47 - Embracing AI for Creative Authorship with Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite engage in a captivating discussion with Joanna Penn, a pioneering author and podcaster from The Creative Penn. They discuss the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry, as Joanna shares her journey of integrating AI tools into her creative process. From using AI for deep research and generating book titles to crafting captivating book covers, Joanna illustrates how technology can amplify creativity and streamline productivity. Discover how AI can be a powerful ally in authorship, allowing writers to focus on what truly brings them joy. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. We are in the midst of summer vacation here in the United States. It is hot here. It is hot. In Europe. It is hot in most places up here.

And then I know it's winter down where you guys are in the Southern hemisphere, so happy winter to you as well. We're just cooking along. Danica and I have been doing a lot of work. And then she was traveling and I am hoping to get some time at the beach this summer, which will be lovely. I can't wait.

So whatever [00:01:00] we're doing now, we're doing a little recording during the summer and then we're going to be launching these in the fall. So I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing from everybody in September when we're back on the air.

I do have my wonderful co-host with me. I'm so happy to see her face 'cause it's been a few weeks. Danica Favorite, how are you doing Danica?

Danica Favorite: I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, it is hot and I apologize in advance. I have a lovely summer cold, which is one of my souvenirs of my travel, and so I'm sitting here, I've got a fan on me and I'm like, I don't know.

Do I have a fever or is it just that hot? It's hot. I do think it's just that hot. I think it's just that hot, but oh my goodness. Heat wave everywhere. So everyone please stay cool and safe, although hopefully. By the time you listen to this in September, the heat wave will be done. Everyone will be happy and safe, and you've all had a fantastic summer because I know that's what our plans are.

So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Danica Favorite. I'm the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors on every stage of [00:02:00] their journey from formatting that manuscript to finding the right keywords and book descriptions to distributing your books to the widest audience possible.

And finally, being able to split your royalties once those books start selling. So between us and the Future Fiction Academy, we have you covered and I am just really excited today. When Steph and I started this podcast, the person who inspired us both on our AI journey we said, this is our dream guest.

This is our dream guest. And it took us a while to figure out timing and everything. But I'm really excited today because to kick off this new season of the Brave New Bookshelf we have with us, Joanna Penn. And I'm yeah. Yeah, we're like, yay. So welcome, Joanna, and please tell us about yourself.

Tell us o obviously you have been a great influence in the AI space, but let our audience know a little bit about you and where you're at with the AI journey.

Joanna Penn: Oh, thanks for having me. I am [00:03:00] Joanna Penn and I write books for authors under that name and also JF Penn, where I write thrillers, action adventure, crime horror, short stories, travel memoir, and oh, also I'm a podcaster, the Creative Penn Podcast, and I have a second podcast called Books and Travel, which is more deeper side of things. But yeah, I really got into self-publishing at the beginning of the sort of technological revolution that we, the first one we lived through, which from sort of 2007 with the launch of the Kindle and the iPhone and that was the thing that got me into publishing. And because I wrote before that, but I then took it seriously, started my own business. And then essentially when it was 2016 when Alpha Go beat Lee Sedol at the Chinese game of Go and it was Move 37, the first creative move by a machine.

And that just made me prick up my ears. I always read Wired and I was going to a [00:04:00] lot of tech conferences and I was like, this is really interesting. And so from 2016 I've had people on my podcast, I blogged a lot about this. In 2020, I wrote a book on artificial intelligence, blockchain, and virtual worlds, which hilariously is still coming true.

Like chapter by chapter every few years, and it was about the next decade. So by 2030 I expect it all to have come true.

So yeah, I guess that's how I got into it. And in the same way that I jumped on the technological revolution of the iPhone and then of course podcasting came off the back really of mobile commerce and would not have a career without the digital revolution, I now see that this is the first early years of what is a new technological revolution that we will see change a lot. Where we are now, it's just the beginning, but things are gonna change a lot and I think that's a super exciting time. So that's a bit of how I got into it, I suppose.

Steph Pajonas: i've been listening to your podcast for a long time. I don't think from the [00:05:00] beginning, obviously, because I started writing in 2013.

