…it sure has been quiet around here

So I was looking back at my stats, and I couldn’t help but notice that (not counting yesterday’s post) it’s been almost two months since I posted anything on this blog. What happened?

I could give all the normal excuses: time flying by, kids taking up the time, etc etc… but that would all be evading the main reason, which is that I’ve been working on a secret project for the last six to eight months now, and that’s sucked up all my time.

I can’t yet reveal exactly what the secret project is, because I’m still gathering data and revealing everything about it would screw that up. Also, I don’t want to overhype it, because it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to blow your mind and make you super excited when I reveal it… or maybe it will? I don’t really know.

But without revealing any specifics, I can say that I’ve been developing a method for writing AI-assisted novels, and I think I’m at a point where I can start using it to finish some of my open trilogies, like the Falconstar Trilogy, or maybe even write some new books.

I also really want to share some of the things I’ve learned, because I do think that AI is going to change everything when it comes to writing, and not necessarily in a bad way. Originally, I just wanted to keep my head down, because there are so many negative opinions and misconceptions about AI in the writing world. But now, I think it will actually be better to be more open about it and share some of the things I’ve learned.

So I will probably do a blog series about AI-assisted writing. I also want to finish a couple of other blog series that I started ages ago, and never really finished—maybe turn those into a nonfiction book at the end or something. And I’ve also been reading some old Hugo nominated books, in an effort to figure out how I would have voted in past years. That’s been a very interesting exercise.

So for the next few weeks, my goal is to post something new every Wednesday and Friday. My email newsletters typically go out on Thursdays, so that’s a pretty decent amount of content to put out there. And if I have something fun to share, like a meme or a picture or a video, I’ll try to post those on Mondays if I can. But if there’s anything in particular that you want me to blog about first, feel free to let me know!

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

4 comments

  1. Not sure that I like the idea of reading AI books, but I hope it works out for you! And I do love all of your old works, those are amazing stories!

    1. Thanks JR. I can see that I need to explain things, because if my method for writing an AI-assisted novel works out, you won’t be able to tell that you’re reading an AI book… because you won’t be. The AI is really just for writing a crappy first draft that gets totally rewritten into the author’s own words, cutting down the writing time by as much as 90% but otherwise keeping all the elements of a human-written book. I’ll do another blog post soon about this.

      1. Interesting, thank you for clarifying. I like the idea of the art of the story, but I suppose this is no different than authors who hire ghost writers. I look forward to future articles on the subject then!

  2. My brother is also very interested in AI – he’s been taking classes in adjacent subjects (and his ultimate goal once he’s done with his schooling is to be able to make his own Iron Man suit complete with a helpful Jarvis). I do think it’s very misunderstood, so having someone who actually knows how it works and can explain it in layman’s terms would be very helpful.
    As a writer, I feel like I would be willing to try AI-assisted writing; however, I also want to create my own stories. If I were to use it, it would probably be in the way you describe – getting the messy first draft out of the way so I can go on to dev and then line edits more quickly. Learning more about how I could incorporate such a tool into my writing would certainly be of interest.

Leave a Reply