I finished an outline for a novel yesterday and now I’m pondering my next move. My gut tells me to do some reading and to game out some character studies. And, yet, I have some momentum and maybe I should throw myself into writing.
And there are some elements of the third act that did not quite work out the way I had hoped — damn AI and its knowing the logistics of things (grin) — so that has made me a little unhappy. I had this really dark sequence of events for the third act but at the moment, it’s just not practical.
But I have a long time to go before I have to get to that part of the novel. The general premise of the novel is pretty good and I think the only way I “save” it is to lean into it being a character study because right now I fear not a lot happens.
I have been working on the outline for a new novel for some time now. The novel is pretty good, if I do say so myself. I have been leaning heavily into AI at this point in the development process.
It goes without saying, of course, that I won’t be using AI to actually write any of the text of the novel.
Anyway, I need to stop drifting towards my goal. I need to focus. I have only a limited amount of time on the planet before my inevitable demise. But this specific novel idea is distracting enough that I don’t mind that I will wake up and be in my mid-50s before the novel is ready to query.
One issue I have to contend with is, is my writing natively bad? Is all of this moot because no matter what, I suck? Only time will tell with that, I suppose.
Today, I’m really going to buckle down and get some work done on developing my next novel. Enough moping. I may also do some reading about how to write a novel, if I really want to be productive.
I don’t know what’s been wrong with me the last few weeks. But, hopefully, it’s over. Hopefully, I can start to churn out copy within, maybe, a month or less. I still have a lot of development to do.
AI has really helped me speed up the development process a great deal. What might have otherwise taken weeks or months of struggle can now be compressed into a few hours.
That’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself.
Anyway, I have two failed novels now under my belt, so I do, at least in some respect, understand how *I* write a novel. Hopefully, that will speed things up a great deal.
A writer for The Wall Street Journal is in hot water for using an LLM to write a column. I think we should give the person a pass. So what if they used AI. Now, some context — I am NOT using AI to write my novel.
But, I will admit, that I am using it extensively for development.
It just speeds the process up too much not to be used. I used it some yesterday and I probably built-out three months worth of novel development in a few hours.
Anyway, back to the WSJ person.
I think we just need to get used to the idea that people are going to use AI to write stuff. We also need to accept that music is already being transformed by AI and that transformation is here to stay.
And, I will admit, that I’ve started to use AI more and more to write blog posts. But I generally clearly mark those that I do and also no one reads this blog — in general — so it’s a lulz.
But the people who get really upset over the use of AI in the creative arts for any reason really need to cool it.
But, at the same time, it is pretty lazy to use AI (or an assistant) to write an 800 word essay. Hell, I could do that pretty easily without breaking much of a sweat.
I spent a bit of time today using ChatGPT to help guide me through the process of writing a summary for my next novel. The novel is an homage to Stieg Larsson’s work and everything is going pretty well except for one thing — I’m really struggling with the second act.
But ChatGPT — or “Annie” as we’ve agreed to call her — has really helped me a lot game out some semblance of a second act. I’m feeling down because the USA is now a “light touch” managed democracy and working on a novel helps me feel better.
If I could ween myself entirely from Twitter — specifically AI Twitter — then I wouldn’t use the Internet at all socially and I would live my life as a man in a high castle.
But, alas, I’m too invested in what’s going on within the AI community on Twitter and I just can’t pry myself away from the service. And, as such, I continue to monitor the USA’s decent into authoritarianism.
It’s time for me to put up or shut up about writing a new novel. I can’t just mope forever, however much I want to. I have three — at least — solid novel ideas a half a dozen solid short story ideas.
I need to just do it. I need to confront the cold, hard fact that the novel I wrote — which I think is pretty good — is just not good enough to query. That is very painful.
But that, combined with it taking me a while to figure out how to properly include AI into my workflow, causes me to want to put aside my first (completed) novel and “delve” (as LLMs always say) into a new adventure.