So you had already been podcasting for a few years at that point. And I remember, just like cleaning around the house and having you in my ears and getting caught up on all the different news, which was fantastic for somebody who was just getting started. And then you started talking about this technology on your podcast and I was like, ha, that's super, super cool, super interesting.

I don't even know how I would use that. Right. And now I'm using it all the time. But it is funny to think about those first couple of years when it just seems so new and so interesting and now it is like virtually pretty much everywhere, right?

Joanna Penn: Yeah, and obviously the early sort of AI before generative AI, I mean we all use Amazon and Google and all these things.

Even Spotify and Netflix and these companies are built on AI discovery engines, and I think people forget that sometimes. So [00:06:00] realistically, that was some of the beginning stuff. We didn't really have any easy access. I do remember the GPT 2 and I was like I am technical, not as technical as you, Steph.

And I was like I can't use that. Through some random API thing. Yeah. But then GPT-3, and then of course in November, 2022 when Chat GPT started, that was when I had my first kind of WTF moment and goes on from there.

But I feel like for all of this, it's all about curiosity. In the time that I've been in self-publishing, there have been so many companies that have arrived and disappeared. There have been so many people who have arrived and disappeared. There have been so many changes in technology and in the systems that we use and the processes we use.

But throughout, it's why are we doing this? What is the point? And for me. We are here 'cause we love books. there are much easier ways to make money, especially in technology and AI than with books. So I feel like this is really only for people who really care about their [00:07:00] writing, their creativity, what we put out in the world.

And we all have all these things in our head that we want to turn into real things in the world, like books. And so yeah, I feel like that's what we have to keep in mind. Because this is not the end point either. I guess this is, maybe it feels like 2008, 2009 in terms of some of the vitriol and some of the sort of Anti AI artisan authors out there in the same way that when I started in self-publishing, it was considered to be the worst thing that you could do. Our books were called The Tsunami of Crap and we were second rate and all of that.

And then by around 2012, so maybe it took five years, then we started to see people coming in, and now it's a kind of respected business choice. And now I don't think we have such a sort of warlike scenario with trad pub versus indie or KU versus wide. I feel like [00:08:00] these things dissipate over time. And if you look at history, that's what happens every time.

So I'm pretty confident that things will settle down and that things will continue to change as well.

Steph Pajonas: I agree. I think that what we're seeing is people trying out the technology now, like just like they did with self-publishing. There were a lot of people who dipped their toes in.

They weren't really sure what they were doing. They were still querying at the same time that they were trying out self-publishing and it's just one of those things where there's a lot of experimenting going on right now.

And something we were talking about before we got started was people are going to be using AI for a lot of different parts of the process.

Some people are using it to be speedier and to get more books out, rapid release, do those kinds of things. Other people are using AI for the creative aspects of their business. Like they, they wanna have more images that represent what they're writing, movies, book trailers, other ways to tell their stories too. Whether that's just as text on the page [00:09:00] or if it's in audio or something like that.

So I really love the whole process of using AI to enhance our creativity. That's what I've always loved about it was the fact that I could go deeper on a character or go deeper on a subject or just look at different ways to say things.

That was another thing too, because for me, I was always stuck in like these patterns of the way that I wrote and I had a voice that I was always working with and AI helped me break out and try different things. And it was one of the things that I've really loved about experimenting with AI, and I know that you love AI for creative purposes as well.

Joanna Penn: Yeah, so actually one of my favorites, and I just before this, I set off some more deep research reports. So probably my number one usage right now is using Chat GPT, the o3 model, which may have changed by this time this goes out, but also Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Research also.

And I'm a very chaotic creative, I'm a discovery writer. [00:10:00] I have all kinds of random things that I will bring in. And what I love is I can put them all in a deep research prompt. And it will, and say, find all the connections here. Find me all the literature about this.

Go into the history of all the places I mentioned. I did one the other day about the history of the Vatican and AI. I was really interested in all the sort of papal walls, or not just AI technology over history and how the Vatican has reacted to technology, but I just did one about the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in Iceland and Jules Verne Journey to the Center of the Earth, which he was inspired by that area, and there's a place called the Black Church and I was like, okay let's go into all this and give me the research reports. And then from there I will go through those reports. I'll find some more books to read and I always ask him, my prompts give me 10 books to read.

