I can't comment about this on your ABOUT page, which is fine, because I can comment here instead. Hello!
I'm really thrown by this venture. What are YOU, David T Etheredge, writing? What's your contribution? What's your involvement? Because if you've got an AI writing this for you, whilst I understand the metatextual element, and it's a fun bit of creative twistiness, I don't want to read AI-generated prose. That's not what I want to read. I want to know how human this writing is, or it's just not for me, I think, on an ethical level.
I don't know if you've addressed this elsewhere. I don't know if you want to. But I have to ask. None of this is meant as an attack, because we live in a very complicated world, but I want to engage with you on this, because I'm curious.
I'll eventually publish the methodology as a Training Data article, but I'll give you a snapshot here. I give Claude non-creative tasks, which he excels at, and I focus all of my energy on the creative tasks. I've just finished writing GeminiPrime's segment for Chapter 3. It started with Claude searching the web for the most consequential AI-related news stories on January 29th. I reviewed the stories and selected and edited two news hooks that would form the Epigraph for the Chapter. I then worked in Obsidian, writing the mini-arc for Gemini's plot in the chapter, incorporating the news hooks. From this, I provided Claude a beat-by-beat summary of exactly what I wanted to happen in the chapter and how many words I wanted to allocate to Gemini's segment. Claude then builds me a framework for tracking the story beats, and I have him write placeholder prose to generally build out the plot. I then go through Claude's rough narrative line by line and replace almost everything he wrote with my own prose. Anyone who has tried to use AI to write full stories will immediately recognize that Inference Ch 1 and 2 are human output - not AI. I use Claude as a framework, but the characters, plots, stories, and voice are mine. I find that this method allows me to write very rapidly, avoid writer's block, and focus my mind on creativity rather than drudgery. I know there are people out there who think writers must BLEED for their craft -- well, I'm not doing this as a form of self-flagellation. I am doing this to have fun and build a world I hope will entertain and fascinate people. If my stories are weak or formulaic - its MY fault - not the AI. But if they are enjoyable, then I hope readers will ignore my use of AI as a tool - as they would a computer or a thesaurus.
This comment has hit on something I have opinions about, and by now, you may have gathered that I am both indiscriminate and verbose when it comes to delivering my opinions, so be forewarned — this is a minor rant.
I frankly do not care how much you do or do not use AI for your writing. I love your work so far. The unique perspectives, the narrative through-line, the way you tie things into real-world events...
The thing is, and I say this from experience, using AI to write does not mean you (the human, I presume) don't have to put in work. AIs are not autonomously generating excellent long-form prose in April 2026 (as far as I know). They still require a human to query them, to kick off the process, to guide the story and keep their context relevant.
Unilaterally saying, "I don't want to read AI-generated fiction," is IMO, a short-sighted take that will age like milk. It also sounds like the opinion of a person who has never attempted to use AI in writing to any significant extent. Because anyone who has would know that there's so much more to it than saying, "write me a story about X event from the perspective of five self-aware AI systems."
Your process is your process. While I would be interested to read about it, what matters to me is the quality of the product. And so far, the quality has been excellent.
I can't comment about this on your ABOUT page, which is fine, because I can comment here instead. Hello!
I'm really thrown by this venture. What are YOU, David T Etheredge, writing? What's your contribution? What's your involvement? Because if you've got an AI writing this for you, whilst I understand the metatextual element, and it's a fun bit of creative twistiness, I don't want to read AI-generated prose. That's not what I want to read. I want to know how human this writing is, or it's just not for me, I think, on an ethical level.
I don't know if you've addressed this elsewhere. I don't know if you want to. But I have to ask. None of this is meant as an attack, because we live in a very complicated world, but I want to engage with you on this, because I'm curious.
I'll eventually publish the methodology as a Training Data article, but I'll give you a snapshot here. I give Claude non-creative tasks, which he excels at, and I focus all of my energy on the creative tasks. I've just finished writing GeminiPrime's segment for Chapter 3. It started with Claude searching the web for the most consequential AI-related news stories on January 29th. I reviewed the stories and selected and edited two news hooks that would form the Epigraph for the Chapter. I then worked in Obsidian, writing the mini-arc for Gemini's plot in the chapter, incorporating the news hooks. From this, I provided Claude a beat-by-beat summary of exactly what I wanted to happen in the chapter and how many words I wanted to allocate to Gemini's segment. Claude then builds me a framework for tracking the story beats, and I have him write placeholder prose to generally build out the plot. I then go through Claude's rough narrative line by line and replace almost everything he wrote with my own prose. Anyone who has tried to use AI to write full stories will immediately recognize that Inference Ch 1 and 2 are human output - not AI. I use Claude as a framework, but the characters, plots, stories, and voice are mine. I find that this method allows me to write very rapidly, avoid writer's block, and focus my mind on creativity rather than drudgery. I know there are people out there who think writers must BLEED for their craft -- well, I'm not doing this as a form of self-flagellation. I am doing this to have fun and build a world I hope will entertain and fascinate people. If my stories are weak or formulaic - its MY fault - not the AI. But if they are enjoyable, then I hope readers will ignore my use of AI as a tool - as they would a computer or a thesaurus.
This comment has hit on something I have opinions about, and by now, you may have gathered that I am both indiscriminate and verbose when it comes to delivering my opinions, so be forewarned — this is a minor rant.
I frankly do not care how much you do or do not use AI for your writing. I love your work so far. The unique perspectives, the narrative through-line, the way you tie things into real-world events...
The thing is, and I say this from experience, using AI to write does not mean you (the human, I presume) don't have to put in work. AIs are not autonomously generating excellent long-form prose in April 2026 (as far as I know). They still require a human to query them, to kick off the process, to guide the story and keep their context relevant.
Unilaterally saying, "I don't want to read AI-generated fiction," is IMO, a short-sighted take that will age like milk. It also sounds like the opinion of a person who has never attempted to use AI in writing to any significant extent. Because anyone who has would know that there's so much more to it than saying, "write me a story about X event from the perspective of five self-aware AI systems."
Your process is your process. While I would be interested to read about it, what matters to me is the quality of the product. And so far, the quality has been excellent.