It’s just a lot more difficult than I would prefer to confront that failure before moving on. I really thought I had a chance of querying the novel I finished. And, yet, everyone who has actually given me a critical review of it instead of being polite has panned it.
I have been feeling rather meh for the last month or so, ever since I finished my first novel…then realized it just isn’t good enough to query. Or, at least, it’s not good enough to at least try.
Add to this that I worry that the specific manner that I used AI may put the kibosh on it getting published, period and you have several reasons to just start all over again and do something different. (I’ve figured out a new work flow method for writing my novels that will hopefully prevent *any* accusations that I just generating AI slop.)
That feeling my change, but at the moment, I’m going to start from scratch on a few ideas I have rolling around in my head.
It’s just taken me a lot — A LOT — longer than I would have hoped to get back into the grove of things. I hope to do some reading about writing ASAP so I will have a fresh idea as to how to do it “the right way.”
If I was 20 years younger, I would go back to the world of the Stieg Larsson homage that I was working on for all those years…but I just don’t have the time unless the Singularity arrives and suddenly I have 500 more years to live.
I have been stuck in neutral for sometime now creatively because I just didn’t know what I should do next. But I’m slowly beginning to get the urge to be creative again.
And, yet, I have to seriously reconsider one element of this — querying. I have begun to get more feedback from readers about the novel and it’s clear I need an editor that I simply can’t afford.
As such, I think I may, in an attempt not to make a fool out of myself, put a pause on the querying front while also plunging forward on the writing-a-new-novel front. The new novel has a lot of promise. But I’m really going to have to lean on AI for developmental backend of things.
Most professional novelists use spreadsheets in some respect to develop their novels and I just don’t think like that. But I can get a chatbot to help me, I suppose.
Anyway. I hope to throw myself into writing a new novel ASAP.
The key issue when it comes to querying this particular novel is I see it as an opportunity to get the lay of the land. I just want to understand better how exactly to query so the next novel I try to query might get a little bit closer to the goal of being successfully bought.
As it stands, the querying process seems rather overwhelming. I just need to get into the right mindset to do it. I need better understand things. As it stands right now, I really have only a limited understanding of what goes into querying.
And, really, if I was all that eager to get the novel into the hands of actual human beings I would self-publish. But I know that would be a failure because I can’t sell for shit and that’s just not my vision for my work.
I would rather not publish the novel at all than self-publish. To me, self-publishing is kind of a cop-out. I understand why people do it, of course, but it’s just not my vision for my works.
Anyway, I’m going to keep reading about querying today and hopefully be a lot more productive than I have been for some time now.
I’ve sort of been experiencing post-partum creative depression when it comes to what I’m going to do next after finishing my first novel. (Actually, it’s my second, but it’s the first novel that I feel is good enough to query.)
I’m hoping writing this out will get me in the right headspace to get back to writing again. I really also, of course, need to bone up on querying. But the last few weeks I’ve just been in a severe funk because I’ve finished a pretty good novel but I couldn’t think of what next to write about.
Thankfully, a new novel idea came to me in a dream. So, the moment I woke up, I rushed to my computer and started talking to Claude and Gemini LLMs about it. After about 20 minutes, I had the basis of a fully-formed novel gamed out.
But, like I said, I’ve really had problems actually doing anything with the novel. Yet I hope I can bootstrap myself back into developing and writing a new novel starting today. I just can’t daydream and be immobilized forever.
The new novel idea comes at the android-human debate from the opposite direction as the last novel. Which is something of a challenge that I like having to work on. I still have a lingering desire to write a trilogy that is an homage to Stieg Larsson’s work…but I just don’t have the time to write a trilogy.
I’m not getting any younger.
Even as it stands, I could be closer to 60 than I would prefer even if everything went right with the novel that I want to query. That really is depressing and discouraging.
But I just can’t change that it took me 20 years to figure out that the only thing I’m reasonably good at is writing fiction. And even that is debatable to a lot of people. (I guess in real terms the only thing I’m natively good at is being a rock DJ or photograph, but neither one of those is a viable option for me right now.)
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