talking about how she writing over 50 and Steph just turned 50, so now all three of us, we are in the over 50 club.
Steph Pajonas: Woo-hoo. We’re all over 50 now. Woo-hoo.
Danica Favorite: That’s [00:05:00] right. And so she was just talking about the struggles of writing and how AI helped her with that. And what’s been great is now as Jessica, she’s got her whole new publishing business, not just helping people over 50, although that is her primary market, but for anybody who’s looking to start that writing journey, and I love that today we’re gonna have Jessica Waldron here today talking to us a little bit more about some of the beginning AI for writer stuff.
And if you are a writer just getting started and you don’t know where to start with AI, this is gonna be a great episode for you. So without further ado, I would love to introduce you to Jessica Waldron. Jessica, tell us about yourself and what you’re doing with AI.
Jessica Waldron: Hi everyone. I’m Jessica Waldron, AKA Connie Clark.
She’s one of my pen names, actually, the very first one. And I think that’s how I was on the podcast before. [00:06:00] So what I do now is I’m a romance author, and I write under six pen names. I have genres from Regency to Mafia Dark Romance, and I also run The Invisible Pen, which I just renamed from Clark Publishing House.
I’m trying to keep ’em separate. So Clark Publishing House is going to be all of the books and the Invisible Pen is going to be the coaching and the classroom and the things that I’m trying to do there. So I just made that distinction, and I’m still working on making that distinction on my Substack.
But it is something that I started because last spring, and I think I told this story before, I had this horrible case of writer’s block, and I had a book that I was trying to finish called Wild Reckoning under Connie Clark’s name, and it took me three years, and I still couldn’t get the dang thing done.
And I knew what I wanted to write, but it was just not clicking for me. And so I ended up throwing the entire, what I had finished already, which is about 30,000 words, plus the [00:07:00] outline into Chat GPT at the time. And it came back with some very surprising results. And so I was actually able to finish the book, and that kind of was my first, and you would think that I would’ve started sooner, but no, that was my first introduction to what AI could do for an author. And I was immediately hooked. I was like, oh my God, this tool is freaking amazing. Because if you’re like me, I had a ghost writer before because I can think of the things, but I can’t always write the things. And so being able to outline or think of what, you know, where I want the story to go, and I can even guide it after the fact, and all of those things.
But getting it down on paper sometimes was a challenge. So that was the beginning for me. And then I started experimenting with the different ones that I found. And so there’s Grok that, my husband was all, oh, you go to try Grok. And I’m like, oh, okay, fine. And then there was Gemini, which I didn’t know very much about, but has become very surprising [00:08:00] in recent months and recent weeks even.
And Claude, who uh, another author told me, oh, have you tried Claude? And I hadn’t at that point. And, so I was trying all of them, and that was how it all kind of started with my experimenting. And so my Substack started, I started thinking, you know what? I should publish and just put on Substack what I’ve been doing with the experiments.
Because I had been experimenting with like, you know, how do each one of them write certain types of romance? Can I get spicy? How spicy can I get? What kind of results am I gonna get if I ask it you know about Regency Romance, which is a little varied, and that’s coming up in a series that I’m doing.
So I started with Dark Romance, because I had a, a friend who she likes Thriller Dark Romance Mafia type. And she was like, I bet it can’t do that. And I was like, well, I don’t know either. Let’s find out. And so I created a series of prompts, because everything kind of has to start with [00:09:00] some prompting.
You can’t just expect to throw you know, say, Hey, write me a dark romance, and expect it’s gonna know what you’re talking about. It will come up with something, but it’s not gonna be what you’re looking for. So you have to prompt it, you have to guide it, kind of like a toddler to, you know, how to eat properly and not spill stuff all over the floor.
So I experimented a lot with how to guide the AI, and I’ve come up with some pretty interesting results as a result of that. And so that’s where I started the Substack.
Steph Pajonas: I was gonna jump in and ask if there was any particular, like incident or like thing that really spurred you to think about how you wanted to approach like newer people to AI, but they are already writers?
Do you have a specific like demographic in mind that you’re writing towards?
Jessica Waldron: Absolutely. Well, not toward what I’m writing toward exactly, but who I’m trying to guide is, um, where I was over 50 when I discovered all of this. I thought, the older [00:10:00] crowd, and I don’t even think we’re old.
I think that we’re just in the middle of life. That’s it. You know, we’re not old. We are just ripe is what it is, like fine wine or perfect fruit. Anyway yeah, so I was thinking the over 50 and I started everything, like I, I started my podcast and the writing that I was doing on Substack was supposed to be AI for authors over 50.
