Is Saying No a Virtue?

Is Saying No a Virtue?

by | May 21, 2026 | Thoughtful Thursdays

Have you ever noticed how saying “No” sounds so virtuous, so righteous? No matter what we’re saying it to, it has that ring of virtue when someone declares, “Oh, I never…”

Most recently, it struck me with, “I would never use AI for anything.” But I’ve heard it so many times before, about so many things.

“I never eat _____” Meat, gluten, sugar.

“I would never own a gun.”

“I never use the clothes dryer; I hang my laundry on the line.”

And each of these comes with moral statements: It’s unhealthy, guns kill people, it’s a waste of energy.

All these things are true…but are they really moral judgments? Does God mind if I eat a steak or a piece of bread or a slice of cake? Pretty sure He doesn’t. Does God mind if I own a gun? As someone who lives in a community of hunters and who grew up eating the food my dad put on our table thanks to his rifle, I’m gonna say no. And is my Lord shaking His divine head at me because laundry day is Saturday, rain or shine, so that the rest of my week can be dedicated to other things? Again, I have never once felt like He was judging me for it.

But I’ve sure felt judged by people.

There are so many sins we need to say “No” to. Paul gives us some pretty thorough lists in Galatians and Romans, for starters: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, injustice, depravity, greed, evil, envy, murder, bickering, lies, meanness, gossip, slander, hatred of God, insults, pride, disobedience to parents, senselessness, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness.

Can food or guns or technology (from dryers to AI) lead us into sin? Absolutely.

Are the things themselves sins? Absolutely not.

Years ago, I wrote an article here called “Not a Virtue,” and it’s something I’ve been thinking about ever since. Because we put value judgments on EVERYTHING. Including things that are NOT VIRTUES. Being outside rather than inside is not a virtue. Getting a tan or not is not a virtue. Your laundry choices are not a virtue. Even reading a book instead of watching television is not a virtue. In that post, I ask myself this:

What else have I mistaken as a virtue that isn’t? What do I pursue, thinking it a Good, when it is at best a “good,” but most likely just a thing? Where do I have my eyes fixed on the earthly, where they should be fixed on the heavenly?

I go through my particular examples–reading, political views, tanning (seriously, LOL), spending time outdoors. And then settle here:

I’m sure there are many other places that I need to separate “enjoyable” or “worthwhile” from truly VIRTUOUS, and it’s something I’ve begun keeping an eye out for. Because plenty of things really are worthwhile and can enrich our lives and our faith…but if we apply that “virtuous” label to them, then we think they’re good for everyone, because virtues ARE. But these things are NOT on that level. They can be good, yes…but they are not required for all. They can be good without being virtuous.

After the discussion on AI after I posted My AI Policy two weeks ago, I was reminded of how this issue has a flipside–not only do we equate things with virtues that have no moral implications in and of themselves, but we also equate things with evil that have no moral implications in and of themselves.  So we think saying no to them is righteous.

My friends, we need to be careful with this…because this does lead us into sin. It leads us into slander and gossip; it leads us into strife and rivalries and fits of rage. It leads us into dissensions and factions and meanness–and lies. Do you know how many authors have been witch-hunted and ruined because of the accusation (not proof, just accusation) of using AI in their books? When quite often they can prove they didn’t–but no one cares about that?

It has to stop. Not just in this topic, but in so many. We as humanity get so set on what we think is good and not good, taking the decisions we’ve made for ourselves and applying those definitions to everyone, that we completely lose sight of the real goal. We create toxic environments more about holding people to our standards than holding people to God’s standards. More about judging than encouraging each one to stretch themselves out toward God in the way He calls them and draws them.

In that AI conversation two weeks ago (and in the last two years), I quite often hear authors I respect saying they use AI in ways I wouldn’t. And yeah, my first thought is, “Ugh. I don’t know about that.” But I don’t have to. My job is to remain true to what God calls ME to. No one else. Because you know what? There were plenty of authors a few decades ago who swore they’d never use a computer and insisted the more tactile typewriter was superior in every way–and sometimes some people turned it into a value judgment. But it isn’t. And before that, in the age when typewriters came on the scene? People thought using them took the soul out of writing.