And then I'll I've got a ton of books here by my desk on gothic cathedrals, which I'm also researching, so I use those deep research reports to send me off into other things. [00:11:00] Often visits, so I actually visited this area in Iceland. But of course when you are there, you are doing one thing rather than the research. And I was at a gothic cathedral on Monday, so I'm combining these deep research reports to surface interesting things. In fact, the last time I looked, Gemini was on 374 webpages that it's been searching.

And this is the thing, there's no way I would do that much research on my own. So I think it's really valuable. So that would be like my number one use case right now is as a research assistant. I do find that Chat GPT o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro are extraordinary. And when they both came out earlier in 2025 and I started using them, I had another one of those WTF moments because they really are a step above other things.

So my usage of Claude, for example, has really dropped off. Although again, by the time this goes out, they may have taken another leap into something else. These things are always move on.

But just some other things that I [00:12:00] use it for. I use Chat GPT for the title. I have a short story collection, my first collection, which is coming out on Kickstarter. And in fact as we as this goes out, it will be live jf pen.com/buried. And I was like, how do you title a short story collection? It is almost impossible. And so I uploaded all the stories up and said give me 20 titles. And it came up with the one that I love, which is The Buried and the Drowned.

So that is actually the title, the Buried and the Drowned. And if my writing is JF Penn, you will understand how appropriate this is. So I did that and then I was like, okay, can you give me some prompts for Midjourney to do the book cover? Because for the last two years really since I've been using Midjourney. All my book covers are Midjourney. Yeah, pretty much without fail, all my book covers are midjourney, and so it gave me some prompts. I went to Midjourney, did all the iterations as we do, and found an awesome [00:13:00] picture, which is the cover for The Buried and the Drowned. And then what I do is I still work with my human editor and my human book cover designer. Jane Dixon Smith, who's been my designer for more than a decade. And so I send her my AI images and I did lots of iterations, and then she does the fonts and all of that kind of thing. So I still love doing hybrid approach of AI plus human .

Oh, and then Claude does my sales descriptions and a lot of the kind of sales copy.

And I do sometimes do first draft writing with Claude, but every line I human write and or human edit. So I hand edit my editor edits. But also I do work with Pro Writing Aid, which has some wonderful AI powered tools and editorial reports as well. So that's some of my tools.

Do you want more or do you have any comments on that?

Danica Favorite: I'm sitting here going, oh my gosh, I need to already the research stuff. I'm like, can we go back to that? Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I geek out on. You're my [00:14:00] dream podcast guest, but like seriously, I'm like, I wanna someday go on a historical site visit with Jo Penn because oh my goodness, we would nerd out together so hard.

Joanna Penn: That may one day be a thing.

When I started my Books and Travel website, I was planning to do trips and retreats and that kind of thing. It may happen, Danica.

Danica Favorite: I'm here for it. That is the Danica dream life right there. I love how you talk about using a variety of pieces and different tools in your process and the human factor because, I think that so many authors think of it as this all or nothing thing, and they hear about something on our podcast, they're like, oh no, I have to use that. You don't, and I really love that you have found, these are the things that work for me. This is my process. This is what I love to do and I'm always going to do it. And then this is what I'm happy to hand off to the robot over lords.

Even, with the research you're like, okay, give me a list of 10 books. You're not saying summarize these 10 books for me. No. You're getting the list of 10 books and then you're gonna [00:15:00] read those 10 books.

So I think that's really a good thing to pull out for our listeners to understand that it really is finding the pieces that you love and doing what you love.

And I'm really eager to hear more about that side of it because I know that as we were talking beforehand, you were talking about some of the things that you love, and I'd love to hear more about that for you to share with our listeners in terms of you following your passions and how AI is helping you with that.

Joanna Penn: Yeah, so we can come back to some more tools in a bit then. But I think one of the things that I have found with ai because I think maybe, 'cause I've been using it for quite a long time now, and you have these moments and I think it's really important to acknowledge that you do have moments of going what is the point?

And. We have to acknowledge that and we should acknowledge it because it may well have happened again with GPT 5. It will certainly happen at some point. I think when I wrote that book in 2020, I said, GPTX, because by the time we get to whatever number down the line, and that was [00:16:00] before X was after Twitter, but as in, GPT 27 or whatever it is, these things are the worst that they're ever gonna be right now.