And then I had some pushback from some of my over 40 friends who are like 45 and they’re like, but we need your help too. And I said, okay. So I started a Facebook group for the, it was over 40 ’cause I got so much pushback. And so that’s why it’s kind of funny ’cause the Facebook group is for the over 40 but the Substack is for the over 50.
And I thought, well I can’t really change the Substack now. I’m just gonna leave it. So yeah, that’s kind of how that came about.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. So first of all, would you tell us the name of your Substack so people can look for that?
Jessica Waldron: Yes it is right now I’ve, ’cause [00:11:00] I just renamed it to the Invisible Pen and but it’s clarkpublishinghouse.substack.com.
That’s where you’re gonna find me.
Danica Favorite: Okay, great, great.
Jessica Waldron: And I’ll probably, I’ll give you the link, but…
Danica Favorite: Yeah, yeah. And we’ll have the link in the show notes. You just keep referring to your Substack, so I’m like, okay, let’s just make sure we get that in there for people who are listening. And then if you wanna check out the show notes, the Substack link will be in there.
Jessica Waldron: Yeah. Yeah. And the Substack part that I’m referring to is the Writing for AI over 50, and that’s just a portion of the clarkpublishinghouse.substack.com.
Danica Favorite: Okay, great. Great. And I would also say age really is just a number. So if you’re like, I’m not specifically in this age demographic and yet the things that Jessica is saying today really resonates with you, go check it out anyway.
Like, no one’s gonna kick you out because you’re the wrong age. But I do really love this approach to AI in publishing for people of a certain age, because I [00:12:00] do think that, you know, once, particularly women, get to a certain age, there tends to be a little bit of this writing us off or, oh or writing ourselves off. And recognizing that, we are all still young enough and have enough life in us that we’ve got the stories to tell.
And I really love this approach of showing people how to make AI work in their publishing. I know we’ve gone through like our AI questions with you as Connie Clark, but I’m curious about this approach to AI and publishing. How do you approach it as a woman over 50? And how do people over 50 who maybe feel like they’re a little bit older and behind on the whole tech thing?
How do we approach AI with that?
Jessica Waldron: I think the first thing to remember is, like you were saying, Danica, just because we are over 50 does not mean that we don’t have our minds [00:13:00] anymore. And like I’m sure the two of you are experiencing, if you haven’t already, you will be soon, the fun joys of perimenopause, so…ha.
Danica Favorite: We are there.
We are there. Indeed. AI helps with perimenopause brain people.
Steph Pajonas: It really does. It really does. I would be so lost without AI right now, because my forgetfulness is completely off the charts.
Jessica Waldron: Yes. It’s like you have your own assistant who remembers everything and then brings the conversation back around.
It’s kind of funny actually, ’cause I will have a conversation with Claude and then I’ll go off on whatever tangent I’m going off on and all of a sudden he’ll say, and weren’t we doing this in the beginning? And I’m like, oh yeah, we were. It’s it’s nice that way. But one of the things too about being over 50 and using these tools is realizing that, I think, and I think I touched on this before. We are Gen [00:14:00] X and well, I am. We’re in that Gen X category.
And if you’re older or younger than Gen. X, some millennials may fall into this, but I think it’s more the Gen X. We went through, I don’t know if you remember, but we had Atari. Okay. Or we had, we didn’t have a clicka. We had to go get up and go change the channel on the tv, and there were only three of them if you were lucky.
And yeah, my father, when I was growing up, and I don’t think I said this before, but he used to sell cable tv. He went door to door selling cable tv, when I was a kid. I was probably five or six. I don’t obviously remember that, but he used to tell me that people didn’t know what that was.
So imagine not knowing what cable TV is. And now today you can pretty much, if you can find it online, you can watch it, no matter what it is or whatever show it is, or, you just stream it somewhere. And so going from that to where we are today, we, that’s in our lifetime. [00:15:00] So using AI as a tool is just another one of those newfangled things like a cell phone that was just gonna not, who’s gonna use a phone in their car?
Why would you want to, now it’s, on your hip and you know where your phone is all the time, ’cause it’s pretty much right there, you always know. That’s one of the things that I think makes it a little bit, a little bit easier for someone like us to just embrace this tool as something new to use because we understand that it is a tool.
It’s not replacing us, it’s not replacing our minds. It’s not replacing what we do or how we think or how we can use it to actually write faster or write better. And it’s not always about writing faster. Sometimes it’s just about getting your thoughts in order and being able to put them in a, in a decent, cohesive way so that you can continue on with the story that you’re trying to put down.