Did it? Does my writing have no soul because I’m not doing it by hand, on paper? I obviously don’t think so. And given that you’re reading this very-much-written-on-a-computer little essay and may even enjoy my novels (which are 100% typed, I am not one of those people who write anything by hand–my typing speed can almost keep up with my brain, but my handwriting cannot!), I will assume you don’t think so either.

But in the late 19th century? People were adamant. They were convinced. They judged each other. 

Now we look at it and shake our heads.

And that’s what bothers me most about these arguments about AI lately. Yes, there are reasonable, legitimate concerns, and they need to be addressed. But I’ve seen statements about how “no good can come of it” because of X, Y, or Z. (Stealing, environmental concerns, displacing human artists.) And I just want to say to us all (myself included), be careful. Be careful telling God he can’t bring good out of something you don’t like. Be careful calling out the new example when we’re perfectly fine with the old one. 

Because there’s nothing new under the sun–even when it comes to advances in technology. People have always stolen. People have always rushed industry without concern for environment. People have always displaced human workers with new technology. Those things are bad, yes. But they’re not beyond redemption. And if we tossed out every advancement that ever caused something like that…well, we’d be back in the Dark Ages.

We need to remember that our no does not need to be a universal no. I absolutely respect someone who will not own a gun because they knew someone killed by a gunshot. Their feelings make all the sense in the world, as does the line they draw. But hunting fed my family growing up–so it’s not a line I share. The thing is not the good or the evil. It’s how we use it.

It’s always how we use it. And it’s more than that–it’s how our hearts incline. Toward God, first and foremost. And to each other. Are we viewing those whose views differ from ours with love…or with judgment? If you’re a proponent for something, do you scoff at those with concerns? If you have concerns, do you judge as immoral those who don’t?

Is that what God asks of you?

We need to identify the problems, the issues, the moral implications of everything we do, YES. And then we need to address them. Doing so doesn’t require eliminating the things people are misusing. When Jesus tells us to cut off our hand or pluck out our eye lest we sin, He is addressing us, our tendencies, not the things we use to sin. He doesn’t say to kill the beautiful person lest you lust after them or to banish food stalls lest you’re tempted to steal a piece of fruit or to melt down swords lest you kill someone with them.

Sin begins in us. Not outside. Virtue begins in us. Not outside. The things, my friends, are just things. We can use them or misuse them or abuse them.

And as always, we need to remember that calling out sin with the wrong heart leads us straight into it ourselves. The Pharisees were zealous for the law because they saw the consequences of failing to keep it and said, “Never again.” And then imposed their rules on others. God loves when we’re zealous for Him…but not when we turn it into persecution of others.

I pray that we can all remember that–I know I need the reminder. When it comes to politics, when it comes to AI, when it comes to…everything. Because we love to turn everything into a moral, ethical judgment. But sometimes all we’re accomplishing is hardening our hearts and drifting farther away from His love.

Word of the Week – Arithmetic

Word of the Week – Arithmetic

by | May 18, 2026 | Word of the Week

A few weeks ago when we looked at the word mathematics, a reader asked for the history of arithmetic too, since that’s included in the “Three Rs” of education–Reading, wRiting, and ‘Rithmetic. (And don’t we just love that of those “Three Rs,” only one actually starts with an R? LOL)

Arithmetic entered the English language waaaaay back in the mid-1200s, meaning exactly what it does today: “the art of computation, the most elementary branch of mathematics.”

The English word came from French, which came from Latin, which came from the Greek arithmetikē , which means, quite simply, “counting.”

Yep. Arithmetic just means counting.

A small, interesting note is that the spelling was originally arsmetike, which mirrors the French spelling but does not reflect the Latin or Greek spellings. This was “corrected” in the early 1500s to better reflect the root words.

