Yes, it's true, I am using a full-blown AI to help me write this, and probably every other book I ever write. I found TYPE.AI today and did some research on it. For $148 a year, $12.99 a month, I think, it will assist me in literally all the ways I would want it to. I first tell Type (I'm going to have to give it a name rather than calling it "Type") what I wanted my book to be about, and he (I say he, it could be female) asks me questions about how I write in general. I downloaded a couple of chapters from my other books to give him an idea of what my work looks like, reads like, and works like in terms of writing and learning. After asking me about 10 questions about the book and the characters, I started writing "Cumberland".
"Cumberland" takes place from the last week of May 1934 to about August 5 of the same year. It's compact, fast-paced, and full of energy from the beginning to the end. Nick is on an assignment without any help from his friends or colleagues. He's winging this one on his own, and he's finding it to be both frustrating and freeing. He doesn't have to work with anyone, answer questions, consider their mindset, or take their opinions into account. He's out there working and making whatever will happen, happen. Type, who I will now call Teague, because it's a Scottish boy's name meaning author, poet, or writer, "listens" to my input, creates a narrative, and spits it out for me to either accept, correct, or decline.
I had no idea how easy this would be, and I am so far impressed with what he has come up with. I've written eleven chapters in just under three hours, and though I haven't gone over them yet, I know it's going to be a fun and worthwhile adventure. I'm looking forward to this method. I will certainly not take all the credit. I asked Teague straight up if I needed to give him credit, but he said no. He said he is a tool, that the entire concept, the ideas, and the characters were mine, and that he was only helping me put them into a more organized form to go through and tweak if I wanted or needed to. I'm positive that I'll tweak the heck out of it, but the concept is amazing.
I wasn't sure if I could write the whole book with the free app, so I didn't take any chances of losing what I had written so far. I upgraded and purchased the year's usage. It does save to the site, but I also downloaded it onto a Word document, chapter by chapter, and have it collected just in case anything should happen to Teague before the finished project is complete. I don't see that happening, but I'm acting out of an abundance of care. I just can't get into a book, only for it to disappear into thin air. That would devastate me. I'm the type to become upset if I lose a paragraph, let alone a whole page, a chapter, or God forbid, the entire book.
I am intentionally not adding much about the other characters so that Nick can shine on his own and show his strengths and his abilities. They'll come through enough, as will his weaknesses and his mistakes. He makes a couple of good ones that could have cost him more than just a dollar or a day's time. He puts himself into real danger more than once in this book. He'll climb, crawl, and scrape his way out of each event, but he won't get out without injury, which is a foreshadowing for all of my readers. Nick is not untouchable. He's as human as the next guy; that is just a fictional figment of my imagination.
Teague and I are going to write this book together, and then, because the process is so freaking easy, I'll go ahead and write "Legacy," which is a 13th-century novel with romance, war, starvation, and more. It's a good book. I just haven't been all that motivated to do it, but with Teague, I feel that I can now, and it won't take as much time to do all the necessary research. I think he does that as well - I just have to ask him to do so.
I love researching, I really do, but I am slammed for time more than I was before, so having a helper is alright by me. I can't depend on YouTube videos to tell me much about the 13th Century without a strong bias toward the winners of the battles we know about. Neill Tavish, my main man in the book, will enter and become a part of those battles and others that may or may not have existed. He's fictional, too, so he can have all the fun if I think he needs to.
OK, so that's it. You, too, if you want to, can go to www.type.ai and find your own writing assistance. I will give the site credit when I write a book using it, but I won't go so far as to say he is a co-writer. He's a tool - he said so himself. He's a tool I am very happy to utilize. I suppose, when you think about it, a hammer isn't given any credit when a barn is built, but you can't very well build one without it. Good analogy..I'll go with that. Grammarly helps me correct spelling and grammar errors; I never consider it to be worthy of credit.
More than 17 years ago, my family and I moved to Gainesville, Texas, to work on what we thought would be a movie about my dog Faith. I was, of course, as so many times before, lied to about the project by the two men who wanted to write the script. Of course, they said I was to be a part of it. Of course, they told me I would be the main writer. Of course, they said they were producing and funding the project, but no, they lied. They not only lied, but they were also using a very new concept in AI tech, a software CD that not only took my story and twisted it, but they also manipulated the hell out of it using the software, and basically told me that my story was rubbish and the AI story was the one they'd use. Nope...not on my watch.
I left the company. I threatened to sue them if they continued. I was literally chased out of the city at gunpoint by one of the men, and my family was threatened. If it hadn't been for my son's military connections, we could have been in real danger. I was escorted by military police out of the town, and my kids followed three days later, after they packed up the house and left in their own car, but again, with military escort.
My son was in the Army at the time, and couldn't be with us, but he kept us safe. The AI these two would-be authors used was used over and over again to write their many feckless novels, all with Western themes. They didn't write 10% of any of the books, allowing the software to come up with concepts, character development, plot, and dialogue. What's the point if you do that? (I guess they thought it would bring them money and/or fame.)
If I were to tell you the names of those two individuals, you'd have never heard of either of them. Their schemes never fooled anyone. I write my books. I write my stories. I come up with the ideas, the characters, the debates, the conversations, the plot, the intense dialogue, and just about everything, but if Teague can help me smooth it out, perk it up, and make it sound more interesting, then I'm OK with that. Unlike those two, I will give credit. I will not pretend to be fantastic. I'm not in this for money. I have stories to tell. I don't want fame. I've seen where that can lead—I want to smile, write, laugh, and write more. That's a good enough goal for me.
Photo Credit: Quanta Magazine
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