And it’s also a good way to, to. You know, we were talking about perimenopause, and using it as [00:16:00] therapy and things like that. Like I’ve taken my journals and I’ve put ’em in Notebook LM, and then I’ve come up with the podcast talking about my life, and all of a sudden I’m like, wow, I did go through a lot, didn’t I?
You know, things like that. And again, a tool to use to help us figure out where we’re at. And that’s what I like to do is dial it all the way back to the beginning. I’m not a techie person and I wouldn’t pretend to be a tech guru of any kind. But I can figure things out, and I can figure out what works for me and I can help someone figure out what works for them, because I can help them dial it back a little bit.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I like that. I like that idea of figuring things out, because I do think that we grew up in a generation of that’s what we had to do. We just had to figure it out. And that’s what we’re learning.
So part of your figuring out like what is some of your workflow with AI? What does your workflow with AI look like?
Jessica Waldron: So depending on what I’m doing, I use AI for writing my [00:17:00] books, and not in the way that you might think, but I use it as a tool to help me get everything going. And then I also use it for when I’m, you know, using it for Substack. I also use it for my cover design. I use it for my Facebook posts. I use it for, I’ve even created Facebook ads using AI.
Gemini is amazing at that. I can just, there, there’s different little things that you can do. And I’m not gonna go into everything here ’cause it’s a lot, but, it, my flow is basically I come up with an idea and then I and I’ll just go into how I write a book.
Let’s just do that one, because I think that’s the one that people are most interested in. So the first thing I’m gonna do is I come up with an idea. And and then I think, okay, what are the tropes that are part of this idea? And so I spell out probably three to four different tropes that I think I want to be in this book.
If I’m developing a series, then I say, okay, these tropes need to go across the three to five book series that I’m developing. And then what’s gonna be unique to each book? [00:18:00] So I plug that kind of into my little formula thing that I’ve created, and then I decide what the character names are gonna be.
And kind of tropes that I want for each one of those characters. So if I want ’em to be a grumpy sunshine, or if I want somebody to be a big bear, I just figure out what the individualized tropes are gonna be for each one of the characters, the main characters.
And then I figure out what the setting is gonna be. Because that’s also something I think a lot of people forget. If you don’t have a setting, if you can’t ground where your book is, then that can, you never know where it’ll go then. So you wanna ground it and the type of genre that you’re writing, because if you’re writing a Regency romance you can’t have guns and shoot ’em up.
So anyway, it’s, so I guess you could, but not in the same way. Anyway. So you have all of those things together, and it’s like your five to seven core things that you start with.
And then I have a specific, and [00:19:00] something that I have come up with, and it’s taken a lot of trial and error that I will plug into, right now I use Claude, but I have, depending on what the type of book it’s going to be, I will use any one of the different models. So I will plug in the, that information and then I plug in my prompt, which is basically let’s get the premise down. So we get the premise down, and then I say, okay, great.
Let’s get the codex going, which is, what is this character’s information? What’s our setting information? Let’s map out the book itself. Where are we going with this book? And if I agree with it, I read through everything and I’m like, okay, nope. Gotta change that. Nope, that looks good. Why is there Marcus Chen in here?
I told you I didn’t want him. So we, we take him out. Um, although I, I didn’t do that. I, I made the mistake of the, the book that I’m writing right now. Anyway, there’s Marcus in there because I didn’t catch him in time. So now he’s in there.
Steph Pajonas: Marcus Chen is everywhere. [00:20:00] He is everywhere in every everywhere outline.
Jessica Waldron: He is.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And here’s what I wanna know, and if anyone knows this like. Who offended the AI designer so much? What did Marcus Chen do that he now lives, I mean, maybe he didn’t offend them. Maybe he was like this amazing person. But
Jessica Waldron: No I bet Marcus Chen is one of the designers and he’s like, always use my name.
Danica Favorite: You know? I would not be surprised.
Steph Pajonas: I would not be surprised.
Jessica Waldron: Right?
Steph Pajonas: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Waldron: Yeah, so once I get that through then we, then I say, okay, now using the codex that we’ve just developed together, do the outline and outline at least 25 chapters. It will outline the chapters.
I go through the outline and I’m like, okay, yep. I like where the story’s going here. No. We need to change this. So I go through it, because, you could just let the AI do what it wants to do. But me personally, I’m a control freak. And so I need to make sure that it’s doing what I want it to do and not what it [00:21:00] thinks is good. And so yeah, so then I’ll go through the outline, tweak it the way I want it, and then we start, and then I tell it.