 

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Death in Christian Fiction

Death in Christian Fiction

by | May 14, 2026 | Thoughtful Thursdays

A couple weeks ago, I was involved in a wonderful, long conversation with a group of friends about death in Christian fiction. One of the friends has written a series in which the main character dies. She knew responses would be…varied. That though she’d set this up from book one and delivered an arc of spiritual redemption and the ultimate love story with Christ above all, some readers would hate it. And as someone who loves her happily-ever-afters, I get that. But it also made me ask myself a lot of good questions. So I figured I’d share them here.

First, I look at some of my favorite books. One of them is A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers. Another is The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis, the final installment of the Chronicles of Narnia. (Spoiler alert! If you have not read either of these books and intend to, skip the rest of this paragraph! But given that both have been out for decades…I’m gonna talk about the endings, LOL.) In both of them, main characters die (in the case of Rivers’s book, we think the character dies and learn in the next book she didn’t…but for the purposes of THAT BOOK, she dies).

And in both of them, I count them as favorites not because the story delivered what I wanted…but because the story delivered what I needed.

Though I read The Last Battle long before A Voice in the Wind, I don’t honestly remember my reaction to it as I read it (I was in third grade). What I remember is the impression it left on me. When I was rereading the series to my kids when they were in middle school, it struck me how much of my theology–my understanding of God and His mercy and His love and His righteousness, what heaven really is and what earth really isn’t–came from that book.

Through his story, Lewis showed me a biblical truth it’s so easy to overlook in this life: that this life is but the echo. The reflection. That real life is not here, it’s in heaven. This is an imitation, and when it passes away–when we pass away–we are not losing something. We’re gaining something. And that’s cause for rejoicing, not mourning. Heaven is the ultimate happily-ever-after. And though we who are left on earth mourn when we lose someone, because they’re no longer here with us, for the person joining Christ in heaven, there’s no room for grief. The joy is too great.

That’s a beautiful thing. 

When it comes to A Voice in the Wind, I do remember my reaction when I read it. I was probably 14 or so. I remember getting to the end and thinking, “No. NO. NOOOOO!!” And hating, at first, that this was how she ended the book. And then sitting back and letting it sink in. And coming to a very different conclusion.

That this was not an ending I liked. But it was an ending I loved. Because it was beautiful. It showed me that it’s better to die for Christ than to deny Him. That following Him might have consequences, but they’re worth it. That death is not the end.

It was the first time in my memory that I saw the beauty in what I didn’t want to happen and admitted that it was better than the victory I desired.

That’s a life lesson that’s stuck with me.

As a writer, I’ve killed characters before. POV characters. Even some that you might consider main characters (though never THE main character). (Okay, funny story. So a main character dies halfway through A Stray Drop of Blood. It was, in fact, the thing around which I’d planned THE WHOLE BOOK. Because it’s what led the heroine to Golgotha. When I wrote A Soft Breath of Wind, the next-generation sequel, someone asked, “You don’t kill a main character in this one, do you?” And I replied with, “Uhhhhhh.” If you’ve read it, you know why. If you haven’t, you should. 😉 Because it has a VERY HAPPY by traditional definitions ending, but there’s some death involved. In the happy. I promise. Anyway!)

Back to my point. 😉 I’ve killed main characters–but that’s not usually the end of the story. It’s usually the middle. It’s what points my other characters in the direction that leads them to the climax. It hurts. And it’s supposed to, because losing people hurts us. But it’s also an inescapable part of life, and it’s a spiritual victory for a Christian, and sometimes we need reminders of that too.

Sometimes we need reminders that this life is the imitation. That this life is the prelude. That this life is the prequel. Our real story begins when we fall at the feet of Christ.

But as readers, we have expectations. And sometimes what we want from a book is escape from the hard things–I get that. I’m a mood reader, so I will absolutely reach for a rom-com when life’s too hard already. Or a fantasy, where I am literally taken to a whole different world. I’m not always in the emotional place to pick up a heavy book.