So we do have to have that moment of, okay, what am I good for? Because even if people don't believe AI can generate a book right now with one click, and I know we have some people who know that can be done. That is not the point to me.

The point is what is the human element and what am I good for? I can't lift a rock like, a machine can lift a rock out the road, you know when the workers are outside and perhaps, no, truly, I'm not the best human writer and I won't be the best writer, AI will best me.

But that doesn't matter. Because it's about what I want to create and what is most human for me.

Maybe I was using AI tools for a lot of productivity. I was oh, I can generate these images and I can put them on Instagram, and I can do all this stuff, and I can do all the ads, and oh [00:17:00] my goodness, I can do all the things.

And then I just had that moment of what is worth doing as human me. And what I come down to and people don't know my background. I have a master's in theology from the University of Oxford. All my writing as JF Penn is very centered around the darker side. There's a lot of death, but there's also a lot of thinking about the meaning of life.

And I talk about Memento Mori. I actually have, I have for people on the video, I have my little Memento Mori coin here on my thing. And you might see behind me, I've got a, sugar skull from, which is a sort of Mexican skull with the butterflies colorful skull. And I think about this a lot.

And so one of the wonderful things I guess I've been doing, and I've got this gothic cathedral project, which is very much about the sense of time, visiting things that are 800 years old, a thousand years old, and feeling small against the backdrop of time and deep history. And that to me is a very human element.

And so what this has actually done, it's [00:18:00] freed me. I used to be on social media a lot and I feel like reasoning around AI has made me feel like I don't need to do that. I cannot go as fast as the machine, and I don't want to. I don't want to speed up. I want to slow down. And so I can tell you guys and I've announced it on my podcast by the time this goes out. But I'm actually starting another master's 'cause we love education, right? I'm actually doing a Master's in Death, Religion and Culture. So there will be papers on sort of dark travel, which I'll talk about on my Books and Travel podcast. I'll be looking at death and literature and I'll be just really getting into the more human element because at the end of the day.

We are physical humans and we will physically die. And this is very interesting to me. I've always thought about becoming a funeral celebrant. Again, something that I don't think will be replaced by AI by the time we have a robot funeral celebrant I'm not sure what [00:19:00] society will be like.

So I feel like this is, it might be turning 50, it might be post menopause, but it's certainly like thinking about the bigger question. It's lovely to be able to tell you this and bring this challenge to you and the listeners on this show because we don't need AI to make us more like machines.

We can use AI to help us be more human. And perhaps that is the more important thing. So do you think I'm completely mad? You can.

Steph Pajonas: No.

Danica Favorite: I am sitting here cheering because th this is really where I have been going in my own life. I love that these are the kinds of thoughts that I have been thinking in terms of my own humanity.

People talk about the AI taking over and replacing us, but the truth is we are already part of the industrial complex machine of the world, and we are in a lot of ways just cogs in a wheel. And it's funny you talk about visiting like the graves and the [00:20:00] cathedrals because I just got back from Europe and I got to go to the Pantheon in Paris and seeing like the graves and where some of my literary heroes are buried and just realizing that we are so busy with life that we don't have time to contemplate what meaning our lives have and how we are giving to the world.

I just had a conversation with one of my good friends about this yesterday is that I recognize that comes from a place of privilege. Like we are privileged that we get to contemplate these things, but if we have the tools like AI to free us, to allow us to go down that path. I am all for that because we need more of that in this world.

Jo, I'm excited for this direction and I can't wait to hear more and see where this takes you because I think this is exactly what AI should be doing for us.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. It should be freeing us to do the kinds of things that we really [00:21:00] want to do.

For me, I've had plenty of existential crisises crises in the last several years. There have been plenty of times where I've been like, Oh crap. Wow. This is what is even the point anymore? And I know that we all ask those questions about lots of points in our lives, whether it's business related or family related or personal, et cetera.

We all ask those questions like, what am I here for? What am I supposed to be doing? I keep coming back to the fact that I have all of these stories in my brain and I want to tell them. Now, I don't need to tell them rapidly or anything like that, but they need to get out of my brain somehow at some point, right?

And that's what I use AI for. I use it to help me get those thoughts down, get them out of my head, get them someplace where I can play with them and have fun with them.

