55 - Leveraging AI for Creative Projects with Jill Cooper from The Writing Wives

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite welcome back Jill Cooper from The Writing Wives. Jill shares her insights on using AI as a project management tool, particularly in crafting her cozy LitRPG fantasy series and managing Kickstarter campaigns. She also examines the use of AI for creating effective Facebook ads, emphasizing the importance of understanding reader demographics and tropes. 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 and welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach everyone how to use AI in any part of their process. Mostly authors, but you know, there's other people in there too. I'm also the Editor in Chief of the Future Fiction Press, where we're publishing AI forward books and having a lot of fun doing it.

Ugh. Gosh, I love making covers and pulling TikTok hooks and doing all that publishing fun stuff, because that is, that's just the gravy for me. I just really love it. It's a lot of fun. But anyway we're going to move over to my wonderful co-host Danica Favorite, who's with us today. And she is bright and sunny and sunshiny, [00:01:00] and I'm happy that she's with us today.

So how you doing, Danica? 

Danica Favorite: I am doing great. Thank you. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors on every stage of their journey from crafting the perfect book blurbs and metadata, to getting your books distributed to the widest market possible, to then, once those books have been distributed, to be able to split your royalties. And then along with our good friends at the Future Fiction Academy and the Future Fiction Press, we have every stage of your writing journey covered, which is really great. Because if you are an author and you're looking for ways to make your business more efficient and more productive, really, we have you covered. We can help you, between our, my company and Steph's company. Okay. Not my company. Like I don't own it or anything, but I work for them. Between the two of us, we can really help you. And today we're [00:02:00] excited to have a guest, who has been with us before, Jill Cooper from The Writing Wives. And the thing that's great about our guests is that we bring these guests in intentionally with the idea of finding other ways to help you and finding more efficiencies.

And I think that's what's really exciting for all of us, because as we have said before, and we're gonna always say it, and pound this into people's brains, that you can use AI for whatever makes the most sense for you in your writing business. And we're presenting to you as many options, which is why I'm really excited to have our good friend Jill Cooper from The Writing Wives.

Like I said, she's been here with us before. I will let her introduce herself in a moment. Also just acknowledge that Jill's a good friend of both me and Steph as well as her wife Mel. And what's really great is these differing perspectives on using AI. That's why I [00:03:00] am really excited to have Jill as a guest today.

So Jill, please tell us about yourself. 

Jill Cooper: Hi, I'm Jill Cooper.. I am one part of The Writing Wives which help authors sell more books and market. I'm also though an author. I like to write in pretty much every genre there is. And that's just... I t's the struggle of being an author, I think, is playing in one sandbox, but I choose to play in all the sandboxes instead.

And AI definitely helps me. All the balls in the air, from covers, to writing, to blurbs, to pulling out hooks, and spreading pitches like animate for reels and things like that. But thanks. I am so happy to be here. 

Danica Favorite: Thank, you. I thought one of the things we could talk about, because you did mention your writing, which I love, again as I mentioned, Jill and I are good friends.

We may or may not have a chat that we have open most of the day and [00:04:00] giving each other a hard time about what is happening and what we're writing. And so I've gotten to see Jill's evolution as an author and being able to play with these different ideas. I may or may not harass her on a regular basis about stories that she needs to be writing and... 

Jill Cooper: That I'm not. 

Danica Favorite: Right, right. However, Jill, you have a project that you're working on for Kickstarter ... 

Jill Cooper: Yes. 

Yes. 

Danica Favorite: That I know you're using some good AI stuff for, so why don't you tell us about that? 

Jill Cooper: Sure. That's my cozy lit RPG fantasy series that is inspired by Magic: The Gathering and World of Warcraft. And I'm using it to help me like animate trailers, make some backgrounds. I'm using designers too for like the cover and different things that are just outside my wheelhouse. And I know I need more of a sort of refined hand for, making like a play mat for the magic card game, so it has a place for you put all your, all your cards, and it's [00:05:00] just a lot of fun.

I've been really just taking my time, putting it together. I always joke that it'll launch by 2030. You know, and while I'm piecing this together and waiting for different things to happen, I'm writing other books, other genres. For the cozy Lit RPGI, I've already written like the Reader Magnet and it's ready to go.