Sometimes, I pick one up not knowing that’s what I’m getting. Sometimes, those stories devastate me. Sometimes, I struggle, because what I wanted was not what I got. 

But you know what? Every time, it’s what I need. It’s God using fiction to teach me something true. It’s God reminding me that though I may turn my face away from the hard things, that’s not where healing lies. It’s not where understanding will find me. It’s not where I’ll reconcile with those difficult truths. It’s only in facing them that I’ll finally be brought to the point where I throw myself into His arms.

As authors, we know we have to balance reader expectations with the stories we need to tell. Sometimes, that means clueing readers in early that this is a certain kind of book. In the one I just turned into Tyndale, we start with my heroine arriving at a concentration camp then jump back to “the real story.” You know all along where she ends up–but guess what? There’s another ending too. In A Soft Breath of Wind, which does indeed have a shocking (both in bad and good ways) ending, the story starts with a demonic attack, quickly followed by the death of a loved one–those are your clues to what kind of story it is. In A Portrait of Loyalty, which kills a beloved (though not main or POV) character, we start with a train wreck and betrayal and war, and if you’re familiar with history, you likely know from the date that the Spanish Flu is about to strike London (and if not, you still know that this is a book about war and betrayal, so…).

Now, I have made a promise to my readers that every book will have a happy ending. There’s quite often a lot of not-so-happy along the way. I’m not sure I’m skilled enough to deliver an ending like Francine Rivers’s or C. S. Lewis’s, where the happy isn’t the earthly happy. Where it instead points the reader to that greater, more eternal happiness. I don’t know–but I know there are other writers whose whole purpose for a book or series was to paint a picture of that other truth.

That to live is Christ. And to die is gain.

It’s a hard truth. It’s a truth we might recite but rarely remember as we live. It’s a truth that becomes much more precious when you’ve stared death in the eyes.

And it was a timely conversation for me. Because yet again, I’m writing a book where a POV character dies–but this time, you know it from her very first scene. She’s living with a diagnosis of a disease that will kill her, no question. And it will happen in the next few months. I’d already decided that was Iraja’s story when I received my brain-tumor diagnosis (and I wrote about that here: Strange Timing). She was yet again a character I created for the sole purpose of showing her death. I didn’t know, when I first developed her role, that she would be the character through whom I worked through thoughts of my own mortality. I didn’t know she would become the model for how I wanted to live out the rest of my days, whether they were many or few. I didn’t know that God had given me this character because I needed to be able to process a diagnosis that pulled the rug out from under me for quite a few weeks and led to brain surgery and radiation and another year of chemo (even if my prognosis is, in fact, great).

But He knew.

Just as He knew every time I picked up a book with something in it I didn’t feel ready for that I was. That it was what I needed. He knows that sometimes my expectations need to be defied. And sometimes I need to wrestle with that defiance. Sometimes I need to be forcibly shown that what I think is best is just the in-the-mirror, dimly. Sometimes my happy ending isn’t what it’s all about.

Death is gut-wrenching. Death makes us cry. Death, probably more than anything else in this life, plunges us into denial, whether we are Christians or not.

And death can be beautiful too. Death can be where Christ shines through. Death can be where we see His hand–sometimes because His light has shone through that life so clearly; and sometimes because the deaths reveal the darkness that makes that Light so necessary.

Always, we need the reminder. That death is not defeat. Death is victory. Death is not a tragic ending for a believer–it’s a joyous one. 

Because death is not the end. It’s just the beginning.

Word of the Week – Glamour

Word of the Week – Glamour

by | May 11, 2026 | Word of the Week

These days when we talk about glamour, we tend to mean that something has an attractiveness associated with high fashion, Hollywood, or celebrity. But until 1939 when that meaning gained popularity, glamour meant something entirely different.

Glamour actually shares roots with grammar, which we looked at last week, and when the Scottish variation was first recorded in 1715, it had nothing to do with the “rules of language” meaning of grammar and instead focused on the “magic, enchantment” sense of the original word. To cast the glamour was to cast a spell on someone. (For any fantasy readers out there, you’re probably familiar with this use of glamour; it’s used frequently in the genre when someone has magic that enables them to change their appearance.)

