Using AI Editors

 

Image by Ray Shrewsberry • from Pixabay

Everybody is talking about AI these days. Some of them are in the camp that declares using AI ever at all for even the tiniest iota of anything should result in being banished from the creative community for all time. Others unabashedly publish books written by an AI and slap their own names in the byline.

I am not a member of either of these camps.

Like an icepick, a kitchen knife, a screwdriver, or a shotgun, AI is a tool. It can be used for good or for ill. My primary use for AI is as a spelling and grammar checker. I am on disability. I'm not making anywhere close to the kind of money where I can spend hundreds of dollars a month to pay a flesh and blood editor for everything. So I "hire" ProWritingAid and WordTune. I have a lifetime subscription to ProWritingAid and pay a reasonably affordable annual fee for access to WordTune.

My process goes a little bit something like this.

First, I run the piece through WordTune a couple of paragraphs at a time. WordTune helps me catch typos and rephrase awkwardly worded sentences. Let's use the second paragraph of this post as an example. You can read it unedited above.

Here it is after I ran it through WordTune.

AI is a tool, like an icepick, a knife, a screwdriver, or a shotgun. Depending on how it is used, it can be beneficial or detrimental. My primary use of AI is as a spelling and grammar checker. My income is from SSDI payments. I do not make enough money to spend hundreds of dollars each month on a flesh and blood editor. So I "hire" ProWritingAid and WordTune. I have a lifetime subscription to ProWritingAid and pay a reasonably affordable annual fee for access to WordTune.

WordTune didn't rewrite the paragraph for me. I selected the changes sentence by sentence. Not all of WordTune's suggestions are winners. Here is a list of its suggestions for changes to the sentence "I am on disability."

I am a disabled individual.

As a disabled individual, I receive benefits.

It is my privilege to be on disability.

I am a disabled person.

My disability status is disabled.

My income is based on my disability.

The disability I am receiving is temporary.

It is my responsibility to be on disability.

My disability status is limited.

The disability I receive is temporary.

Although some of the statements are accurate, they do not reflect the fact that my primary source of income is Social Security Disability Insurance. Rather than using any of WordTune's suggestions, I changed the sentence to clarify this. I acknowledge that a human editor would not have made any of the above suggestions. They could only come from a computer program. Similarly, Waze sometimes tries to kill me with its inane suggestions to make a left turn from or onto a busy road without a traffic light or suggests I cross four lanes of traffic coming from both directions to potentially save three seconds. Waze has no context for death and dismemberment. It only "sees" map grids and traffic patterns, or however a GPS works. 

I primarily use ProWritingAid for its beta reader feature. It helps weed out repeated sentences and words. Although I do a fairly good job of that when I read my document aloud, it never hurts to have another set of "eyes" on it.

It would be great if I was a better artist or if I could afford to hire someone who is a skilled artist to create the covers for my books. I design my own covers using Pixlr. Most of the time, I use a free image from Pixabay and make a few minor adjustments. However, I used Pixlr's AI program to render the covers of my latest releases.

https://amzn.to/3GJDsyk

Nice and Naughty is Lil DeVille's m/m holiday romantic comedy novelette. It packs a lot of heat and is just 99 cents on Amazon or free with Kindle Unlimited. I used WordTune to edit Nice and Naughty.

https://amzn.to/3vz8uXw

Ornery's Gambit is a book of poems and a short story. It will be released on February 15th of this year to coincide with my 59th birthday. The price is $1.99 or free with Kindle Unlimited.

I don't run my poetry through an AI, nor do I run it by a human editor. Any changes I make to the raw initial effort are my own choice. 

The story was voluntarily edited by Denise Covey. Thanks to Denise, the completed project was far superior to my initial effort. You can find Denise at the Write-Edit-Publish Now website. 

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com

Speaking of which, I need to see what the prompt for this month's WEP piece is.

To sum things up, I view AI as being somewhere between a neutral tool and a necessary evil in today's writing landscape. I won't let it write my stories. I wish I could afford to pay a human editor and cover designer every time, but I simply can't, so I use AI for those tasks.

Do I ever let AI write anything for me?

Yes. Writing prompts and blurbs. I suck at writing blurbs.

Read samples of stories from the Naughty Netherworld Press team on the official blog. 

http://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com

Subscribe to Lil's newsletter.

https://www.subscribepage.com/lildeville

I listened to this while writing and editing the post. This is the third time I've listened to it in the past three days. If you like music that's well outside the mainstream, you might enjoy it.

Here is a direct link in case you're on mobile or such and can't see the player.

https://odysee.com/@Rave_Archive:e/Orbital---In-Sides-%281992%2C-US-release%29:1?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16

Odysee is a decentralized sharing platform. I recommend it as a YouTube alternative. YouTube's censorship is getting worse and worse. Every time I hear the term "unalived," it fills me with liquid murder. As a generally peaceful person, I don't enjoy this sensation.