Now I need you to create prompts that are specifically to help you write this book that I can guide. And it becomes my ghost writer at that point. And then I have it write, and then I read what it’s written and then I yell at it. A lot. So we go through, but when I give it feedback, I give it feedback in, this is the feedback for this chapter.
Number one, change this. Number two, she would never be caught dead downstairs in her nightgown. Good Lord, this is a Regency romance. Let’s keep, keep it real. Things like that. And then it goes back and it rewrites it. And then I’ve set up in the back end of Claude, I’ve set up the skills. That’s what they’re called the skills.
And that is something completely different. And for an advanced class, let’s just say. So yeah, so that’s kind of part of my process [00:22:00] and.
Danica Favorite: I like, I really that you broke it down. Particularly in terms of like how you write the book using the AI, because I do think that number one, for the people who are anti AI, I mean, most of them have probably not gotten this far in the listening, but I hope they do, that people who are worried about AI taking their jobs, like the level and sophistication of writer knowledge and what you need to know as a writer to guide them to do all of these things. And the level at which you break it down, it’s really very sophisticated using your skills as a writer. But the other thing too is for people who are listening who were really hoping that, Hey, here’s the magic bullet, the one prompt, i’m gonna stick it in and get a book. Also, I’m sorry, that’s not what’s gonna happen here. And I think you really [00:23:00] showed that process, that it isn’t just popping a bunch of stuff into AI. And it’s really funny, because I know this about AI, and I was just getting frustrated with this experiment that I’m playing with, and I’m like, why am I not getting the result that I want from this?
And as you were breaking it down, I’m like, oh my goodness, I missed a step. So it is that constant learning and constant breaking down of what you’re doing and why and explaining to the AI. And so for those of you listening, like this really is a big skill as a writer that only skilled writers are going to be able to do and get good results.
Steph Pajonas: It’s very collaborative, right? It’s a collaborative process. You’re going back and forth with the AI. You’re planning with the AI, you’re making decisions. Then you’re taking it back to it. You’re asking it to make revisions, you’re getting writing, which you read, and [00:24:00] then you critique and you say, yes, yes.
No, no. Yes, yes. No. Rewrite it, please. Exactly. It’s like a very collaborative process, and a lot of people don’t realize that. They think it’s, you press a button, you get a book, and you just go ahead and publish it. Nope. It’s still a lot of work. And then I will also hear from people who say if it is a lot of work, why do you, why do you even do it?
Why can’t you just do it yourself so that you own all the work, and it’s all yours. We’ve come to, there are, there are plenty of people who, like me, like Jessica, like Danica, we’ve come to a point in our lives where we’ve got a lot of stuff going on and our brains are very spicy nowadays.
Right?
Jessica Waldron: so
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. Spicy. Right? It’s spicy. And now we have to deal with that and still try to be creative and still try to stay on track and still try to get these things done. And you know what, if AI hadn’t come along when [00:25:00] it did, I probably would’ve quit.
Jessica Waldron: Mm-hmm.
Steph Pajonas: Like a hundred percent. I was on that road when AI came, because getting stuff done while I was going through perimenopause was really hard.
Mm-hmm. Um, you know, just finding, finding the time, finding the creative energy to do things, especially going through brain fog from COVID. I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Right? AI came along at the perfect time for me. That’s for sure. And it did come along at the perfect time for many other people too, who were struggling.
It doesn’t have to be just people that are struggling that are gonna use this technology, obviously, but I do see that those people picked it up much quicker than the people who are not struggling and just now wanna use this technology because they’re like, they can see it can give them the edge up, it can give them, level them up, get their skills up.
And that’s great too. I don’t begrudge anybody these things whatsoever. This is a collaborative process and it’s a lot of [00:26:00] fun or having a lot of fun doing these things. I’m having fun every single day playing with AI. This is this is where we’re at and I love the fact that you’ve just now laid all that out in a workflow for people so they can see just how much work it actually is.
Danica Favorite: Yes, I agree. And it’s funny because I was saying before we started recording, I can’t remember all the things we talked about in our last podcast, but one of the things that I do know Steph and I talked about was how I really think working with the AI has made me a better writer, because we are learning how to break it down.
And I was just thinking about this book that I’m doing as an experiment. And I was really frustrated because I have a chapter I wrote, and I’m trying to get the AI to use it for other things. And the AI did not listen to my instructions, because I gave it bad instructions.