I also use it for the deep research. I love the deep research. It is so much fun. I also use deep [00:22:00] research for my own home life. I needed a new pair of sneakers. I was like here's how I walk and this, I had plantar fascitis and give me like five brands and it was great. It went out, did all the stuff for me. So it can do so much. It doesn't necessarily have to even be about like a subject that you're really super excited about.

It can be about something mundane that you have to just get done so that you can push that part of your life aside and do something more fun and creative. And this is what I love AI for, is it is doing lots of different things in my life. And I've been embracing it and just telling people to just find things that will enhance you and make you better at what you're doing. It does not have to replace anything.

Joanna Penn: Yeah. And I think one of the I know productivity is a big theme on the show, and I absolutely appreciate the people who've shared tips on all of that. But I think one of the most important things about productivity is questioning whether something should be done because people [00:23:00] spend money outsourcing things, or they spend money on the tools. Let's be honest, if you do all the tools like we do, you're spending some money every month. So you have to have good reasons to do these things. And I just find myself questioning, should I do this? I'm quite famous now for saying I won't be on TikTok and thus I'm not.

There's nothing wrong with it if you fancy that yourself, but just not my thing. And so it's what is worth doing? What is worth spending the time doing? And so I would urge people to really think about that.

Now, you mentioned images earlier. So Midjourney for example, again, we're not, we don't have to be in love with the specific tool either. We're in love with what happens what we want to create. I've used Midjourney for a couple of years. Who knows where it will be by the time this goes out. 'cause they're being sued by Disney, which is pretty big deal.

But the point is, I was using runway for videos for my book trailers, and I love making book trailers. I love making images. I'm a very visual writer. But then Midjourney video came out and I ditched runway just like that I just [00:24:00] went and canceled it. And I, we find new tools and that's gonna happen as well as things change.

NotebookLM, I wanted to give a shout out to NotebookLM, which is fantastic. I do a lot of, because I don't watch videos, I use it with YouTube a lot. If people put out stuff just on YouTube, I take the YouTube URL, put it into Notebook and it will then say, what are 10 points I can learn from this video? So that's really super useful.

ElevenLabs. I did a voice clone for my novel Death Valley, which I think is awesome. Although the short story collection that again, is on Kickstarter. I human narrate all of those. That is my human narration. I am doing some translations again, but what's funny is I got into translations way too early, like 2014 and was burnt by that because there wasn't really an audience back then on Kindle. That is something I'm interested in. But I do use human proofreaders because again, I think having a human read everything we write before we publish, and I [00:25:00] only publish under my own names, so Joanna Penn and JF Penn. I don't hide any of my names. So to me it represents my body of work. So I must be responsible for every single line that is published.

But also with Kickstarter, it's really focusing on the artisan thing. So again, on the video, I've got my beautiful hardbacks with the foil and the sprayed edges. And they've got custom end papers in which again I did with Midjourney.

And helps me write my copy. It does my character images, does the images for the interstitials in the book. So I love the artwork that it can help me do.

Another tip is obviously to get it to write the prompt so you can describe it in English, or as I said, upload a story if you are happy with the terms and conditions. Obviously. But then you can say, write me 10 prompts for this. And you can do that with pretty much any tool. So for example, you can say, write me the prompt for Sora, or write me the prompt for whatever.

I guess the other thing I wanted to just [00:26:00] say on Kickstarter was that Kickstarter has a very clear disclosure policy, and I have always disclosed my usage. I know some people aren't happy with that, but I always have done that. And the Kickstarter thing, I list out everything that I use and I know some people are worried, but I've never had any problems. What I love about Kickstarter is like you have to pay.

And this is another thing, the paywall. I think is an important aspect for an era of difficulty, let's say. And I put most of my AI stuff behind my Patreon paywall, which is just a few dollars a month, but it actually means I can share a lot more detail there that, and I used to share it on my blog and I just don't anymore.

Steph, you have an open substack and that's, you've just gone for it there.

Steph Pajonas: Yes, I did. It's funny that you mentioned that because I was just looking at all of my stats this morning to see how it was doing, and it's phew! Straight up, right? I gave a lot of thought to this because I was like, I wanna [00:27:00] write on Substack.

