A Semi-Literate Author’s Path
Writing through the Dyslexic noise to publishing with the Help of...
I’ve had several really good stories rolling around in my head for years, ones that have really fine-tuned. I’ve always wanted to put them on the page but was never able to for several reasons, the main one being that I’m Dyslexic and borderline illiterate or semi-literate, making me too embarrassed to even make an attempt. Actually, allow me to clarify what I mean by that. I am able to read decently enough but for some reason writing without misspelling every single word is very difficult for me. It’s something I’ve learned to hide rather well over the last 40 years or so.
Because of this it can take me five times longer to write something than the average person. If a novelist were able to write a book in 6 months it would take me 2 to 3 years and a lot of headaches, taking the joy out of the accomplishment.
With that said, what I’m about to tell you may be a bit of a hot take that people aren’t going to like, especially people who are anti AI. But with the advent of AI I was able to get past my shortcomings, using an AI (Speech to text AI software) to transcribe I was able to tell one of my stories. But there were still hurdles to overcome not because of the AI but because of the way my brain is wired my transcribed writings were often not punctuated correctly, or formatted correctly, On top of that because of the way my brain works my writing made perfect sense to me but not at all to the people I let read it. So I gave my writings to an AI agent and asked it to fix it. I asked it to fix the misspellings, fix the punctuation but most importantly to make it readable. And that’s exactly what it did. It took my writings and rearranged the words so that they would make sense. The AI did have to add in some filler text to make the writing make sense but the writing was still more than 95% of what I had put down Just with the words rearranged if that makes sense.
The story is still mine, it’s still the story I wanted to tell exactly how I wanted to tell it, just fixed in a way that would make sense to everybody and not just me. The way I look at it is that the AI was my proofreader.
Some people’s opinion may be that if AI changes anything it is no longer human and it is now AI slop. But let me ask you this before you jump to that conclusion. If you were to write a novel before releasing it you would likely hire a professional proofreader who then would most likely make suggestions on changes and fixes. If you allow the changes by your own logic wouldn’t that make your book The proofreaders and not yours?
Don’t get me wrong, I am completely aware that there are people out there using AI unethically to write entire novels and selling them all over the place at a pace that real novelists can’t keep up with. I completely get it. AI is a huge problem when it comes to artists of all types. What I’m trying to say is I believe there is an ethical use of AI, I would have never been able to write my first book without it and I have half a dozen other stories that I’d like to tell that I would not be able to without it.
In case you’re wondering about the cover art, yes I also used AI for that. I mentioned earlier that there were several reasons that would stop me from writing a book and one of them is I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay an artist to handle the book cover. Keeping in mind the book I’m speaking of is my first. If it were to be successful then I wouldn’t have an excuse to not use an artist for my next book cover.
I genuinely would like to hear your thoughts on the subject of me using it the way I described. We already know that it’s Unacceptable to write whole novels, manuscripts Etc with AI you don’t have to hash that out in the comments. Also if you are going to comment try to keep it productive not hateful.
If reading a book written by a semi-literate individual sparks your interest or you just want to support me the best way to do it right now is to head over to Kickstarter where I have launched a Crowdfunding campaign for my first novel. You can find it at the link below or you can go to Kickstarter and search The Goth Girls.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/shadowvault/the-goth-girls-an-erotic-poly-romance-novel-by-jlp
Or if you're interested in picking up a free Pre-launch copy I am still looking for ARC readers (Advanced reader/reviewer copy) An ARC reader is someone who reads a book Pre-launch with the hopes that the reader will leave a review of the book post launch Or make social media post about it. If you’re interested in picking up that ARC copy, be sure to use your words and say that in the comments or PM me directly. Simply liking this post won’t get you an ARC copy.
