I’ve long been searching for the magic productivity bullet. Diaries, journals, kanban boards. Different configurations of planners and bullet journals. The problem is, these things can be ignored. To manage anxiety, I rely on CBT techniques which involve making lists, except sometimes I get too anxious to make a list, and if the list in a software thing, I can easily ignore it. Also, as you can imagine, this makes things worse!

If it’s a book, less so. I started with a nice paper diary this year, but I’d make a list, and time would march forward, and things wouldn’t be done and I couldn’t bring myself to face that the last list I wrote was two weeks ago.

Usually, I keep stuff in my head, and do full steam ahead on that, with other urgent things lurking in the background like lurking monstrous tentacles.

I’m trying to get a book out this year, in record time, but while I’m focused on editing, there’s other stuff I need to prep for. Covers, promotional bling…. Stuff that should be done as early as possible, but I don’t want to think about. Time to make a list, and yet if I use a diary, I get anxious when I see how few weeks are left. Why is project management easy at work, and yet hard to bring into my personal space?

But since I also have a streak of ruthless pragmatism, so it’s time to bring out the paper diary again. Except, this time, I’ve resurrected one of my old bullet journals. No dates, months, just a list of things that can be crossed off. The journal is a physical artefact, so I’m less likely to ignore it as an app. Got a lot to get done over the next few months, and it’s important I stay on top of things leading up to getting Book 3 done….

Every author business podcast I’ve listened to recently, and a lot of book-ish social media groups, are furiously discussing the impact of modern AI tools on publishing. There’s a mix of speculation, gossip and fearmongering.

• Publishers with low-effort, AI-churned out books will swamp the market place! No one will touch self-published books again!
• Readers won’t love us writers anymore as they can walk up to a computer, enter some prompts, and receive a perfectly tailored story to their tastes and preferences.
• Canny publishers will use AI to increase their output and draw readers’ attention away from my stuff!

There are arguments on both sides. A lot of this appears to be FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) – the fear that the AI assisted texts will make certain writers more productive and take the readers away from discovering other writers! I don’t think it quite works like that. Sure, I’d love it if my favorite authors were more productive, but I’ve also stopped reading a series where the latest volume loses that spark and feels ‘churned out’. And even if everyone flocks to mass-produced texts, there will still be people who prefer hand-crafted stories. Maybe it will become like craft beer—there’ll be always an audience for those who want the more interesting beverages on the side.

What makes a good story? Intriguing characters, pacing, the ability to evoke emotion, perhaps. How do you bottle this and create a reliable, reproducible formula for making engaging stories consistently? People have been to figure this out for years. There’s so many courses out there that tell writers about how to write unputdownable stories, or what the best formulas. I’ve found some stuff useful (structuring and pacing techniques) and others less so.

There’s also been heartwarming stories of people with disabilities who can now express themselves better using AI technology. People with language issues or Long COVID brain fog can now complete stories with AI assistance. This is how I’d like it to be used. I’ve got some issues myself, which makes it hard for me to engage in social media. I have trouble writing random social media posts about blah life stuff without wanting to sit and think deeply about out it for ages, but if I bothered, I could go to the ChatGPT and have it write my social updates for me!

I haven’t mucked around with AI yet. Actually, I tell a lie—I use souped-up grammar checker Pro-Writing Aid to clear up my text. I’m a messy first drafter with lots of dropped words, speling errors that are fixed down the pipeline. I use some of its suggestions, but not all. Lately it’s got this AI feature that rephrases sentences. Some of it sounds better, some of it’s bland. Mostly I ignore it. But the tool is there as an option. Anyway, more options are good.

At this stage, I’m not going to engage AI (apart from PWA’s grammar/reporting checks). I’m still working on my craft, trying to capture that magic of making a great story, or at least, improve of what I’ve done in the past. For example, when I wrote Final Night, it was the best thing I’d written and completed, and now I’m going to improve on that with the next book. When I think I’ve gotten my craft to a certain level, I might check out AI tools more deeply, but for now it’s fingers to keyboard.

I’ve been away from the social media for a bit. There was a holiday, effort around trying to finish my next Lukie book, Feral Night, (Revenant Records #2) book and getting it ready for release this year, getting stuck on a craft post I wanted to write about different fantasy species, trying to figure out how to use social media to connect with others and feeling overwhelmed by it all. And then when I’m overwhelmed by something, I pull back, and focus on other things.

And now I’m all refreshed, and chill, and feel like talking to the internet again. For social media, comes down to, well, not what has good reach and connections, but more like, what is fun for me to use?

So, what do I enjoy doing? Well, writing blog articles, it turns out. I don’t enjoy memes, and if I use cartoons, I’d prefer to draw my own. (I did do some drawing courses this year, and now have Procreate on the iPad and some terrible artwork, so something to try out later on.) The plan is to blog, cross-post, share, see how it goes.

Pipeline

This is what I’d like to focus on with coming posts:

• Launching book 2, with a mix of business reflections, and some character updates and reviews.
• Getting my dormant roleplaying game for the Vestiges of Magic in development again. I did a big playtest mid-year, lots of things broke, and I never wanted to look at the draft again. In fact, I was going—perhaps I could rebuild it in another system! Then I used a cut down version of the system for a local game convention and it ran well in that use-case. After a few months off, I’m looking at the draft again and it’s easier to see what to fix and what repair.
• Craft post about fantasy species, racism and so forth. I think I’ve figured out the angle I want to use for this.

Anyway, if this post has a message, it’s about taking a break and coming back to a stuck project with fresh eyes.