What do I write about? I was like, do I write about just being an author? Do I write about, do I do fiction? There's so many ideas surrounding Substack. But then I was just like, you know what? I have all of this knowledge to impart about AI and how I'm using it and how I feel about it in the community as well.

So maybe I will just write about that and I'll be open about it and the haters be damned and I'll get through it somehow. Right. So yes, I did do it. I am shooting up in the numbers, which is great, and I'm glad that people are finding it and finding it helpful, which is what I want to be doing.

I could put it behind paywall. I thought about that for a long time, but I was like, you know what, I'm just. Just gonna, I'm just gonna make it free. I, as part of the Future Fiction Academy, am behind a paywall for all of that, right? So if you're going to wanna come and really learn, get down and dirty with the prompts and the tools, and like all the productivity and blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that we do, then you're gonna have to pay, obviously [00:28:00] by joining the Future Fiction Academy, getting in the accelerator, doing all that kind of stuff.

My knowledge is there too. And that's the more intense, more detailed stuff that I can do. But then I try to impart some wisdom on Substack.

It has already brought me some haters, but what are you gonna do? I was expecting it. I was actually expecting it much sooner. I got several articles into this process before somebody glommed onto the fact that I was talking about AI out in the open. Oh my God. For shame. But yeah, what are you gonna do?

You found what worked for you. You were like I'll just talk about the Creative Penn stuff, your podcast, and those sorts of things on your blog. And then put the more AI stuff behind the Patreon paywall, and I love that too. I love all of the things that you've been talking about there too, because you talk about Midjourney, you talk about the videos that you've made, you talk about deep research. It's great. If people are looking for that kind of stuff, they can definitely go find you on [00:29:00] Patreon too.

I want to talk a little bit about the fact that when you write with AI and you're using it as an assistant and it's helping you out that you do qualify every single word that goes out into the public because I think that's important for people to hear and that the majority of authors are doing that.

They're not just pushing a button, getting a draft, and like sending it out there without reading it. The majority of us are working on a few sentences and adding that in and revising, or sometimes even I like to generate a whole chapter and then go through it and be like, yes, no, I love this. Reword this. Oh my God. Don't use the word crucial again. Get rid of it, and then everything is happy and I'm happy with it by the time I've gotten all the way through it, and then I move on to my next chapter or whatever it may be.

That's the same thing that we're doing with Your First Draft, which is a tool that should be pretty much public by the end of the year. It's all about [00:30:00] getting the words out, getting your story out. It's very hands on for the author. Adding in all of your details about your characters and your worlds and what happens and if it's a mystery, what clues you're leaving and red herrings you have. It's all very author centric, even though the draft comes out and then you now have words and you're like, oh gosh, now I have words I need to work with.

Read through them, make another draft. Right? This is so important for people to realize that we're not like generating willy-nilly and then publishing. It doesn't work that way, especially if we're gonna put our name on it and be proud of that. Right. So I love that about you because you've been always very upfront about that.

The fact that you're looking at it, you're revising it, and everything that you read and you've loved is something that you were willing to stand behind.

Joanna Penn: Yeah, and again, it comes back to that sort of what is worth doing with my time. And I write a very extensive author's note for everything [00:31:00] in every short story in this collection. Every novel has a lot of why this is so personal to me, and I think that is really important. Again, everything we put out, whether we use AI tools or not, should have that spark in us and should be worth publishing. And I think it is also worth reminding people that generating words is not a business model, whether that is with AI tools or with your hands, or with transcription or whatever. Like a pile of words is not a business or it doesn't reach readers. And I think this is even more important in an age of AI, is we still have to connect. Like you can publish three books a day on Amazon if you want, but that doesn't mean anyone's gonna read them in the same way that back in the day when there were no books on the Kindle, those books did get downloaded and read because there was nothing there.

But now there are so many books. You can upload a book or a book an hour or a minute if you want, and no one's gonna read it. So I think that is [00:32:00] what may happen with the sort of go faster, productize everything, is that people will realize that isn't a business plan, that isn't a, and that isn't, is that a career?

That is a long-term happy, creative career because, like I said I started writing in 2005, so that's, 20 years now and I've seen so many people leave the business and I think this will be another inflection point. People are going to leave the business over this, whatever their reason, but the people who stay, and that obviously includes us because we've been wrestling with this since it came out.