Imagine that. And it rewrote this chapter and I’m like, oh my God, this is so not what I wanted. But then I was reading it going, oh, but this is [00:27:00] clever. Oh, but this is clever. And so now I can take that chapter that the AI wrote that is 1000% not what I wanted, but it saw things that I didn’t see.
Jessica Waldron: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And now I’m like, oh wait, this is really interesting. I can use this concept or this piece to improve what I’ve actually written. And I think that while all of our brains in perimenopause land are definitely sometimes struggling with like staying on track and keeping the thinking straight, there’s also this piece that I think is really lovely with the AI, that it is also helping us maintain our critical thinking skills and really being able to critically look at something and think through it and understand how it works in a way we would’ve never examined it before. And I’m really grateful for that because, studies on aging and [00:28:00] things like that, like critical thinking and doing things that make you use your critical thinking, this is actually how you keep your brain from declining as you age.
So yay us. Like we’re fighting against dementia and all of that stuff. And I know ladies, do we all feel it some days, like we already are in the middle of dementia.
Steph Pajonas: Yes.
Jessica Waldron: I think it’s, yeah I think it’s definitely one way to keep the mind fresh. And I think I’m a strategic thinker. I’ve always been kind of a strategic thinker.
My background is business banking. I come from insurance, business banking and all of that kind of stuff. So you have to be a strategic thinker when you’re doing all of that. I’ve helped a lot of small businesses and medium sized businesses grow and even get established. So that is part of my expertise as far as that goes.
And this has helped me be more of a strategic thinker, in thinking about, how do I wanna grow? Do I even wanna grow? [00:29:00] And then I realized, and that’s part of what I realized too when I’m doing this, I was running all of these experiments for myself. And then, you know, I talked to you guys a couple months ago now and the wheels started turning, and I remembered a few years ago when I had first started writing during COVID.
I n 2020 is when, I started my pen name and I started all of that. I had started coaching authors, newbie authors, baby authors is what we call them, right? And they wanted to know how to get started. And, you know, how do I get, how do I even, you know, put my book up on Amazon. How do I even format, how do I even finish the book? How do I edit, how do I find a cover? How do I, all of the questions that they had. And so I had coached over a dozen authors, because I was doing a lot of one-on-one coaching, which is my preferred way to do it.
Although I am going to branch out into some classes and some group classes, just, to see how that goes. We’ll see in my school community, which I was gonna mention as well, The Invisible [00:30:00] Pen at School, or look for me on school as under the Invisible Pen. Anyway so I thought, okay, so how can I do that here?
And so that’s what I started. So that’s why I started the Substack just to see if there was any interest in something like that. And the interest is crazy.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Because we were talking about this again before we started recording, and your Substack’s had a lot of really amazing growth, which I think is fantastic, because yeah like Steph and I both have Substacks and granted, I don’t think either one of us are really intentionally trying to grow it at this point, but like what you’re doing and the growth that you were talking about I’m just like, holy crap.
Okay. Maybe I do need to think about adding some kind of strategy to Substack. So can you share a little bit about your growth? You don’t have to give like the specific numbers if you don’t feel like it, but you know, just some general points.
Jessica Waldron: Because yeah, absolutely. So I started.
Well, I started my Substack a while ago, but I was doing it as a serial romance, and so I changed it and [00:31:00] I thought, you know what, I’m gonna put up the experiments that I did per each LLM. The large language model, which is Claude, Grok, Gemini, and ChatGPT, huh?
The first one. Okay. You’d think I would’ve said that one first anyway. So I thought, you know what, I will just put up my experiments and see what the feedback is and if people are interested in that. And so I think I posted my first one in December, December 14th was the first time I dropped, and there was a huge influx of interest in what I had to say.
And basically I was just, I was just saying, let’s see what happens if we try to write a Thriller Dark Mafia Romance using AI. And that’s how it all started. Right now, I’m in the middle of dropping this series about writing spicy, which people are very interested in as well. And this one is a hockey romcom that starts out as text messaging.
And let me tell you some of the like, Chat GPT [00:32:00] gave me a big we don’t talk about that kind of stuff. Um, with, With us. That’s very no, no. And so I tried making a GPT to go around that and the GPT did for a minute, but when I pushed it to go higher heat, it went, we don’t talk like that around here.
We are very proper. And I was like, but you weren’t just a minute ago, you could go a little hotter. And it said, no, we won’t. And so that was interesting to me. And then I had this same reaction from Gemini where it did go a little bit hot, but it was mostly like, um, you need to write your own smut.
