sudowrite

In June 2021, I began working with Sudowrite, an AI writing assistant for fiction writers. And by “working with,” I mean I started using the software. In July of 2022, I was featured fairly prominently in How independent writers are turning to AI – The Verge, but because they primarily used my real name (Jennifer Lepp) instead of my pen name (Leanne Leeds,) no one paid me much notice. AI use in fiction was getting far less attention than art-generating AI. And then ChatGPT blew that all to hell. (I did a follow-up interview on that, too though my pen name was a bit more prominently pointed out thanks to my complaint about my real name use. I didn’t think that one through.) At this point, I’m seeing some things mentioned about me that are pretty inaccurate I felt the need to put this up. So, here we go. First, though: Can we interview you/use you for background/include your opinion in this article/podcast/television show/skywriting art installation? Unfortunately, I am not interested in doing additional interviews on general #AI use at this time. Most of the information folks seem to be seeking can be found in the Verge articles. I will continue to advocate within the writing community, and will be happy to discuss #AI use in fiction writing in venues that discuss writing/authorship in general (vs. venues that discuss #AI or technology in general—unless it’s a panel at SXSW Tech and you’re buying me a pass. Then I’ll talk about whatever you want. Kidding. Mostly.) I read somewhere that you use AI/ChatGPT to generate all your books now. Yep, I read that, too. When this all started, I didn’t honestly know how much of the AI-generated text I actually used because I just went with the flow and didn’t have too big a concern with keeping track. As this became a hotter and hotter topic (and I’ve seen statements from folks claiming I “generate” my books,) I got curious, so I started separating my Sudowrite documents into chapters and used PostSEO text compare to compare my finished chapter and the text in Sudowrite’s generated cards. The following is a screenshot of the chapter I wrote yesterday, and this seems to be pretty average. I’ve had results as low as 8%, and as high as 11%. On average, 90% are the words from my brain, and 10% are the words from the #AI. I do not use Sudowrite for plot suggestions as some do—I know where my chapters and scenes are going, I just want to say it better. What part of your books does ChatGPT write? None. Almost all words in my books (the 10% above) are from Sudowrite. 2/1/23 update: I’ve started to use ChatGPT minimally in editing. What do you use ChatGPT for? Marketing text, research only. 2/1/23 update: I’ve started to use ChatGPT for editing/rewriting a bit. Do you write faster with AI? I read that you use AI to write fast. I read that, too. Unfortunately, …

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This will be the final post on incorporating Sudowrite into my writing. I’m not going to stop using it, but I do think I’ve gone in-depth enough to give folks an idea of what it’s like to start using a tool like this. I’ve also come to some final conclusions about how I’m getting use it that I don’t think will change. I went back to dictating/my process. While the first four chapters leaned very, very heavily on Sudowrite, as I got further into the book the harder it became. Starting an e-book comes with a certain amount of freedom, especially if the books are character-driven. For me, the specifics of the scenes were far less important than what those scenes showed regarding where the characters were in their journey with one another. So, I had more flexibility at the start of the book than I had in the middle. By chapter 6, I was no longer using Sudowrite to spin up scenes and had gone back to my original process outlined elsewhere in this blog For creation. The more I gave it, the better it was. Despite being pretty attached to expand, I learned to develop an appreciation for wormhole. The expand option in the software has very little to work with as far as my own voice whereas wormhole seems much better at attempting to mimic my voice as a writer. Description, too, seemed to work better the more text it had. Sudowrite was most useful for me when editing I tend to tell stories through dialogue—my books come in at around 60% dialog on average. I’ve made a conscious effort over the past several years to go back and flesh out descriptions, and my readers have seemed to really enjoy that. This is where Sudowrite is indispensable for me—I rarely use its description word for word, but it gives me descriptor ideas that make it well worth the money. I think there are places it can go. There are some things I wish Sudowrite had, and I’m sure the developers might add them in the future (or another tool more specialized to world-building or grammar might come along utilizing GPT-3). That includes character generation, plot beat generation, mystery seed generation, rephrasing suggestions (like a sentence or paragraph thesaurus), and intelligent descriptor expansions. I know some authors with far more technical know-how than I are already creating their own tools for their own specific needs. I’m just, unfortunately, not that smart. 🙂 Don’t get me wrong. I think Sudowrite is a complete tool with a robust focus, and I definitely recommend it. But having played around with this tool for more than a month, I feel like I just scratched the surface of what it could do and how it could improve my writing. I will keep using it. Just not for generation, I think. Editing, adding, adjusting my writing, yes. Generating? Maybe not quite yet.

