If you’re an author and are ready for feedback on your first draft, you may have considered this question posed by Trent. Especially if you’re weighing AI’s advice versus hiring an editor.
In this “Ask Stacy” episode, I talk about the trickiness of using AI and the potential hazards of watering down your voice as an author. I’ll also discuss the different ways you can receive meaningful feedback—from author coaching to writing community support. And if you have a financial roadblock to hiring an editor, there are free resources you can use.
There are limitations to using AI, but there are also ways to use AI to your advantage. The main focus is to invest in your success and long-term growth with integrity and efficiency.
If you’re an aspiring author looking for wisdom about using AI, you’ll enjoy this episode and walk away with inspiration on how to best use AI in your book-writing process.
Show notes:
- How to Use AI Ethically and Legally in Your Book.
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Ask Stacy: Should I upload my manuscript to AI? | Episode 254 Transcript
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
this kind of too many cooks in the kitchen can just make things confusing. But then also part of it is that you’re in such a delicate state when you’re writing. And so I really, I like to call it your writing cave. It’s like you go into your writing cave and you Just kind of like huddle down and you get it done and then you get.
Stacy: You complete this thing and you get it to a place where you’re ready to share and then you get the feedback. So that’s generally what I recommend, which it sounds like has basically been what’s happening here. And then when you’re ready for feedback, I typically recommend a professional editor and beta readers. Now that is a whole other thing. If you want to hear more about beta reader process, leave me a comment and I will do my best to get that into the queue for things that I talk about, because that’s a whole. A whole thing. The thing is, as I mentioned, this process is really vulnerable and delicate. And so you really need feedback that you can trust. And at this point, you cannot trust AI. You just cannot. It’s new and imperfect and it tends towards sycophancy. Sycophancy. How do you say that?
Stacy: Oh, no, I know. Sycophancy. Okay, we’re not going to cut that because I think you need to see the human side of me that forgets how to pronounce things sometimes and being really frank sometimes, it really produces poor quality writing. Those of us that are in this industry can sometimes sniff it out in seconds like it’s not good. So you don’t want to get feedback from a tool that does not produce good writing. That doesn’t seem like a great idea, does it? The other thing that I think is really problematic is that AI seems human, doesn’t it? So I’ve heard my friends refer to Claude or Chat GPT as he, which is interesting. Why is it he? I guess Claude is more of a male name. But ChatGPT is gender neutral. Why is it a he? But anyway, I. I digress.
Stacy: It seems human, doesn’t it? It seems like you’re hearing from a professional or a friend. And it’s very convincing. Very convincing. I just used Claude for some very simple math. I was having it create percentages for me of one total and it got that wrong. And then it insisted it was right. So now apply this to your precious baby, your book. And the risk is big. The risk for you as an author is big. That you’re going to get bad advice. Not only many of the things that I’ve talked about previously about AI, which we will be sure to link to that in the description of this video or in the show notes of this episode. So if you want more in depth about the problems with AI and the good things about it too, listen to that episode or watch that Video.
Stacy: But you know, in general, I think if we can just put that aside, we can just look at the fact that it’s not really providing quality feedback right now. And I think that’s really important. I really understand the cost challenge. And you know, it’s way more enticing to pay free 99 than to pay thousands of dollars for an editor. And you have to remember that these editors that you work with, assuming they’re skilled, have poured entire lives into their craft. And they are worth the payment, they are worth the investment when you find somebody who’s skilled. And if you want to grow as a writer, as you said, then that means that you need to make the investments to grow as a writer.
Stacy: That said, I really need to just comment on the cost side because I work in a very privileged part of publishing A lot of the time. I work with people who have budgets, who can spend, invest on their books, on their author journeys. They can hire me as a coach or do my program or purchase my self study course. They can work with hybrid publishers or pay a self publishing project manager. And that only represents a privileged portion of publishing. Now some of my authors do get grants or other things to work with me, but they’re kind of few and far between. So I recognize that there is a dearth of affordable support in publishing. I don’t have a solution to that right now. I, I have been quietly trying to work on something for that, but it’s not come to fruition yet.
Stacy: It’s not AI. It’s not AI related. And I don’t know that. You know, as much as I think it’s a nice idea that AI will solve that problem. I think that we lose so much. We lose so much and particularly the ethical side to this. And I think that the loss to you as an author is that writing a book is one of the most human acts that exists. I mean is. It is a purely human creation if you let it be. Right now you have a lot of temptations to not let it be, to cheat, in my opinion, and cheapen the experience and shortchange your journey. And this is not, by the way, Trent, you wrote such a beautiful and thoughtful message and it’s in no way pushing aside how you feel because a lot of people feel that way.
Stacy: And also I think, you know, I like to show up as a coach. This is my democratization, by the way, YouTube podcast, my newsletter, which I’ll be sure to link to in the show notes as well. This is my democratization of publishing. This is my effort to make this information available without you having to pay a cent to me. And this is all, again, understanding and empathizing and. And yet this is also such an important part of your journey, is the human experience. Are there exceptions? Probably. I think about, you know, maybe somebody who wants to write a family book. Okay. This might be an elderly person who wants to capture their life story and they work with a writer and they want it proofread and they use AI they’re never going to sell this book.
Stacy: It’s never, you know, it’s just for their family, maybe. You know, I think about a lot of. A lot of things where this. Like that maybe maybe still, you know, kind of hurts my heart a little. But I can acknowledge that there are places where this might make sense. So looking at my notes, making sure I got all my things okay, my last thing is just that questions like this are important, and I hope that more people ask them and are honest about it, question and challenge themselves to look for thoughtful answers and make a decision that feels aligned. So thank you so much for this question and for those of you who are not Trent and watching this, I hope this was really helpful for you and your journey and be sure to come back for the next question that I’m answering.
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