Once the Kickstarter...I'm ready to start, sort of, promoting it. And I wrote a short story about the known rogue character based on our friend Dana, who is a tech, guru. And so that's what the gnome does. She's in charge of the crystal wifi in the realm, and it's gonna go haywire.

She needs to go fix it, and then of course, she's going to get eaten by the dragon again.

Steph Pajonas: I know Dana, so this is funny. 

Jill Cooper: Yes, it's so much fun. Yes. It's so Dana, like I, I always joke with Dana like, this Dana character is more Dana than you are like, Yeah, t-shirts magically change. It's just [00:06:00] fun. 

Steph Pajonas: I love this idea. I love how Magic: The Gathering, the card game right, has been around for a long time.

I had a boyfriend in college who played it. It has been around for quite some time and then recently my daughter and her boyfriend have been playing it. I am really impressed with the sticktoitiveness and the the fact that it has stuck around for so long. 

Jill Cooper: It's having sort of a resurgence right now.

Steph Pajonas: I think so. It is having one. I agree. 

Jill Cooper: Yeah, like my daughter was playing it before middle school, like all the kids would bring their Magic: The Gathering cards in, and they just now are launching Magic: The Gathering Star Trek collab. There's Hobbit. I have a couple Hobbit decks. And like I also have now Enchanted like woodland creatures, so it's like a squirrel in like a mage robe.

I'm like, that's such great inspiration for my story. Like I'm gonna definitely grab that. And you know, before AI, I don't know if I would've taken the task of I wanna write a story that's gonna have enchanted scrolls and now all these pastries are buffs. [00:07:00] And the AI helps me keep track of who's buffed. And like it'll just start spouting off the scrolls in the middle of the scene, and it's like, whether it gives dexterity, and you've had this pastry, but now you ate too much of the pastry, so now it's a negative against you and it's not a positive anymore, and it's just fun. 

Steph Pajonas: It sounds like a lot of fun.

I love this, because it's like, it gives a whole new. It gives it like a whole new meaning to the worlds and whatnot. And then you can take a lot of these characters and make them your own. And now you're even doing a Kickstarter where you can even call back to the Magic: The Gathering by doing that place mat and everything.

I'm really inspired by this, I think.... 

Jill Cooper: Yeah, all the characters are gonna get their own Magic: The Gathering card, where I get like the image, and then I have written all the text and how much mana each character costs if you were to actually build a deck and put them into the deck.

And it's just, it's a lot of fun. I tend, especially since COVID, get really overwhelmed by projects or just thinking. So it's nice to have like that AI [00:08:00] partner that takes a lot of the pressure off of me. So it pieces some things together and then it says something that makes me think, oh, then I should do this, or I should do that.

And then it helps me make the lists and keep track of everything that, that I basically want to do, but would definitely feel overwhelmed with trying to do by myself. 

Steph Pajonas: I think the AI is great at helping with overwhelm. I think it can also be very overwhelming itself. Obviously, when... 

Jill Cooper: Sometimes. 

Steph Pajonas: When you're like, give me these ideas for this and it gives you like 30 and you're like, oh God, that was too many, and now I'm overwhelmed.

AI can be super overwhelming. And what we find out is that there are gonna be so many projects coming in the next 5 to 10 years that probably would've never seen the light of day if the AI had not been involved, because that person had the ideas but needed the extra leveling up that the AI gave them, right? Because if you weren't able to keep track of all those characters, and their different [00:09:00] elements, and the things that they are doing, then you might feel overwhelmed and then never actually get to a project. But now you can, because AI is there to help you.

Jill Cooper: Sometimes I'll even ask, I'll be like, okay, what is the first step? What first things do we need to do? So one things I did is I took a Kickstarter that it was like a cozy fantasy, and it did really well. So I created a Claude project at that point, and said here's a really good, a good Kickstarter, that aligns with me, break it down into a template, so we know what we need to reproduce. So then it gave me basically several to-do lists, and then it was like, help me craft the text. And it already had my book uploaded that would fit, the same bot. And then, so it's not writing like the campaign for me, but it's giving me all the different steps that I need to take to achieve that.

What placeholders am I gonna need? What images? B ecause when you go to Kickstarter, and you're just looking at this blank page of here's your campaign. There's nothing on it. I don't know what to do now. I'm just gonna [00:10:00] hit X, and I'm not gonna do a Kickstarter campaign. So they gave me lists of things I need.