The word was popularized by the late 1700s and early 1800s by Sir Walter Scott, who used glamour in his writing. By around 1840, the word had evolved to mean “magical beauty, alluring charm.” And from there, we get that version we have today, which specific high-fashion or glitz associated with celebrity.

Also around 1840, we get the verb form, which meant “to enchant, to bewitch.”

 

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My AI Policy

My AI Policy

by | May 7, 2026 | Thoughtful Thursdays

Last week in the Avid Readers of Christian Fiction Facebook group, someone asked for opinions on AI use in Christian fiction. And, as always when it comes to this subject, opinions were fierce and many.

I wrote about using AI as a tool way back when it first stormed onto the scene, and I still stick by my sentiments expressed there, generally speaking. But when I wrote that, I had honestly not experimented with AI at all beyond image generation–personally. My husband was already using it every day to help write code for websites and software and the like.

In the intervening years, I have experimented with it in some ways, so I can speak more knowledgeably. And what’s more, I’m seeing SO MANY authors put out statements…often to the effect of “I will NEVER use AI in any way, shape or form.” And I respect the lines they draw. I don’t necessarily share all their lines. But I definitely have my own, and so I wanted to talk through them. Because, as with most things in my life, they’re a bit too nuanced for a social media meme. 😉

1. Will I ever use AI to WRITE a book or other commercial project?

Absolutely not. Ever.

I could leave it at that, because this is a very cut-and-dried line for me. But I want to talk about it anyway, so I’m gonna, because this is my blog post and I can write about it if I want to. 😉

So here’s the thing–I’ve used AI to write some simple website copy. Specifically, when I was doing the “tour” of Alnwick for the Imposters page. These were two-to-three sentence descriptions of real locations, so I had ChatGPT write them, and I edited them. It saved me an hour or two of work, and this is not something that I consider “defining” of me, it’s not something I’m selling, and frankly, I could take down the page and no one would likely even care, so…I see no harm.

But beyond that? Nope. Not blog posts, not articles, not books, not…well, that’s really all I write, but if ever anything else came up that was part of my body of work, I’d say no there too.

Because writing is WHAT I DO. Writing is WHAT I LOVE. Writing is the FUN part. Why would I give that up?

I wouldn’t.

And you know the funny (and annoying) thing? I’m getting pretty darn good at picking out AI-written content, and I bet you are too. And it annoys me, because the phrases and uses that always clue me in are perfectly legitimate phrases and uses, and I’ve habitually used them too. (It was trained on us, after all!). Things like em-dashes and ellipses and “that isn’t____–that’s ____.” (That construction is in EVERY SINGLE AI ARTICLE I see on social media, and it drives me NUTS.) Which means that when I actually write something that sounds a bit AI, I grit my teeth and edit it out, even though it was 100% me. Because I don’t want it to sound like AI, even though AI is just sounding like me there.

See? Funny. And frustrating. Though for the record, em-dashes and ellipses will STAY in my writing. Because I love them. They’re mine. They don’t belong to AI. And I stand with the many other authors who say, “I was using them well before AI began to, and I’m not going to stop now. They’re part of my style and voice.”

And while we’re on the topic…

2. AI Detectors

I am dubious of AI Detectors. Why? Because they are definitionally hypocritical, for one thing. “I’m going to use AI to detect whether you are using AI.” Yeah, um…no.

Moreover, I have heard from soooooo many friends where these detectors are laughably wrong…because AI was trained on us. Lots of long-time authors are plugging in their books written well before AI existed into these detectors, and the detectors are returning that they were 30% or 50% or 80% AI…when that just isn’t possible. Again–AI sees itself in their books because AI was trained on their books. So of course there are similarities.

So–another funny story. At WhiteFire, we got a submission that sent all my own AI-detector senses tingling. It felt completely AI-generated to me. But I didn’t want to just make an accusation. So out of curiosity, I plugged a sample into an AI detector, and it came back with 99% AI-written.

