This isn’t meant to be a justification or an excuse, but I thought it was important to disclose. I decided to get a copy of ProWritingAid, the grammar-checking software. I had always prided myself on my technical skill, on the fact that in ten years of self-publishing, I have never had any complaints about technical aspects (spelling, grammar, punctuation), even though I’ve always done my own copyediting with the help of beta readers and Microsoft Word’s bog-standard spell checker.*
* 99.9% out of budgetary concerns, 0.01% from hubris. It’s nearly unanimous that after a good, genre-appropriate cover, the thing every self-published book absolutely needs is a professional copyedit. Do as I say, not as I do.
But while staring down a 150,000-word first draft, the lure of a tool that could help me save time was too much to resist. I don’t feel great about this, to be honest. It feels like admitting that one of the few things I’m good at is a worthless skill in this day and age. It feels like admitting that I’m not equal to the task, a particularly daunting situation when one of my greatest fears is mental decline. [I’m fine; this is a paranoid fixation based on family history.] And I am still ashamed of how long it took me to write and edit the other Healers books, a timeframe I never want to repeat.
I completely understand if this seems like selling out, and loses readers. I never intend to use generative AI (yes, not even for brainstorming), I don’t agree with its use philosophically, and I do my best to hire artists who won’t use it on my covers, as far as I’m aware. My line in the sand is fuzzy, but it’s somewhere in between, even before this decision. I never had any beef with people who used these AI-powered “spell checkers on steroids”, only decided that I didn’t use them myself. Also, the style of a book that seems to have accepted all of a bot’s suggestions seems flat to me; that’s a personal taste. Plenty of people don’t mind it.
But I understand that I’ve lost ground in the argument by agreeing to this. Much like deciding to use Kindle Unlimited, it is a choice, and I understand that it’s one that not everyone agrees with. We all have the right to care about these things or not, to make decisions about what we consume based on our ethics. Which is why I’m trying to be transparent about it now.
All of my currently released books, up to the end of 2024, have not used it. The next probably will, whether that’s Strangers (the Healers spinoff) or Therapist 9.
It will, I think, save me a lot of time. I hope it will make the finished product stronger — right now I’m still in the developmental stage, going through the first draft to figure out how to strengthen the story itself. This tool won’t help with that. But in the “you use ‘smile’ too often” stage, well, we’ll see. But at the same time, that’s a reason, not an excuse. Do with this information what you will. Thank you for your time.