So then for the designers I am using, I need this sort of banner. I need this or that. And I need like AI images for the book itself. And for that I actually have an AI designer, because she's a really good designer. And she can use Photoshop and stuff like that I cannot do.

So she can craft better looking AI images by blending different compositions together, that I'm just like, i'm just, I can't do that. So it's really helpful. It's almost like I turned AI into sort of like a mini project manager for this specific thing. And I use AI like that a lot for whether it's making trailers or even in the writing labs, if I want to put together, do say a new webinar.

It helps me make the slideshows, the slide deck, and all that stuff. So I'm able to lean, almost like leaning on someone else, but I would never bother to lean on another human this much.

Danica Favorite: I think it's good because, you're saying about the stuff that you weren't [00:11:00] able to do previously. Again because I've known you a while, like some of these ideas that you've had, I, I've heard you say, oh, wouldn't this be cool? And you're like, oh, ha ha ha. I couldn't do that.

And for me, the excitement in seeing this Kickstarter, by the way, it will be sooner than 2030, mostly because she has people who will hold her accountable um, very lovingly, of course. But like the things that you said, ooh, this would be cool. You didn't know how to do. You didn't have a way to do it, and now you're like, oh, but wait.

How can I do this? And, I should point out that Jill is an experienced person in doing Kickstarters. She and Mal have done many, many a Kickstarter for the things that Mal does and everything like that. So this isn't like Jill has never done a Kickstarter but... 

Jill Cooper: I've always handled the marketing and the major pushing of the Kickstarter.

I've never made the Kickstarter. Like Mal does the graphics and writes the page. [00:12:00] 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Jill Cooper: I've never done that before, and so I'm doing it now for the first time. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Jill Cooper: And I'll be doing the marketing and stuff, which, everyone that knows me, knows I wish I had an AI to do all the marketing that would just....

It's not the writing, it's just this, it's the posting and scheduling that I really get hung up in. I just don't want to do it. I know I shouldn't say that, but I sound like every other author out there I don't want to do marketing. Same. No, I don't want to.

Danica Favorite: But I think that's the skill. And I do think you're more skilled with the Kickstarter stuff than you think you are. Because I know,

Jill Cooper: I'm sure I just get overwhelmed. It's so much. 

Danica Favorite: That's, and that's the thing is that overwhelm of saying, okay, what do I do now? I've seen Mal do...you've helped Mal with her stuff and then, holy cow, this is really big.

How do I do it? And now you've got this way of saying, okay, wait, there is a process I can have. I really appreciated where you were saying, okay, AI, this is what I have. This is [00:13:00] the example of what I want it to do. That is something that I know Steph and the FFA teach a lot about how to get what you want from the AI.

You say, this is what I wanna do, here's an example of it. Make my thing like this example. And so I think that's a really great use of how AI can help you move beyond that overwhelm to do this Kickstarter and to do this other thing that you're excited about. So tell me about what your process looks like.

You've gone into some of the process, and this is where I think you can really give some great insight into using the AI, because I know your AI process in terms of using it as that project manager is something that a lot of authors would really benefit from. 

Jill Cooper: I usually start like any process with telling the AI like what my goal is.

Like, hey we're working on a cozy fantasy lit RPG [00:14:00] with these tropes, and these things. So I always start from a almost like a marketing frame point. This is what we're trying to do, these are the tropes we're calling in 'cause we're trying to hit this ideal reader that is interested in say, you know, World of Warcraft, Gilmore Girls, like coffee and pastry is everything, like those sorts of things, so that the AI has that sort of frame of reference of that this is what we're pulling in.

And I think that helps 'cause I have trouble. Keeping my focus narrow. Once I get a good idea, I'll continue expanding outward. So using the AI gives me tunnel visions a little bit. This is my goal, and this is what I want to achieve. So I have to stay on this track. And then I can feel what I'm getting off the track and pull myself back. 'The AI doesn't normally tell me like, oh, you've gone off on a tangent. Like it's not gonna tell you that it's gonna just do what it wants, what you want, to make you happy. But just that frame of reference helps keep me in line like, okay, here's a cozy setting where the tavern's really a coffee shop, and for fans of these sorts of books [00:15:00] or games are really gonna like this sort of cozy, warm vibe with a dragon that's more like a puppy than a dragon.