And it is important to wrestle with it. And I love that we're all being honest about the wrestling with it. And again, as you said, don't tar us all with the same brush. Like we don't all believe the same thing. Like indie authors, we're a broad church. We all do things in different ways.

That's why we're independent. We believe in freedom and live and let live. And all of that kind of stuff, and I think that's a really important attitude as well. It's like you might choose one way and someone else will choose a different way. So I know [00:33:00] my way isn't for everyone.

Like for example, if I could have written a romance series, and a book a month and a romance series, I would have. But not me, not my thing, and not something I want to try and do with AI tools. Like I could probably do that with an AI tool, but it's not something I want to do. So yeah, I would just urge people to come back to that question is what do you want to create?

And how much do you wanna use the AI tools and in what way? But always start with you, basically.

Danica Favorite: I think that's really important. Because, it's so funny. I went to a dating seminar last night and one of the things that they said that really floored me that I was like, duh.

But what you're saying here is exactly what they said is what are your values? And always stay grounded in what your values are because you want what you're doing. For me, if I, end up dating someone, I want someone who matches my values and my career, my writing that needs to be reflective of my values and what's [00:34:00] important to me.

And that's, where I was talking earlier about slowing down and doing kind of more contemplative stuff because that is what I value. That's why when you were telling us about going back to school, I was so excited because I'm like, oh my goodness, this is so Jo. This is so her and her values.

And I think that so much of the question about AI it's not necessarily value driven. It's fear driven. It's, oh no, what's gonna take away my livelihood? What's gonna do this? Okay, but wait let's stop and look at what the value is behind this. And where those values are. Because Steph and I have talked about some of our early passion for AI was accessibility.

And making things accessible to people who wouldn't ordinarily have it. So for me, one of my core values is that everyone's story matters. Everyone has a story to tell and their place in the world matters. If AI can help them do that, then I am all for [00:35:00] that. Again, like that's going at it from that value angle as opposed to, oh no, am I gonna have a job in two years?

Because frankly I could go flip burgers at McDonald's if I just need a job. I don't want to

Joanna Penn: No. They have a bot for that.

Danica Favorite: But really think about that is how do your values connect with what you're doing? And again, I realize this is coming from a place of privilege, but being able to say, okay, what does meaningful work look like and how can I add meaning to the world?

And really looking at how can AI be a partner and a collaborator in that.

Steph Pajonas: Man, these are such good things to say. I love it. You know what, I'm reminded of the Question the Premise, of course, from Becca Syme, like question the premise, question what you need from your life, question what you need from business when it comes to things like social media, do you really need to be doing that? Question the premise.

Because there are plenty of people who tell me every day that I should be on TikTok, and I'm like no, no [00:36:00] thanks. I'm right there with Jo on that one. No, I'm good. I don't need to do that. In fact, like I recently shut down my Instagram, I put up an image. And I said, I'm gonna use this to just tell you about books when I've got them.

That's pretty much it. Like I don't need to put up a lot of promo here. I don't need to be, scheduling things to this to keep an algorithm going. Nope, I'm not gonna do any of that kind of stuff anymore. And I also pretty much did the same thing for my Facebook page as well for my author side because I was just like, yeah, I also don't wanna feed the algorithm. I'm not interested in that.

What I wanna do is I wanna write my books and get my ideas down and publish them and move on to the next idea that I am excited about. And I think that what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing here is that is what we're all pretty much excited about is like being in touch with our creative side, using these tools to be creative like we want to be. And then, just [00:37:00] putting the other stuff aside that we don't necessarily need.

Joanna Penn: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's a great message, I think. And just to, again, always just come back to, so what makes me happy and what brings me alive and what is the point in doing this particular task?

And you might just end up feeling freer like we have by releasing some of those things altogether. And then lean into what you love. Because it might be weird like me, you might love the really weird stuff. But when you start sharing that you love the weird stuff, people just say that they love that stuff too.

So it's amazing how many people love gothic cathedrals at the end of the day. So yeah, and I just was laughing about your Instagram there, but I saw this thing that said I dunno where I saw it, but it was like, generation X thinks Instagram is a photo album. And I'm like, yes. Yes. What else? What else is it meant to be?

