Insecure Writer’s Support Group
March 6th. Be sure to check out the other members of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group here:
Have you “played” with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI’s impact on creative writing?
Artificial Intelligence or AI is a controversial subject right now. A lot of artists and authors are decrying its use as stealing art.
The counter argument is that this is how human artists (authors/creators of all kinds) learn, is that we look at the finished products of others and copy them.
Human art students go to museums to copy the work of the masters. They might even lean close and look at how the masters did their brush strokes.
Copying produces MORE creative art, not less. At least, according to books like Steal Like an Artist. (There are studies, but I certainly don’t have the citations nor the time to go look them up, although I should. Maybe I should run a copy citation software just to keep track of all my non-fiction reading… or even my fiction, too. Then I’d have a log…hmm… Tangents are fun).
All right, so, do *I* personally use AI to write my blurbs?
*Yes* and I made my new covers with Midjourney, followed by a lot of work in both Canva and GIMP. I might eventually swap this combination of tools for an Adobe subscription, but Adobe has AI generative tools as part of its suite now as well.
Why?
It’s hard to find the right stock art, and I’m limited on time and funds. If I can make the right stock art through AI, then yes please.
And as for my blurbs. Sugar, they need all the help they can get. I read all the blurb books that I could get my time on. I listened to the blurb writing podcasts.
And well, also, my merch. I only have the bookmarks so far, but ChatGPT totally wrote up my blurb.
I also asked for a list of potential names for things. That then I decided I didn’t like any of them, but it gave me some adjectives and nouns that I thought, hmm… I might play with those. And, there have been name generators on the internet for decades. So, again, using AI versus using a massive list of words or word parts that randomly generate from a list for SciFi names or whatever, is not so different.
That isn’t to say what you see is the AI version of my blurb either. I’m not that blithe. And I’m not that trusting. AI can make mistakes. AI hasn’t read my whole book and doesn’t know it, but AI does good at selling the sizzle and giving me a framework for that blurb.
I’ve fed it my original blurb along with some additional details. Then took that format and tweaked it.
But again, is my use of an AI blurb as a starting point terribly different than me using successful writer in my genre’s blurb as a framework? I still make a list of puns relevant to my book and characters, then use it to craft my blurbs into 100 words, 200 words, and 500 words? Working to make it follow the right format, while making Sophia active?
In my mind, the AI is another tool to be used.
The same as if I opened up my copy of Sizzling Synopsis and used one of their templates as a starting point.
I even experimented with writing a novel with AI, just to see what it was like. Now, don’t get me wrong, that thing will never see the light of day. It was an experiment.
And, let me tell you, I had a workable outline in minutes, but some writers buy human written outlines pre-made so that’s not any different from someone buying an outline and using that to write their story. You can decide what you want about the ethics of that, but some editors and other author services companies certainly do offer outlines for sale. So, using something like SudoWrite or ChatGPT to generate an outline is not that different.
But getting the AI to use that outline to write a book that made sense and came back around, it was WORK. I was testing this out with no intention of publishing this thing. I just wanted to see what it was like, but it took longer than it does for me to outline and write the book. It still took a lot of human work and my brain didn’t enjoy fixing the AI’s work and making it what I envisioned the story to be. So, I give props to people who can do that. Don’t assume that just because something uses AI doesn’t make it work.
I could see myself using an outline like that if I were really stuck as a starting point or as a naming tool, but really the outlining and writing process is fun for me now that I mostly know what I’m doing and that I’m not afraid to rework my outline when it stops working for me.
In the end, I am just curious about what AI can do for me. I definitely like the way it can blurb something. And I want to make my writing faster overall, although I don’t think that AI is the tool for that.
That said, your mileage may vary. And so might the answers of the other folks responses to the blog hop question.