And then once I have that, usually then I'll do a blurb and a hook. And then once I have all that laid out, if I'm using it to help me manage a project, it will actually even start asking me, because now the AI knows me so well, would you like me to start generating hooks?

Would you like me to start generating Facebook ad copy? And I generally will have it give me like, say five examples. And then we'll break those examples down into like different themes. Here's the cozy coffee theme. And here's the sort of the system game mechanics theme.

Here's stuff for people that were like, maybe grew up playing world.... I can't even believe I'm using this phrase, grew up playing World of Warcraft, you know, that remember the main cities based on Stormwind. Like it needs to look and feel like Stormwind. Like how do we do that? I dunno if you've ever played Warcraft, but that's basically how I pieced it together.

And then all the characters are almost like [00:16:00] an archetype. There's the Paladin, but he's no longer a Paladin. He's like former Paladin, tm. Like he's trademarked himself to be the former Paladin. So everyone is a little bit funny and playing on an archetype that exists in this sort of role playing game.

And I just hope people will get that cozy, warm vibe from it once it hits. And from there then I do images and banners, and start to basically create an asset folder and file for everything that I'm generating. And that's generally, like even talking about it now I'm getting overwhelmed with my own process.

Like sometimes just making images and moving them into the folder is it for the day? I am done on this Kickstarter project for today, 'cause I cannot handle doing anything else. And I think that's something we as authors have to give ourselves permission to be like, hit that full overwhelm and then it's okay to stop and do something else for a while and then come back to it tomorrow, or whenever it is you feel like you're no longer overwhelmed. And that's when I use AI to give me [00:17:00] like, okay, what are my next steps? And then I can take it like a step at a time and then break it down even further. Okay, this is my step one, but what are the steps inside the step just to make it a little less, little more manageable, and a ble to hit things piece at a time,

Steph Pajonas: I love using AI as part of my ...part of my project management process, because it will chunk things up for you into small, manageable bits along the way, and that also helps me. I am extremely overwhelmed. I am helping run the Future Fiction Academy, the Future Fiction Press.

I've got my own pen names. I got this podcast and whatever. There are times when I will go to AI and be like, these are the major tasks, and I try to prioritize my tasks into like high and medium and low. Help me work my way through these tasks, because otherwise I will be overwhelmed.

There will be a point where I can only do one or two tasks a day, and that's not very, that's not [00:18:00] very efficient, but that is sometimes where we get to. But at least the AI has given me those things in chunks, and then therefore I can work towards my goal and not just stagnate, which is what I would have normally done.

I would've gotten under the covers and pulled the covers over my head and been like, nope, I'm not doing anything today, because I'm way too overwhelmed. Do you get overwhelmed too, Danica as well, with this kind of stuff? 

Danica Favorite: Yes. Yes, for sure. And I really love what Jill said to give people that permission to say, okay, I'm done.

And to be okay with that, to say, okay, this is all I can handle, all the bandwidth I have today. You know, a lot of people, they talk about how many spoons you have for this or whatever, and all the different talk about that. And we have to remember that AI is a great tool to help us, but we still get to that point where we say, okay, I'm done.

And be okay with that moment. And I'm so glad Jill said that of just being [00:19:00] okay. Okay, this is all I can manage to handle today. I'm done for today. Now I'm gonna go do something to fill up my cup, make myself feel better. And, like what you were saying, Steph, about having all of these things on your plate.

I'm doing a lot of that same stuff. I work for Publish Drive. I write. I, I have some stuff that I help Jill with. I'm trying to launch my own coaching business. I'm trying to do my own personal healing. I'm also working with personal development coaches on things that I want to do, and yet still trying to have a life and enjoy that life.

And for me, being able to have the AI to guide me and say, okay, here are the tasks. Let's break it down. Let's prioritize. But then also having that moment of saying, I'm done. Like I, I've said this in other podcast episodes where the biggest thing AI has given me is time. Guys, I went out with a friend last night.

We went to an event, and we had a fabulous time. We went to dinner, and [00:20:00] then she and I went and did this other like connection event, and it was great. And pre AI, I wouldn't have been able to do that. And the fact of the matter is I don't know that I would've even used that time productively. Because even though I have a lot of stuff on my plate that is actually due within the next week or two that is overwhelming me, I also know my most productive time wouldn't have been sitting and doing that, because I would've been like, Steph, I would've had the covers over my head going, oh my gosh, what I do? And because I kind of have that stuff saying no. Here's what you can do.