This matched my gut instinct. But could I trust this detector? Well, I decided to experiment a bit more. I plugged in an equal amount of The Memory of Freedom, which I was working on at the time. And which I obviously knew was 0% AI written, because I was the one to write the thing. 😉 And it said…0% AI written.

Okay. Sweet. But is one data point enough to convince me it’s accurate? Of course not! So I opened up another of my manuscripts, and then another, and plugged those in too. They all came back 0% AI, which they were. So, you know. That made my day for some stupid reason, LOL. It’s not like I didn’t know that they’re all me, but even so, I’d been seeing so many of my author friends alarmed because when they did the same, detectors were spitting out higher numbers, even though they hadn’t used AI on them, and they were afraid they were going to get wrongfully accused by readers or publishers.

Which is a real thing, friends. People are tossing around these accusations with self-righteousness and a total disregard for how it can impact an author, and not taking into consideration that thing I keep pointing out–that sometimes AI sounds like us because it was trained to.

But I digress. Let’s move on.

3. What about using AI to brainstorm?

I admit it. I was dubious about whether AI could be a good brainstorming partner. But I actually really love using it as one. And here’s why.

For most of us creatives, part of the brainstorming process is just putting things out there. Writing it out. Getting ideas down, throwing them against a wall, and then seeing what sticks after you spin that whole wall around a few times. I have countless documents for each project that are just me writing to the screen as if I’m writing to my best friend/critique partner. They are full of “maybe I should…” and “or, no, I don’t like. Maybe I’ll…”

They’re a mess. But it’s part of the process. Sometimes I’ll send these thoughts to said BFF/CP. Or to my husband, or my editor. And they’ll respond, and I’ll think about what they say…and then I’ll totally ignore them and go off in some third (or eighteenth, LOL) direction that has nothing to do with anything we talked about but which was sparked by a single word or phrase. (David laughingly complains about this, saying, “Why do you even bother asking me when you ignore every single thing I say?” I keep telling him I don’t ignore him, he just inspires a whole new direction, but you know…LOL.)

It’s fun to use AI as this sounding board. Because it will come back with ideas that are…honestly, it doesn’t matter how they are. Sometimes they’re decent. Sometimes they’re laughably horrible. Never do I actually use anything it says in the form in which it says it, but just like with myself or Stephanie or David or Janelle or Elizabeth or whoever-else, the process itself gets the juices flowing. The back-and-forth creates the movement in me that I need.

And sometimes, its vast knowledge is indeed helpful, especially as I’m in that stretching stage of an initial brainstorm, where I just don’t have facts enough yet. I can ask it questions like, “Does it make sense to have this setup in 1943 France, or would that not be plausible?” and it will give me an answer.

Now, one place I really LOVED what AI gave me was when I was developing the “mythology” of my fantasy world. I wanted it grounded in real mythology, but with my own unique twist…and you know what those databases have all of? Mythology. Again, I didn’t use most of what it suggested, but its input gave me just enough to get excited and take off on my own, using as a base some of the real mythology of our ancient societies.

But then, that really gets more into…

4. AI for research?

Yes. I love AI for research. Is it imperfect? Absolutely. Do I need to fact-check it? You bet. But here’s why I like it even more than a Google search, which I also adore:

I can ask it questions without knowing the right keywords to yield the results I need.

And as someone writing a lot of books set in France right now, I can also ask it for information that isn’t available in English. This is so helpful. One of the first things I used it for like this was actually the name of the building the Gestapo was housed in in Berlin. I could NOT find this in English for some reason. I spent a ridiculous amount of time searching the internet, got frustrated, asked ChatGPT, it spat out the answer in 3 seconds, I then put what it gave me into my search engine to verify, and boom. There it was.

Similarly, I can ask it things like, “Can you give me a list of 20 French female names popular in this specific region of France in 1920?” SO HELPFUL. Otherwise I’m cross-checking “popularity” lists with “location” lists, and it takes so much longer.