What It's not like That's exactly how I use it. It's a photo album. Same

Steph Pajonas: Same.

Danica Favorite: All three Gen X women in this podcast.

Joanna Penn: I was like, I didn't know it could be used in any other way. [00:38:00]

Steph Pajonas: No. And I've been on Instagram, I think for 13 years at this point. I started using it right at the beginning. 'Cause I was also a Flickr person. I like.

Joanna Penn: Oh yeah, me too. I'm still on Flickr.

Steph Pajonas: I stopped going to Flickr when they sold themselves like five times, to I was like, Yahoo. Yeah, Yahoo and then someplace else. Right. And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna move off Flickr and go straight to Instagram and Instagram was all photos and it was so awesome.

And I miss those days so much because now it's all videos and algorithms and sponsored posts and you may like this and that is no fun for me. And I had to go and actually start a brand new like private account to just see friends' photos. I just wanna see my friends' photos. Again, trying to get back to the things that I love, which was, I like to snap photos. Some guy three blocks over caught me taking a picture of a monarch butterfly this morning when I was out on my walk. Like I love to, to travel and take photos and I have a D-S-L-R. I still like to take pictures with that, and that [00:39:00] is a part of my creative side. So I'm always just trying to find the tools that will help me be as creative as possible.

And now AI is one of them as well.

Joanna Penn: Fantastic.

Danica Favorite: I love that too. And I've been drawn to the sign behind Jo. For those of you who are listening, Joe has a sign behind her that says, measure your life by what you create. And I think that's really what we're all doing here. We're these three creative women who love creating and each of us has our own creative process and things we'd love to create and love to do, and we're finding ways to do it. I really hope that those of you listening can find out what you create and figure out what you love to create, and then measure your life by that. Not all the productivity and all the other stuff we do talk about, because it's important in the sense that for me, it just frees me up to give me that creative space.

Joanna Penn: And I'll just say on the poster I made it myself. It's letterpress, so the old [00:40:00] school letterpress where you have to pick all the metal letters and then get the ink and all of that. So I made that my, myself and I do, and we all love creating. So this has been a great conversation. Thanks for having me.

Steph Pajonas: No, we're so excited. Why don't we make sure that people know all about your Kickstarter and your website and your podcast and all that great stuff before we go. Yeah,

Joanna Penn: sure. The Creative Penn with a double n.com and also the Creative Penn podcast if you want that. Or the Books and Travel podcast.

And I also have a YouTube channel on that. And my Kickstarter is at jf pen.com/buried. If you wanna just even go and look at my book cover from Midjourney have a look at that. And all my books under JF Penn or Joanna Penn. Oh, and I am on Instagram at JF Penn author. It's my photo album as we discussed.

Danica Favorite: Yes. And also your Patreon.

Joanna Penn: Oh, yes. My, I call it Patreon being British, but it's patreon.com/the creative Penn.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I love her Patreon, so [00:41:00] go check that out especially, and the Kickstarter is gonna be awesome because I know that you've been talking about this short story series for a while and it is exciting to see you be able to put all of those together into one product and get it out there.

I actually really love going in, going through everybody's Kickstarters and seeing what they're doing because it is so cool to see books with sprayed edges and foil and like all this kind of stuff. And five years ago people couldn't do that. So just look at how far we've come, right?

All right. Danica, anything else you wanna say before we head out today?

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Just our usual stuff. Find us all on socials. Follow us. Make sure you're liking, subscribing. We're on YouTube, Facebook. Look for Brave New Bookshelf, publish, arrive Future Fiction Academy. Make sure you're following all the good stuff and getting all the good news.

And of course, make sure you're checking out Jo's links in the show notes. Definitely want to get some support. And please do share this. The more people we can help, the better because. That is what we do. This is [00:42:00] our labor of love and making sure that people understand they have all kinds of choices and options.

With AI it is just, as we said this whole episode, really, it's not just plug and play one size fits all. It's really about finding out what works for you and what is gonna bring you joy.

Steph Pajonas: I'm all about bringing the joy and so come by brave new bookshelf.com. Read the show notes for this episode.

I'll put them all up there, get all the links on there so you can follow, subscribe, do all that, that kinda stuff. Otherwise we will see you guys in the next episode. Okay, bye everybody. Bye.

Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.