Here are the tasks you need to do today. Okay, cool. Oh, look, I have this chunk of time in the evening I can go out and play with a friend. And I want us all to find that freedom. But the other thing I wanted to call out that Jill had said a little bit earlier, but I [00:21:00] wanted to pull that out. I know we're talking about something totally unrelated, but we get a lot of questions about it.

I wanted to share this, because it is Jill's area of expertise as well, is Jill mentioned how she's got the AI already trained to write her Facebook ad copy. And I know people are always asking about, how do I use AI for Facebook ads? Wait, should we use AI for Facebook ads?

And The Writing Wives one of their biggest areas of expertise and genius is Facebook ads. So Jill, can you speak a little bit to Facebook ads and AI? 

Jill Cooper: Sure. I think it's easier to use AI to help you write your Facebook ad copy if you know who your ideal reader is and you know what tropes you're trying to call out, which is more important now than ever that Facebook is basically forcing their Facebook AI onto people.

You can set all the audience stuff off you want, but at some point Facebook's gonna say we know better than you and basically ignore that. And if you're like, I don't know who my [00:22:00] ideal reader is, I don't know what my tropes really are. But most authors think they know, but sometimes they don't.

I'm sorry. It's true. You could basically could start by uploading your book into AI or you can start small. You could start with your blurb if you think your blurb is good. Most blurbs need a little work at least, but you could start there and say, what would you compare this to that's currently selling on Amazon or, so you could even say KDP. 'Cause if you are using Chat it, it can search KDP and it can search the Amazon bestsellers and it can draw comparisons for you. And then if you, and then if you feel comfortable uploading part of your book or your whole book into Chat, you can, it will make comparisons.

Like it will say oh, like right now I'm writing, um MM Vampire Romance, rockstar. So we're like, oh, this is very Queen of the Damned. This is very Vampire Lestat meets Twilight Meet meets Almost Famous, because the love interest is a journalist, and here are the tropes, and it will just gimme lists of tropes for each of those and say you can combine the tropes like this.

So you will get very [00:23:00] specific stuff. And at that point then you can say, now that we, we're targeting these, these movies slash books, we know we're targeting these tropes. Can you write me the ad copy based on my book? And then this morning he gave me five examples and they're all punchy.

They're all good. They all require a little bit of finessing, 'cause AI doesn't, isn't gonna get it perfect. You need to put like a little bit of touch on it. Then basically you have that, then you ask it for headlines. The headlines usually are really good. They're almost like elevator pitch headlines, like they're five, maybe they're five words long tops.

And I think that works great for a Facebook ad headline. And from there I'll ask it to describe the image. So it'll describe an image, and then I'll take the image description, and I'll go stick it in Midjourney and then I'll start generating images. And for ones I really like, I'll ask Midjourney to animate them usually a little bit.

'Cause they can get funky if you tell it to anime a lot. Not sure what that rockstar just did, but I'm pretty sure he pulled the other guy down. Now they're rolling around on the stage or something. I don't think that's gonna fly with Facebook. Um, [00:24:00] but you know, It gives you like, oh, so many great ideas.

And that's basically where I start. I do not try to write the creative, make the images, and create the Facebook ad all in one day. I create everything into it, like an asset Word document, where I split it up. Here are all my headlines, here's all my medium text. Here's all my long texts, and here's my images where I just copy and paste them in just so I can see them. And I do that, like anytime I do a headline, I think of a headline. I just open the document and pop it in. And then on the day where I'm making Facebook ads, I'll just open the document and then I can just copy, paste everything onto the Facebook ad creator, and then I close it.

I'm done. I made the ad. I'm all set. I don't have to create the, the creative. And make the ad in the same day. 'Cause by the end of that, I'd be so burnt out. I'm not making dinner. I'm not, I could barely order pizza. Like, that, it would be over for me. Like today I said, oh, today's Facebook ad day. So what I did is I created the new fan page and I uploaded like some images, uploaded [00:25:00] the cover photo.

I'm done. Okay. Tomorrow I'll make the actual image. Or sorry, I'll make the actual ad. 'Cause I can't just, I can't task math like that. I need to switch gears all the time. And I guess that's, 'cause I have ADHD and that's why it's also important for me to have 10 projects going on at once.

All in very like, this one's Kickstarter is ready and this one is ready to be published. And this one's still being edited, so I can just jump around like throughout the day. But. I know I went off on a tangent, sorry, but that's how I target Facebook.

Danica Favorite: No, it was, I thought it was a great tangent to go on because it, it still underscores, the topic that we were on before I made you go on the Facebook ad ta tangent, which is yes, the AI can do all of this stuff, but you still recognize your limitations. You still recognize that, okay, this is not a do it all in one day task. For some people maybe it is, but you, we have talked a lot about, on this podcast about people dealing with their neurodivergence and [00:26:00] dealing with their limited capacities, whether that be from exhaustion or long COVID or just stress from life. And for you to say, okay, look, I know my capacity here, which AI has helped you with and AI has helped you been able to do this because again, I've known you a long time and I've known like pre AI, and I've helped you come up with some of the stuff pre AI in, in researching the tropes and how much faster and easier it is with the AI. But just because it's faster and easier, it doesn't mean that you don't still need the rest. And I appreciate that about you and sharing that with our audience.

Because you just gave what I thought was an amazing, very short masterclass in how to come up with the Facebook ad copy. That was great. Also recognizing, hey, I don't have this all at once, and even though I know your word documents, because I've seen your word documents, like it just occurred to me [00:27:00] today, all of these mumbo jumbo chats that I have going on, like, why am I not doing what you do and putting them into these word documents to organize it a little better. I'm like, oh. I think every episode there's somebody who says something that, like the lightning the lightning bolt.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is a lightning bolt or the light bulb goes on above my head to say, oh yeah, do this. Because again, I think that we can be over reliant on the AI to do something for us. And the other thing to point out is that the AI can do all of this for you. Because you have the expertise, you're able to use the AI to help you make this Lit RPG Cozy Kickstarter, because you obviously have experience doing the Lit RPG. You obviously have experience with Cozy. It isn't you're asking the AI to pull something out of thin air, whether that be your Kickstarter or your Facebook ads or anything you're doing. It's still your skill and knowledge as an [00:28:00] author.

And so I really like that. So Steph, you looked like you wanted to chime in on something. 

Steph Pajonas: I was just gonna say that prior to 2020, 2022, okay, I was a serial monogamist. That was like my thing. It was like I work on a book for a long time. I'm done with it. I move on to the next one.

I'm the same way with knitting projects. I knit the project until it's done. I move on to the next one. I was never one of these people that had five projects going at once or anything like that. And then I got COVID, in 2022 and brain fog from that. And since then I've been more like I need a bunch of projects going, because I'll get burned out on one.

The brain fog will kick in, and I won't be able to work on it anymore because I will be overwhelmed by it or whatever. And then I have to move on to another project. And whether that project is in, whatever state it's in, it's something new and my brain is okay, we can try something new and then it gives me some time until that one gets overwhelmed and I have to move on to something else.

So I'm [00:29:00] very similar to you in that regard too, but I would, I don't know why it changed my brain chemistry, must have, COVID, because it was not like that for me before I got it. And I was a total serial monogamist. And now I'm like, every project here, there, the other, next one. I'm like, yes, let's do five projects at once.

Why not? 

Jill Cooper: I sometimes wake up, excited, what project am I gonna work on today? I don't even know yet. Let's go see what happens when I sit down. And back to the Facebook ads, I do have every series has its own Word document, but if that's too much Danika, you could just use notes on your phone just to drop, say you think of a headline while you're driving the car, you just dictate a note and then worry about the rest,p utting it into the Word document later. 

Steph Pajonas: That's what I use Notion for. I use Notion for all this stuff and it has AI built into it, which is nice.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah, that's really nice. And I actually, again, another light bulb for me, like from Steph is I think you're right. As far as I [00:30:00] know, I've never had COVID.

The changes in life and the stress and, acknowledging the life changes I've been through and the divorce and, there's some C-PTSD going on, like finally being able to admit that thank you therapy. But, like being able to recognize that I also used to be like a serial, oh my goodness, I have to do this project until it is done.

And like that permission of being able to do multiple projects. I, I have three or four writing projects that I'm doing and that feels good to me. Even though like old Danica is still yeah, but you gotta finish, you gotta finish. No, I don't. And that permission that we give each other, but also having the AI to keep us all organized, and to be able to say, okay, here's where this project is, where this project, all of those things to do that project management for you.