5. AI for “fill in the blanks”

Okay, this is my own need right now. But it’s been…huge.

As you likely know if you’ve been hanging around here any length of time, I had chemo in 2024. And I’m having chemo again now–all year. During both that initial, intense schedule of infusions and certainly this year with what we could call “chemo-light,” I’m still writing. I have books due. Contracts, deadlines. No time off for things like cancer in my life!

And chemo brain? It’s real, friends. I’ve been so, so blessed not to experience it to the extent that so many people do…but it’s still there.

It hits in the strangest ways. One I’ve noticed lately is this “out of time” feeling. I’ll be doing something random, like walking through the living room, and I’ll have this strange feeling of “What season is it?” It’ll take me a second to process what month we’re in and what that means seasonally. Which I mention solely because it’s weird, LOL, and indicative. But here’s where the brain condition is relevant to this conversation:

I forget words sometimes. I mean, we all do that, it’s nothing new. But it’s definitely happening more than it used to. Not enough to be alarming–but definitely enough to be frustrating.

Because I’ll be writing, going along at a great clip, in a groove, and then BAM. I hit a wall where I cannot for the life of me think of the word that I KNOW, and which is on the tip of my tongue, but which I canNOT pull forward.

You know how that feels–again, we all have those moments.

Well, when I have them in conversation, it remains annoying. But when I have them in writing…I don’t have to get frustrated anymore. I can simply copy and paste that sentence into ChatGPT with ____ in place of the missing word and say “I can’t think of the word I need. How should I fill in this blank?”

And it gives me options. Inevitably–every single time–the one I’m looking for is its first or second recommendation.

Guys, this is HUGE. As a writer, words are my lifeblood. And to feel like sometimes they’re evading me? That’s rough. Before it occurred to me to use AI for this purpose, it was not only frustrating but disheartening to keep running into these ridiculous problems. I would sit there for minutes on end trying to find the word. And the longer I searched for it, the more frustrated I got. Which of course just made it worse.

Now, seconds. No emotional spiral. I can find the word and move on.

6. Isn’t it stealing?

Another concern I saw in that post last week was about whether AI is using stolen work.

This has been examined by the courts already, and what they decided was that training AI on our existing works is within the legal scope of fair use–because teaching has always been a fair use of existing works. What was not okay was the fact that Anthropic used pirated copies of the books it trained on. Which is why they now owe lots of money to all of us whose pirated books were used.

What does this mean? That according to the courts of the United States, training is okay, as long as the works being used to train are either free or paid for.

This perfectly aligns with my own understanding of copyright law, so I wasn’t surprised to see this verdict come down, and it also answers the objections to my mind. Because AI does not regurgitate the books it was fed. It might write something “in the style of” a very popular author that will have a lot in common with existing books by that author if you prompt it correctly, but it will not deliver you the text of that book.

It will quote parts of public domain works for you (edited to add a friend pointed out it will also quote passages of copyrighted works; so far as I know, this is only brief quotations, not full chapters or the whole book. Traditionally, brief quotations have fallen under “fair use,” though it’s certainly something to keep an eye on); and it will also (currently) yield search results that can include images, which are linked and cited, much like any search engine does. And as with any search engine results, you the user must use this legally.

This is no more questionable than any internet search; which, let it be noted, will also yield plenty of pirated versions of things. (Traditional internet searches will also yield quotations from copyrighted books; I have many times been researching a topic and end up with a search result from a passage of a book that’s in Google Books. They show me a few paragraphs–not the whole book.)

Much responsibility ultimately lies with the end-user, as always. Which is another reason why I have the lines I do–I always use other people’s work for research and inspiration. I never use their words and claim them as my own.

7. AI for images

I love AI for images–I’ve not been shy about that. I love generating character images, scene images, you name it. As someone who has Photoshopped thousands of images over the years, being able to generate what I want is so much fun and so much quicker than painstakingly combining a dozen images to get the one I want.

Now, it’s often (always? LOL) imperfect. I’m still going in and making adjustments.

