February 27, 2024

Writing a novel with AI

With all the excitement over AI, the big question remains: Can AI write a novel for you? The simple answer is yes – AI can write a novel with a lot of assistance. However, it’s not as easy as some people like to claim. AI writing books and sites claim that all you need to do is provide a 100-word synopsis, and in the time it takes to make a pizza, AI will spit out a novel. First, that’s not enough material for AI to work with. Second, AI doesn’t provide hundreds of pages of text in a response. (If anyone actually knows a site that produces 2000 word responses to input and doesn’t charge $200 a year, let me know.) I’ve used AI to help write a lot of different things, from articles to interview questions. Articles aren’t bad because it’s following a bulleted list of items and they are short. It still needs a lot of revision though. […]

September 17, 2023

🖊️ A quick look at my writing workflow

Over the years I’ve worked with a huge number of writing tools whether they be editors or grammar tools and while I’m always willing to try something new, there are 5 main tools I use to take an idea and get it published: NoteList – This is where I store ideas and make outlines. I list the topics I’m interested in, make a rough outline of topics, and add links, and store notes. NoteList is simple, but effective in gathering research material and giving me the general structure of what I’m trying to say. The actual NoteList file is part of Scrivener, and sits in the Research folder, so it’s always available. No searching through folders, right-click, Open in External Editor. Scrivener – When it comes to writing, everything is done in Scrivener and it’s been that way for 8 years. My articles, my journals, my technical documentation, even emails of more than a couple sentences are all composed in […]

September 10, 2023

🖊️ Scrivener and Markdown 📝

Since we’re on the topic of Markdown, let’s not forget that Scrivener, my absolute favorite writing tool, can handle Markdown no problem. No, it doesn’t have a preview button, nor does it have buttons or menu choices for adding the Markdown tags. You actually don’t need them. Write and format your document as you normally would, with bold, italic, citations, and tables, and then export the document to Markdown. That formatting gets converted to the correct Markdown codes. From the Scrivener website: This takes a rich text document and converts it all to MultiMarkdown syntax: bold, italics, footnotes, tables, lists, block quotes—the works. …simply tick a checkbox and have all of the rich text converted to MultiMarkdown during export. Markdown is part of the “Compile” function rather than the Export function you see on File – Export. Once in the Compile dialog, select the “Compile for:” option, and MultiMarkdown are displayed, along with a few variants. Under the Formats section, […]

August 27, 2023

💬 Some fun with Comic Life 3 and AI images 🖼

I previously wrote of my adventures and amusement with Comic Life 3. I’ve also discussed toying around with AI image generator. So, what happens when you combine the two? Is it possible to make comics using AI image generation and the correct prompts? Simple answer is yes. The idea came from my kids who brought up Halloween where one wanted to be a zombie character. The other asked why not Spider-Man? Even though there is Venom, the answer was a simple, Spider-Man isn’t scary. Zombies are fun and scary. Spider-Man isn’t a zombie. But, could he be? Could you stretch the bounds for Halloween? I went to the AI generator to run a couple prompts through the processor. This set the wheels of imagination turning. The first result was basically a green Spider-Man, which was kinda cool, but not a zombie by any means. However, it was a bit Green Goblin-esque, maybe Riddler inspired, which sparked a story idea. After […]

August 20, 2023

👨‍💻 A deeper look at MWeb Pro

Since I was referencing MWeb, and listed it as my tool of choice for Markdown, I thought it would be good to list some of its features. If you’re heavy into Markdown, and using a Mac, this is a serious tool to get. MWeb is a full-featured word processor that handles long documents or short notes. I’ve made the comment before, it’s similar to Ulysses, but without the huge subscription fees. At the $20, one-time fee, it’s a powerful editor at a very reasonable price. The first feature to look at is MWeb’s Library. It’s similar to Scrivener’s binder, allowing you to have multiple folders with multiple documents inside. You can organize further with nested folders. This lets you make categories, then subcategories, and additional subcategories inside of those. Mimic a folder structure, web site headings, or class topics so you know where everything is. This is pretty much a standard for Mac, so it’s not a big deal to […]

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