And I was like, I don’t wanna write my own smut. That’s what I’m paying you to do. And, and he said, no. And then I went to Grok and Grok went smut, how much smut do I want? And then I said, let’s do a little smuttier. And he said, hell yeah. And so I actually blushed quite a bit reading what he wrote, and then I was like, well, I guess I could plug that into what Gemini wrote, and then we’d [00:33:00] have, you know, anyway.
Um, And Claude, as long as you coax him along and tell him what you’re doing and tell him why, he’s actually not so bad either. So that, you know, and now I’ve just told you the whole result of my, but probably by the time this airs, that article series will already be over when and done with anyways.
Danica Favorite: Oh, I’m glad you did. I’m really glad you shared because particularly the smut, because for whatever reason I had forgotten until you said that was one of the questions I was gonna ask you is because I’ve seen you like teasing the series.
Jessica Waldron: Mm-hmm.
Danica Favorite: And I think it’s really important for people to know like the different results.
And I am gonna ask you some more about your little experiment here, which is actually a big experiment because…
Jessica Waldron: yeah.
Danica Favorite: What I think is really interesting is and this again goes back to what we were saying earlier about it’s not just sticking a prompt in and getting results, like you are like, okay, I want to write smut.[00:34:00]
What is the best model for doing what I want it to do, and how are those results coming? And even what you were saying about that combo between Grok and the other one…
Jessica Waldron: Gemini.
Danica Favorite: Gemini. There we go. Thank you. Yep. Like the combo between Grok and Gemini was what the really great results were.
And I think that’s another thing that people, when they think AI writing, they’re thinking, oh, just pop it into Chat GPT and get what you want. But it really is taking the different models and understanding the nuances between the models. So even though it’s a little bit of a spoiler, I think for those of you who are like, Ooh, this is really cool yeah, she just gave that to you.
What she gives her paid subscribers, you just got that for free. So if you want more stuff like that, that’s for you to subscribe to and get more of that on more topics. So I wanted to ask about this experiment that you’re doing with the [00:35:00] different models. Like what are you finding in terms of we see the different models of writing spicy models, spicy stuff differently. Are you finding that in terms of the other models and other things you’re asking it to write as well?
Jessica Waldron: Yeah it changes depending on what I’m asking it to write. And so I have found for example, with Regency Romance or something like that, I get better results from, I get decent results from Claude, but I get better results from Gemini on that one.
Seems to understand exactly what to say. For spicy, it’s funny because a few months ago I got decent results from Claude not Claude, Chat GPT, because I had written and I have instructions on how to do it as well. I had created a GPT specifically to write spicy with, and I did the same thing with the GEM in Gemini, specifically to write spicy.
And I’ve also like the instructions to do all that are in my paid subscriptions, but, um, [00:36:00] and they were working, and then it was interesting to me that Chat had an update and now they aren’t working the same way. So that was interesting to me, especially since recently, and I think it was like a month or so ago, we were all told that Chat was gonna have an update that did the opposite, that was supposed to help us, like, let us all write spicier.
So I found that very interesting that actually they dialed that way back, and so they actually did the opposite. And I think on the one hand, I understand where they’re coming from because if there’s a lot of young people or a lot of kids, like writing things and they wanna see what they can get out of it and they plug something in there, there really do need to be some type of a guideline for that sort of thing.
But I think if if you have age limits, and I know that there’s ways to get around and I have teenagers, so I know my 13-year-old used to say she was 25. And when I found that out I was pretty mad. So I know that there’s ways around it, still having a way to create a GPT [00:37:00] for someone who is actually an author or trying to do the things that we’re trying to do, I think is very valuable information to have.
So that’s all part of it. And then running the experiments the way that I’ve been running them and just each one exactly what I inputted. So my paid subscribers get exactly the prompts that I had inputted to get the results that I get. They are able to actually see the results.
I put that behind a paywall, because the results can be pretty spicy and I didn’t necessarily want those to be just available for some random person to read. And, but. I did wanna make it available, because I think that knowing exactly what you’re getting, because there’s different forms of spice, sometimes the spice that you get from, especially from an AI, you’re like, that’s really generic, or that doesn’t seem so sexy.
I mean, the words are all there, but, hmm. The way that it’s written, doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to do to, you know, make your readers as happy as they would be if you wrote it this way [00:38:00] instead. So being able to prompt that and change that and tweak that, I think is all really important. And just, doing the experimenting, I’m doing it so that you don’t have to kind of thing.