So, this is probably going to be one of those frou-frou writer observations. The last chapter I wrote utilizing Sudowrite heavily was Chapter 4. As I’ve mentioned before, in starting my latest book I was incorporating Sudowrite more and more and more. I think with chapter 4, I reached beyond a line I was comfortable with. I noticed as I was writing and editing, I was struggling. I didn’t emotionally feel the same connection with the characters in the storyline of this book as I had in my previous books. I write one book at a time and one series at a time because I really do inhabit, mentally, that world. Falling asleep at night, I think about the next phase in the next chapter. I sometimes dream about the different directions the book will go. In short, any quiet time I have you can pretty much bet I’m going over the book in my mind. Chapter 4 was where that connection faded pretty dramatically. I no longer felt like I was writing the book. I look back over it, and I see that the beats are mine and the things that happened are my ideas, but some of the things I incorporated based on the AI’s suggestion I just didn’t feel a connection to. I wrote chapter 5 today utilizing Sudowrite as a contributory tool, but I didn’t use wormhole to come up with directions in the scene. I hewed pretty closely to leaning entirely on “expand” (Again, expand is the tool that gives me a scene based on what I tell it to write, or from what I’ve already written. That last part of actually an “off-label” use, I guess. The directions say to give it a summary. A lot of the times I give it a hundred words of text I’ve written and let it go, and a good portion of the time it comes up with something really good.) Anyway, I felt that connection to the material re-forged. I’m not going to stop using Sudowrite, but I do think I found the hard limit to how much I can incorporated suggestions without losing the thread of what I’m trying to say in the book or losing that feeling of connection and ownership. While “wormhole” is ready-ish for prime time and “expand” is an experimental lab that could disappear at any time, I can say without a doubt that for the way I write, I find expand much more useful. That could be, though, because of the type of writer I am. I personally rarely run into plot blocks, and I generally don’t get stuck on the story itself. Where Sudowrite helps me is coming up with actual words that present things in a slightly different way than I normally write them to help make the words themselves not boring. I won’t kid you. It was a disconcerting experience feeling disconnected from my own book. It was temporary, but it made me grouchy for a couple of days …

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I have a rigidly disciplined writing schedule. I make a not inconsequential amount of my income from preorders, and I try and make sure I have the next three books up for preorder at any given time to allow people to grab them. Two of those books are always planned, but not written—hence, rigid discipline is needed to get them out when I claim they will be out. My spreadsheets rule my life. I have a defined amount of time to write and self-edit the book—49 days. A defined amount of time in between books as a grace period in case I need it—7 days. 42% of the 49 days are “creation” days, which means in a single week, I should create at least 3 chapters. Any less, and I’m behind. Yes, there’s another spreadsheet for that, too. Like I said. My life. Ruled by spreadsheets. How It All Was I’ve always wanted to get faster, but when I tried, the writing suffered quite a bit. This schedule (work 6 days a week with three writing and three editing days) seemed to produce the best outcomes for the book and (stress/healthwise) for me. There are clear indicators in these spreadsheets all over to make sure I’m on schedule—the percentage left to do should not exceed the time left to do it on the second sheet. The “time left for XX chapters” and “written as of today” better add up to at least 20. And so on. As I mentioned before, my old method was: Dictate a full chapter, edit that chapter the following day, then dictate, then edit. I didn’t like stopping in the middle of a chapter, even if I was stuck. I don’t care whether I write 500 words an hour or 1500. My day’s job is getting that chapter written and done, or edited and done. If it took me an hour or six hours, that’s what it was going to take. The dictating is…problematic. Did you know introverts can get depleted talking to thin air? Apparently, it is an actual thing. I can do it, the dictation, but I dislike it greatly. (Carpal tunnel and De Quervain’s tenosynovitis make long typing sessions extremely painful and potentially damaging, hence the dictation.) I’m also incredibly self-conscious about anyone hearing me, so my husband was not allowed to get out of bed/wake up until I was done. We even have a multicolored nightlight. If it was red, he could go to the restroom but beyond that? Red meant everyone stayed quiet and stayed away. How It Has Been With Sudowrite So, I haven’t touched Dragon at all in the creation of Book 3. Not once. That’s been…pleasant. (My husband would also like me to mention the non-use of the nightlight has been nice.) The addition of Sudowrite has also changed the way I write quite a bit. Previous to Sudowrite, I needed: Total and complete silence. No music, no background television, no talking, no nothing. To begin and end …

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