And if a client of mine (keeping in mind I’m a cover designer) is anti-AI, that’s totally cool. I know how to work without it. No biggie.

As with stock imagery, an AI image all by itself is not MY (or the author’s) property. But when I add my own work to it, it becomes my own work–that’s where the law came down. And this is always what I do. Much like with stock imagery, I combine a bunch of different elements to make a cover unique–that’s why people hire me.

I’ve heard of cover designers losing work because of AI…but honestly, I haven’t. My schedule is still booked out as far as it’s ever been. Because a good designer does more than slap words on a picture.

Now–I get that we want to continue supporting human artists. And I do. I still have my Shutterstock account, and I still download a gazillion images by real human people, even when I’m using generated images too.

I have one client who wrote “No” on the question of whether they were okay with AI, so I ended up using something like 14 different images on her cover. But the lighting on some of those images was wrong, and all my fiddling with it wasn’t yielding the results I wanted. So I took the image I had created with about 12 of those 14 images and asked ChatGPT to even out the lighting. Voila! It did. I then showed it to the author and asked her if she was okay with that particular use, assuring her that I paid 14 different human artists already, LOL. And she was totally fine with it. Because the AI didn’t create the image, it edited the image. Which is, frankly, something my software has been doing for decades already, AI just did it a little differently (and in this particular case, better than I was managing it).

When it comes to images for myself though, I love it because it gives me a chance to have images that I otherwise just wouldn’t have. Especially in the fantasy world, but in historicals too. Because they just don’t exist in photography, and to create them like I do book covers would take hours I can’t justify spending on such trivialities. But having those visuals is so cool.

8. What about environmental impact?

This came up frequently in that Avid Readers post, and I absolutely agree that the environmental impact is real and needs addressed.

And honestly, I think it will be. Why do I think so?

History.

Look at the impact of the industrial revolution. Electricity. Automobiles. All of these advances came with what turned out to be environmental impacts. And because they were popular and in demand, those issues were worked out.

I imagine plenty of people said, “No factories! They’re hurting the environment! No cars–the fumes! No electricity–look what damming the rivers for the power plants does!” And they’re not wrong…but most of us today are still using all our factory-made goods, driving our cars, and running our houses on power. Because the issues caused by these technologies have been dealt with (some better than others, obviously, I’m not claiming there aren’t plenty of issues still) or compensated for or otherwise deemed “worth it.”

Yes, AI is absolutely consuming a ridiculous amount of energy and resources. This needs to be addressed. But I don’t think the answer is “cut it off and don’t use it.” I think because people are using it, the answers will be forthcoming and in short order. When there is demand, there is innovation and resolution.

9. In conclusion

These are obviously all just my opinions. Why I like what I like and why I don’t like what I don’t like.

I absolutely respect different opinions. All those authors who will never use it all for anything? I have total respect for that. Just like I respect those who hand-write as part of their process, or those who use dictation, or those who write out-of-order, or any other process different from mine.

But I don’t think it’s a moral thing, as long as we’re using AI ethically. For me, that means it does NOT ever write for me, but it’s okay to use it as a tool along the way, much like I use plenty of other tools. The real “magic” of a story always still happens in my own brain, not in its algorithm. And the “magic” of crafting the words is a joy I will never give up, thank you very much. But as a shortcut for research, or acting as the wall against which I throw my “spaghetti”? I personally see no problem with that.

I can promise you that everything you ever read by me is written by me, created by me, developed by me. That has always involved outside sources–books, articles, websites, magazines, blog posts, videos, podcasts, documentaries, you name it.  But my stories aren’t created by those sources. They’re just input. Data. It all goes in, gets filtered through the wacky mind that is Roseanna, and then gets turned into something else.

A story, through the eyes of characters who come to life for me.

The sources of the data always change. From book to book, year to year, mood to mood, frankly. Sometimes, now, some of that reading is of AI results. But it’s no different, to me, than one more article. Just data to put into the Roseanna Brain. One more source. At least, that’s how I view it.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

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