Go, Grok, Go!

Gratitude to an AI for six months of life!

This week, I was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work on my plate for the next eight years. I could not see that it was possible to finish all the books I wanted to write in the time I wanted to write them.

At my husband’s suggestion, I stopped and prayed. I prayed that I might be able to get this work done more quickly. God answered that prayer almost immediately, in an astonishing way.

Everywhere I go, an author tells me they are using CHATGPT for writing.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I have often wished someone else would do some of the writing for me. I have joked about putting out milk and honey for the writing elves, who finish your chapter while you are sleeping.

But I am also aware that A ) this is because I am occasionally lazy and B ) doing the work is where the creativity comes out. When I actually do it and do it well, I learn and it grows better.

That would not happen if someone else/writing elves/or an AI did it for me.

Also, every time I come upon a new AI, I ask it a few questions about something I know about, something I think it probably won’t know.

When it spits out entirely wrong answeres, I know that it is not reliable about things I don’t know about.

So I avoid AIs, for the most part.

BUT…I once avoided microwaves, due to the popular fear at the time that they were somehow irradiating you. That was about ten years of me not using a microwave when I could have…making my life unnecessarily more difficult than it had to be.

So I have tried to remain open-minded.

This week, however, I finally used one of these AIs for something for the first time and —Wonder of Wonders!—it saved me at least six months of tedious, repetative, painstaking, mind-numbingly boring work.

The books I am writing, both Rachel Griffin and the Regency fantasy romances, are based on roleplaying games played by email.

This means that there are long email threads with the various actions of the characters in them. In order to turn these email chains into a book I have to do two things.

1. Get the actual game part out of a thread of 30 or 70 or 521 emails, where if I just take a thread out of a given email, everything is upsidedown, beginning of the scene at the bottom.

2. Change Second Person/Present Tense to Third Person/Past Tense.

Take my word for it, this is a VERY boring process.

Let me give an example. Here is a random game email chain in which a young woman raised in America, because her father had to leave England in a hurry after the Battle of Culloden, has come to England and is just meeting her cousin, an extraordinarly rich (and handsome) Scottish duke, for the first time:

He makes a sour face.
'Young lasses should no’ have t’ worry about such things.
"Let me worry about doweries and such. Ye worry about which lad ye want t’ have father your bairns."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 9:20 PM Name <email@address>wrote:

"Mother told me not to encourage him because his parents would want a dowry, but I could like him if I were allowed," Blaire admits. "I don't know if we would suit enough to marry, but I could like him."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 18:20 Name <email@address>wrote:

He grins lazily. "Then dinnea tell anyone. See who steps up."
He adds with a wink, "Marry Ian, I'll make 'im Captain of the Watch."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 8:16 PM Name <email@address> wrote:

"I've told both Ian and Lord Bran that I've barely a dowry to speak of. I don't want a man to leave his duties for me, but I don't want a man who only wants your largess," Blaire tells him. "I'm too proud for that."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 18:07 Name <email@address>wrote:

He says, "Yer me cousin. Won't reflect well on me if yer not generously endowed. Yer brother can settle what 'e wants on ye. I'll settle what I want."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 7:51 PM Name <email@address>wrote:

"You settle?" Blaire asks, surprised. "David is responsible for my dowry."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 17:48 Name <email@address> wrote:

"Och, Aye. Here's the truth: the degree t’ which they will care is directly inverse t’ the size of the dowery I settle on ye."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 7:42 PM Name <email@address>wrote:

"I asked you because I trust you to tell me the truth."

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 17:41 Name <email@address>wrote:

He thinks about this as you walk for about a minute before he says, "The truth? Or some pretty answer?"

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 7:16 PM Name <email@address> wrote:

"Tell me truly Malcolm, will a man here care if I am a Jacobin whose father was stripped of title and land? Has so much changed here?"

So, first, I need to strip out all the extra and reverse it. Here is the email thread converted into a document, with all email information stripped out and the order reversed, so the body of the bottom email is at the top:

"Tell me truly Malcolm, will a man here care if I am a Jacobin whose father was stripped of title and land? Has so much changed here?"

He thinks about this as you walk for about a minute before he says, "The truth? Or some pretty answer?"