And so that you can see what the results would be so that you know which model maybe you wanna go and try first, or even, because you’re gonna have to pay for ’em. Okay. I pay for all of them because I wouldn’t get these results if I wasn’t paying for them. Let’s just say, if you want your free results, you’re not gonna get anywhere close to the results that I just got on any of ’em.
So I will throw that out there as well. It’s not cheap.
Steph Pajonas: I know. I’m, I’m subscribed to so many AIs at this point. I’m really glad that I can write them all up on my taxes, that’s for sure. And we’re approaching tax season, so that’s a, this is a reminder to everybody who’s listening to the podcast. Don’t forget that these are tools that you can expense, probably check with your local CPA. Anyway.
So I, I love the fact that you’re doing these experiments. It [00:39:00] gives chances, it gives a chance to people to show up and read and get a look at what you got out of it so that they can see like, oh, I liked her result here. I didn’t necessarily like this, or whatever. And then they can see your prompt and then take that and iterate on it and prove it for their own processes.
Do all those kinds of things. And those are the kinds of lessons that, you know, we try to do, we try to do those at the Future Fiction Academy as well, try to like, look at prompts and responses and then iterate and do all those kinds of things. And as I have said many times, I don’t want us at the Future Fiction Academy to be the only people who are doing these kinds of things.
I want it to be accessible to as many people as possible. So I’m really pleased that you’re out there and you’re doing this for your Substack, because I think that’s a great way for people to come in and see see it done by somebody who’s been working with these tools for a little while.
And that gives them a chance to really take it in understand what [00:40:00] they are seeing, and then make make improvements for themselves. So that’s great.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.. So usually we end with asking what a person’s favorite AI tool is, but I think what we’re getting out of this conversation is that it’s really gonna depend on what you’re doing and what you’re using it for and being able to test and see.
But I’m curious if someone who’s listening who maybe is a little budget conscious, is there a place where you would encourage people to start?
Jessica Waldron: I think if you were gonna start, if you are an author or a writer and you’re looking to just get some really good results, I’d start with Gemini. You’re gonna get the best bang for your buck, if you will.
From there, you can create gems. If you are already… if you need an email…if you are an author and you need a website and all of those things, if you’re paying for, I guess it’s not Chrome. It’s Google. Hmm.
Steph Pajonas: Google One.
Jessica Waldron: Thank you.
Steph Pajonas: [00:41:00] You’re welcome. Because that’s one of the ones that I, that’s the one, one of the ones I’m paying for.
Jessica Waldron: Yes. So if you’re, so am I, under Clark Publishing House and the Invisible Pen now. So if you’re paying for that already, it comes with your subscription. So you get like a terabyte of memory and everything else. And so if you use that, Gemini and Notebook LM are all part of that, and you get the the best bang for your buck out of those and you can learn how to create gems that will write the way that you want them to.
The difference between writing with Gemini and asking it to write spicy and then writing a gem, creating a gem to write spicy, big difference. So you can actually get some results from that. But that is what I would start with if you’re, if you’re starting and you’re budget, you know and you’re budget conscious. Um, but you want to spend a little bit of money, I think, what is 20 bucks a month, I think, for that. And so that’s pretty, doable. That’s, you know, give up a coffee a week, [00:42:00] I guess. But it’s, it that’s pretty doable is $20 a month and that’s, that’s not too bad, and if you’re interested in following me, I think mine is $10 a month, so on Substack, and then you get all of the little, um, and I’m dropping them, I’m dripping them out, but they’re, you know, um, coming through, um, all of the prompts and things that I use, I just had a brain fart there, so sorry.
All of the prompts that I use to get the results that I do, those are on my Substack. And if you’re interested in joining my school community, which is going to start a little bit more full force in February, I’m going to have some live classes. And I’m a newbie type. I help with the newbies.
If you already know what you’re doing with AI or if you’re using what’s the one that you guys use at Future Fiction Academy? That I haven’t? It’s author. No.
Steph Pajonas: Raptor Write?
Jessica Waldron:  Raptor Write.  Raptor Write. And then there’s another one that you guys are using recently that I keep looking at. It’s like
Danica Favorite: Antigravity.
Jessica Waldron: That’s the one [00:43:00] Antigravity, yes. Antigravity. Yes. I’m scared to try it ’cause I’ll probably like it, but then I’m not sure if you’re using that, you probably don’t wanna talk to me, ’cause then you probably already have your ducks in a row as far as that goes. But if you’re looking for like help as a beginner, then I’m your girl.
