In Today’s Journal
* Heavily Conflicted Quote of the Day
* Writers Comment: A Three-Piece…
* Oh. The Novel Wrapped
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Heavily Conflicted Quote of the Day
“Keep practicing and rewriting. Keep learning.” Dr. Diana Stout
Um, which? Practicing, or rewriting? Practicing is putting new words on the page. Just sayin’.
Writers Comment: A Three-Piece Guest Post
Every now and then, I get lucky. That was the case when, within only a couple of days, Dave Chesson, Carrie Goebel, and Bob Calverley handed me this nicely fitting three-piece suit.
Dave Chesson (the Kindlepreneur)
writes about a big Depositphotos Sale (This is excerpted as ‘fair use’ from a much longer post by Dave. Also see Of Interest)
If you’re looking for high-quality stock photos without the “free site risk,” Depositphotos is one of our favorites. And right now, they’ve got a massive deal on AppSumo:
- 100 images
- Just $49 total (that’s 49¢ per image)
- No subscription — you can use the credits as needed (and they never expire)
This deal rarely comes around, and it’s a steal for authors who want a stockpile of safe-to-use, high-res images for their books, ads, or websites.
To learn more, click Get Depositphotos Deal.
[Ed. Note: Don’t just go to your Deposit Photos account to look for this sale. You have to use the link above. The best deal you can get currently through DepositPhotos directly is $80 for 100 downloads. Save yourself some cash.]
Carrie Goebel
writes about Sarra Cannon and her free virtual writers’ retreats
Click on Sarra Cannon, then scroll down to the monthly events including the (FREE) virtual retreats. If you sign up for the newsletter you will get an email reminder for the retreats also.
Also the first Saturday of each month is Double Down Day where participants try to write 2x their daily word count. There are also live sprints all day that day.
Perhaps some readers would also be interested in the daily live writing sprints on Youtube. I jump in there occasionally. Just discovered you can even click to add to your calendar so that makes it even easier to keep track of when they are each day.
Bob Calverley
writes about ScribeShadow and AI
I just learned from an author friend about a translation service called ScribeShadow. My friend used ScribeShadow to translate some of her older works into French and German.
She was quite enthusiastic about the results. She said she hired a native speaker to check the translation and was told that it was “spot on.” (Not sure how much of the translation was checked though.)
I looked at ScribeShadow. They have a monthly rate rather than a fee based on word count. I did a little googling and see that there are already quite a few AI editing and translation services out there. And some of them are free.
I learned that Chinese professor at Tsinghua University won a national science fiction award for “Land of Memories” which was entirely generated by AI. A Japanese writer admitted that her novel, which won a prestigious Japanese literary prize, was partially written by AI.
When you think about it, there’s already some AI built into MS Word and other software. Software finds grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and fixes them.
Using generative AI to write fiction is not something I would ever do. Any writer who does so without informing readers is, in my opinion, highly unethical. I don’t like that Amazon asks writers about their use of AI but does not disclose that to readers.
Using AI to write or help write a story is a skill set that some writers have developed. We should recognize that it takes skill to use AI effectively. It can take dozens of AI queries to “write” a story. Still, that might be an hour or two of work so it still seems like cheating to me.
AI editing and translation strikes me as something that could be very helpful to writers. However, based on my experience with autocorrect, I doubt I’ll be using AI editing or translation anytime soon.
When it comes to nonfiction, especially in the realm of business, AI is a very useful tool. It enables people with weak writing skills to write emails, memos, etc., that are clear and succinct.
We should recognize that AI sometimes makes up answers to queries. The AI answers seem completely plausible but are not factually correct. The phenomenon is common enough to have a name: hallucinations.
Jensen Huang, billionaire CEO of Nvidia, which makes AI semiconductor chips, says hallucinations are solvable. He said that a few years ago but as far as I know, hallucinations are still around.
Incidentally, Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips are known as Blackwell chips [Ed. Note: What?] and the Trump Administration has implemented heavy restrictions to keep China, particularly its military, from acquiring them. A server containing eight Blackwell chips could fetch $600,000 or even more in China.
[Ed. Note: I’ve been writing Blackwell Ops novels for what, over a year? Who knew. (grin)]
I’d be interested to hear from any writers who have used AI for editing or translations or cover art. You can email me at calverle@usc.edu.
My thanks to Dave, Carrie, and Bob.
Back tomorrow with an excerpt from BO-43 and “The Value of Cycling.” A little more next-level stuff.
Oh. The Novel Wrapped
Blackwell Ops 43: Sam Granger | The Quiz Master wrapped on Tuesday. Spent the first hours of yesterday (after posting TNDJ) creating the promo doc and cover.
Sometime today, I’ll publish it for release everywhere on June 7. So there y’go. The streak extends to 20 novels over 40 weeks. (grin)
Also, as I was telling a writer friend via email, When creative mind takes over, it’s a wonderful feeling. On Tuesday as I wrapped my novel and then cycled over the final few thousand words, the subtitle of the next novel popped into my head. That was the POV character telling me he has at least one more story to tell: something about The Ghost Trails.
I had zero idea what that even meant, but on Wednesday I started writing it, and about a thousand words in, the goal of the POV character (or rather how his boss would use him) slipped in and I learned what the ‘ghost trails’ were and their significance. And the story was off and running. Great fun!
Of Interest
An Author’s Guide to Using Stock Photos So important I added it to writers’ resources on my author site.
Publisher Rocket vs. KDSpy Pro Recommended reading.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1100
Writing of Blackwell Ops 44: Sam Granger | Following the Ghost Trail
Day 1…… 3613 words. To date…… 3613
Fiction for May………………………… 27602
Fiction for 2025………………………. 406018
Nonfiction for May…………………….. 5990
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 107080
2025 consumable words…………….. 506585
Average Fiction WPD (May)………… 3943
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 10
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 26
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 114
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 296
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
If you are able, please support TNDJ with a paid subscription. Thank you!
If you’re new to TNDJ, you might want to check out these links:
- On Writing Fiction
- Gifts
- Writing Resources
- Oh, and here’s My Bio. It’s always a good idea to vet the expertise of people who are giving you advice.
Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.