"I asked you because I trust you to tell me the truth."

"Och, Aye. Here's the truth: the degree t’ which they will care is directly inverse t’ the size of the dowery I settle on ye."

"You settle?" Blaire asks, surprised. "David is responsible for my dowry."

He says, "Yer me cousin. Won't reflect well on me if yer not generously endowed. Yer brother can settle what 'e wants on ye. I'll settle what I want."

"I've told both Ian and Lord Bran that I've barely a dowry to speak of. I don't want a man to leave his duties for me, but I don't want a man who only wants your largess," Blaire tells him. "I'm too proud for that."

He grins lazily. "Then dinnea tell anyone. See who steps up."

He adds with a wink, "Marry Ian, I'll make 'im Captain of the Watch."

"Mother told me not to encourage him because his parents would want a dowry, but I could like him if I were allowed," Blaire admits. "I don't know if we would suit enough to marry, but I could like him."

He makes a sour face.

'Young lasses should no’ have t’ worry about such things.

"Let me worry about doweries and such. Ye worry about which lad ye want t’ have father your bairns."

Then, I need to change the point of view and tense:

Tell me truly Malcolm, will a man here care if I am a Jacobin whose father was stripped of title and land? Has so much changed here?"

He thought about this as she walked for about a minute before he said, "The truth? Or some pretty answer?"

"I asked you because I trust you to tell me the truth."

"Och, Aye. Here's the truth: the degree t’ which they will care is directly inverse t’ the size of the dowery I settle on ye."

"You settle?” Blaire asked, surprised. “David is responsible for my dowry."

He said, "Yer me cousin. Won't reflect well on me if yer not generously endowed. Yer brother can settle what 'e wants on ye. I'll settle what I want."

"I've told both Ian and Lord Bran that I've barely a dowry to speak of. I don't want a man to leave his duties for me, but I don't want a man who only wants your largess.” Blaire told him, “I'm too proud for that."

He grinned lazily and said, "Then dinnea tell anyone. See who steps up."

He added with a wink, "Marry Ian, I'll make 'im Captain of the Watch."

"Mother told me not to encourage him because his parents would want a dowry, but I could like him if I were allowed.” Blaire told him, “I don't know if we would suit enough to marry, but I could like him."

He made a sour face, 'Young lasses should no’ have t’ worry about such things.

"Let me worry about doweries and such. Ye worry about which lad ye want t’ have father your bairns."

If you have never had to do this, let me tell you, it is a LOT of work.

The steps above can take hours. Sometimes, it takes a week for me to properly convert a longer file.

I have 200 pages waiting for my current work-in-progress, probably 400 or more for the sequel, including emails that haven’t even been converted yet for a third, and thousands of pages for the later Rachel Griffin books.

1000s. This means at least six months of work, if I did nothing else. Maybe more.

Six months of my life.

Six months of not doing creative writing, of not producing a book for readers to enjoy.

Six months of something I find really painful to do. I want to be writing, not trying to catch ever verb in the wrong tense. And so often, I miss some.

Six months of agony.

Yes, it would be stretched out, a week here, a month there, but it was still agonly.

This week, during a conversation about something else entirely, the topic of AIs writing books came up, and, suddenly, I thought: What if an AI could do the boring parts?

What if it could remove the part of the email that was not the body of the message, reverse the order, and change the point of view and the tense?

Twitter (X) has just put out a new version of its AI, called Grok. It’s right there when I’m on the site/app.

So I tried it. I entered: Convert second person to third person female, simple past tense. only change the prose, not the dialogue: And pressed ENTER.

Shazam!

A whole week of work for me—done.

Took about two minutes.

I had an activity I had to do with the family on Thursday, took two or three hours. In that time, I converted all the files from the original game that I might need for the Seventh Book of Unexpected Enlightenment.

Just…done. Like that. Weeks and weeks of work.

Now, these are still raw files. They need to be trimmed, edited, have descriptions and emotions and other things added to them. But none of that can be done until the files are in the correct order and tense, etc.

Words cannot convey my amazement and gratitude.

Six months of life, restored to my use.

So grateful! Thank you, God. Thank you, Elon Musk and Twitter (X). Thank you, Grok.

Read the First Book of Unexpected Enlightenment: