Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
The awesome co-hosts for the August 7 posting of the IWSG are Feather Stone, Kim Lajevardi, Diedre Knight, C. Lee McKenzie, and Sarah - The Faux Fountain Pen!
The following link will allow you to peruse everyone in the Blog Hop.
Link | IWSG Blog Hop Participants
***************
August 7 question - Do you use AI in your writing and if so how? Do you use it for your posts? Incorporate it into your stories? Use it for research? Audio?
***************
Hello, friends!
What a month July has been!
I've been so busy, but when am I not? I actually think this is my first IWSG post since I gave my website a facelift! There's a page for my books now and the other pages have been revamped. And, I have a newsletter! I admit I haven't sent anything out from my newsletter yet, but I will be soon! More below.
The highlight of the month was that we went to the SAGA Genre Writer's Conference and ConGregate in the middle of the month. It was so much fun! I'd ever been to ConGregate before and I liked that SAGA and ConGregate teamed up this year. During the day I went to mostly SAGA workshops, since I paid a good bit for those, and in the evenings I got to take advantage of the ConGregate programming. It's in downtown Winston-Salem, NC, which is such a cute little downtown with lots of coffee shops and bars and amazing places to eat surrounding the hotel. Really great place for a con.
I'm working on a full blog post about SAGA that you can read if you'd like to learn more. I was hoping to have it done before today, but didn't get around to it. Just means I'll have it done before September's post and you can catch up then, or drop by some other time.
If you can easily get to North Carolina, I definitely recommend adding SAGA as a potential writing conference to attend for next year. Amazing people to network with, opportunities to pitch to small presses, great workshops and it's a bit cheaper than other writing conferences. Plus, it focuses on genre fiction!
The conference season is pretty heavy in the summers, but it's not over yet. I'm going to my very first DragonCon at the end of this month! I am so excited and also so terrified of the crowd. Anyone else attend DragonCon?
And then in October, I'll be a guest at Multiverse Con in Atlanta. Really looking forward to that. Also excited and terrified (for different reasons than Dragon). I have crowd anxiety about DragonCon (we're talking 70k people) and Imposter Syndrome anxiety about Multiverse.
Link || Multiverse Con
The Tinsel Twist Update
Welp, I haven't officially announced it yet, but I guess you can say you read it here first. I am planning to release my debut novel on October 1st!
The Tinsel Twist is a steamy, suspenseful holiday romance set in the fictional town of Tinsley Falls, Georgia, in the Appalachian Mountains. It features strong female friendship, yummy food, a non-toxic second chance romance, a smidge of peril, and a super cute kitty.
I'll be releasing ARC sign-up forms here in the next couple of weeks, so if you're interested in finding out more, feel free to sign-up for my newsletter or follow my socials. Blurb and cover reveal will be coming soon!
Link || Newsletter Sign-up
Link || Rose's Socials
In order to get ready for this release, yesterday I purchased Affinity to work on my cover and Atticus to work on my formatting. I've been playing around with Atticus and seeing how the epub format looks. It's pretty easy to use on the surface level. I need to deep dive into some of the more subtle things.
Also, there are SO MANY decisions to make when formatting a book. My decision fatigue has decision fatigue.
I will likely be starting my LLC this week and buying ISBNs, in addition to getting the ARC forms ready. So much money being dropped. Yikes! But I saved up for this with my money from ghostwriting last year and my stipend for being a guide for the RWA Pen to Paper program. I think I'm going to end up a little over budget, but that's okay. Some of the costs are start-up costs like one-time software purchases and a bundle of ISBNs that will last me through a couple more books, so at least I know the next book won't be this expensive.
I've been working on all these business things while my baby is at the copy editor until the 16th.
Less than SIXTY days until I'm a fully published author! EEK!
It's so different when it's my book and not a book for a client. I am so excited to release this book into the world though. If you'd like to see what people are saying about it, I have some beta reader comments on the new page about the book!
Link || The Tinsel Twist
The IWSG Prompt - Writing Tools
The question for this week is definitely a hot topic.
I use certain AI applications in relation to my writing. I do not use Generative AI, but I use Assistive AI like ProWriting Aid for self-edits. And there is a difference.
In the earlier days of ChatGPT and Sudowrite I did play around with it for brainstorming plotlines and for trying to come up with names and stuff like that, but now that the environmental impact and carbon footprint (on top of the other ethical implications as far as plagiarism and lack of copyrightability) has become apparent, it's personally not something I feel comfortable using. And I have never used an AI Art generator, aside from the filters on social media programs that modify a photo you provide.
It's hard for me because my day job field is ALL ABOUT ChatGPT and GenAI usage and how it can be a tool in the field. There's a new workshop or webinar every day and all the professional conferences are full of "make ChatGPT work for you" type presentations. So GenAI is always there in my periphery.
I even use an AI voiceover program for work (I have no choice in this matter if I want to keep my job, which I do), but at least it's one of the more ethical companies in that they pay their voice actors up front and royalties on downloads of audio made with their voices so they generate passive income by having their voice on the program. Which is how it should be. And they also have very stringent terms for what the voices can be used for. No deep fakes will be coming from their program. If it were a less ethical program, I would be pushing for a change.
I like to know that everything I wrote came from my brain and there's no question about it. When someone asks me "was AI used in the making of this book?" I can say "no" without a shadow of a doubt.
Especially where art is concerned, it's getting much harder to tell what is AI and what isn't. While I've been looking for stock photography for my cover, I've been terrified something AI will slip through, even though it's supposed to be clearly marked when it's GenAI.
And I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to AI. I also believe that the idea of GenAI is a good one, especially when used respectfully as a tool instead of as a "do it for you" solution. but we're a long way from that point. And also a long way from where GenAI was trained being ethical. The whole machine would have to be scrapped and started over with new, licensed, approved training data. Which is likely not going to happen.
I also think, we've yet to get to the point of seeing what's going to happen legally with things that have been created using GenAI, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. Especially not with all the other factors. I am glad to see that people are starting to understand the difference between a program like ChatGPT and a program like ProWriting Aid. I am also glad to see companies spelling out how they train their programs and how any data you input into their program will be used in their Terms of Service.
Thanks for stopping by! Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic this month or on self-publishing or writing conferences! Drop a comment below.
Looking forward to traversing the blog hop this month.
Be sure to see my links for other places to keep up with me online and sign-up for my newsletter if you're interested in my upcoming debut!
For now,
Rosie J.
Link | Rose on Twitch
Link | Linktree
Did you enjoy this blog? Follow me on Twitter or Instagram for regular updates on my life and my writing.
Comments