Danica Favorite: And I will also just another plug for the Google One subscription. Because Antigravity is a Google tool.
Jessica Waldron: Yeah.
Danica Favorite: With your Google One subscription, it gives you more bang for your buck with Antigravity. And I, I told myself no on more tools, but I will say I am really glad that I decided to give Antigravity a try, because I’m enjoying it .
Steph Pajonas: Good.
Danica Favorite: Yay. Yay, yay. Sorry, Jessica. I know, I just,
Jessica Waldron: I will try it sooner.
Danica Favorite: I’m the little devil in your ear whispering. Try Antigravity.
Jessica Waldron: I probably will when I’m done with my experiments, because I feel like they will taint my experiments if I start using another tool that’s like [00:44:00] better. So I just want, because the whole point of my experiments is if you’re just coming into using AI tools and you aren’t aware of the other tools that you can use and you’re just like, oh, let me try this because I’ve heard of it. Let me try Chat GPT and see how I can write with it. Then, you know, this is to kind of help you understand how to better write using those specific tools before we, delve into something more like, uh, and I’ve tried all of the other ones. This is kind of how my brain works right now, so.
Danica Favorite: I like it and I like that your brain is doing that. And I would recommend to anyone who, even if they have something that works for them, it’s okay to experiment. I am a tried and true Chat GPT girl 90% of the time. That is my first go-to. And for whatever reason, I was working on a project for work today and Chat was just not even.
I, I think it was just on another [00:45:00] planet this morning. And so I said, fine, I’m gonna go into Gemini and do this, and see what Gemini does. And I’m like, oh wait, Gemini is way better at this task. And I was like, okay. I have to also remind myself that sometimes the one you use most often isn’t the best one for the job.
And I think that was another really big thing that was just a great reminder talking to you today, because as much as we get into these little ruts of doing the same thing, sometimes it is fun to just try something different and see those different results, ’cause I this one task, like I said, I was usually doing it for Chat GPT and it Chat was being dumb today.
So I said fine. And I’m like, oh my gosh. Gemini did it better and faster. It’s always a good reminder play with the different models when you have time or when you get frustrated like I did, and just check those results, because different tools are gonna do a different job and give [00:46:00] you different results based on the tasks.
So thank you today for being here with us and giving us all these great reminders and such good info. I think this was really, really perfect for anyone who is curious about what do I do with this AI writing thing? This is an amazing place to start.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, this is a great place to wrap up for this particular podcast.
I wanna make sure that we send people to the right places. So we’re gonna link up clarkpublishinghouse.substack.com and then the other one is again, can you remind me.
Jessica Waldron: It’s skool.com/the-invisible-pen. Or I guess if you go into the search in skool, which is skool.com and then it’s The Invisible Pen.
Steph Pajonas: Great.
We’ll make sure that we got that too.
Jessica Waldron: And you can also find me on Facebook JM Waldron or Jessica Waldron. Apparently I did both, ’cause I have a page, [00:47:00] Jessica Waldron and then of myself, JM Waldron. And Clark Publishing House is also in there as well.
So The Invisible Pen is also in there as well. I just started that one.
Steph Pajonas: Fantastic. So anybody who wants to come check out the experiments, we’ll have a link in the description and the link in the blog post for today. Everybody who’s been listening in, you can come by bravenewbookshelf.com, check out the show notes and all the links in there to find more about Jessica’s experiment and what she’s been working on and all of her really cool stuff that she’s been doing, especially for the newbies who are here.
And they wanted to get a little bit of information about how to get started with AI. So, we’ll, that’ll be also in her school area as well. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much for coming today. We really appreciate it. Danica, do you wanna give us the final things? Thank you. You’re welcome.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, just our usual reminder, please go [00:48:00] out and and follow us on YouTube and Facebook.
Make sure you do that for Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, Publish Drive, all those good things. We really do appreciate the support and making sure that we’re getting word out. I really am so grateful that it seems like I’ll pop up in a new space and somebody’s oh, we love Brave New Bookshelf.
But there’s also a lot of people who are like, oh, what’s Brave New Bookshelf? So make sure you’re spreading the love. We really want to get word out and help people understand that there is no one right way to do AI as an author. And today’s episode, I think was like the perfect example of why that is true.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. Okay. So again, thank you, Jessica for being here.
Jessica Waldron: Thank you so much for having me,
Steph Pajonas: And we will see everybody in the next episode. Okay. All right. Bye everybody.
Danica Favorite: Bye
Jessica Waldron: Bye.
Speaker 2: Thanks [00:49:00] 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.