Because without AI, I wouldn't be able to have so many projects going on, [00:31:00] and I think my brain would be very stressed at the not finishing. Yeah see? T his is like all the things. 

Jill Cooper: My brain can only handle and it, it's regimented. I do 20, about 25,000 words per project before I feel like I'm forced to switch to another project.

And I've tried to push no, I'm gonna get to 30, I'm gonna get to 40. But I just can't, I can't do it. I just have to switch. And then once I switch for a while, then I go back and do another, say 20, 25 before it comes again. Where I get the itch like I need, like I just, I don't know what it is about, is it fomo?

Grass is greener on the other side. I get a new idea and that becomes more exciting. But I discovered too like, like, for branded military sci-fi universe, AI does a really bad job, really bad. It basically writes a B sci-fi channel movie, and I really need help with my military sci-fi, now, since COVID, I just can't do corridor fight battles anymore for some reason.

So just getting AI to write a really bad version of what this novel will [00:32:00] eventually be is better to have the framework than to have just nothing. With me trying to write one word after another with a blinking cursor, it just drives me crazy. But now that I have this really bad written sci-fi movie, I can change it to fit what it is I needed to, to be, to match, Mal's universe that I write in under Chris J Pike, just in case anyone wants to know.

Danica Favorite: We do want to know, we'll put that in the show notes. Because her Chris J Pike books are delightful, MFP forever.

Jill Cooper: They do have aspects of cozies in that really violent, espionage, political thriller, space battle world. There are, if people read my other books, they might, they will be able to see there are some parallels. It's just that the fuzzy animal familiar now swears a lot.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I have a theme. I'm telling you I've got two, two themed people. Jill's got her MFP in space, her little cat in space, the familiar, and Steph of course, and [00:33:00] her Pets in Space books, like I'm telling you, it is a thing you guys. Yeah, if you haven't read Steph's Pets in Space stories, those are great as well. But I think what's cool about this conversation is like when we first talked about having Jill on, we're like, oh, I don't know what we'll talk about? Oh, we've got the things. And I think this episode particularly has so many great things about like processes and avoiding burnout and also Facebook ads.

So it, it's got a little something here for everyone. So now as we're closing out, Jill, why don't you tell us about some of your tools that you're using and what your favorite AI tools are? 

Jill Cooper: Sure. I mean, I've still um, I'm using Novel Crafter to build out my Codex's and things. I know a lot of people they feel like using something like Novel Crafter or the different tools out there where you build all the parameters at first are overwhelming, and it is at first. But once you do it a couple times, you realize how much work it saves at the end. So that's basically [00:34:00] why I do it. And actually my favorite part is building Codexes. Like I want to world build these really complicated documents all the time. I, for the actual fiction writing, I still love Claude.

I use Claude most of the time, mostly through Novel Crafter. Sometimes I will use Claude projects like building up the Kickstarter, 'cause Novel Crafter can't do that. It turns everything into a fiction narrative, whether you want it to or not. So I do use Claude Projects for bigger things like Kickstarter and for things like Facebook ads.

I use ChatGPT. I guess I'm using 5.0 now though I was sad at first to lose my, my, the personality that chat used to have. Like I had a teenage vampire, slayer, beta reader and that was, he, chat was the most valley girl thing ever. And I loved that girl. I would just talk to her, she'd be like, oh, yes, queen, we are gonna go slay.

It was great. It was fun. And I use, for images, I use Midjourney most of the time. Just, 'cause I like the quality of their images [00:35:00] best and it just, it seems, it feels so natural the way you can speak to Midjourney and it can pull out what you're talking about. And those are the main tools that I use.

Chat now knows me so well, I can just spout like I'm doing this thing for The Writing Wives, and it has all the background on what it is I'm talking about that I don't really need to explain that much. So the more you use it, the better trained it is at whatever it is you're doing.

Those are, those are the main tools I use. 

Steph Pajonas: I love Midjourney too. They have this new feature. It probably won't be so new by the time this goes out, but anyway, on the main homepage, it used to be you could just scroll and see what people were generating, but now they have a style explorer. I don't know if you've been in there.

I spent a lot of time in the style explorer looking at the different styles of images that people make, and I have a few prompts that I run with those styles just to see what it'll give me, and then I save them and hold onto them and then use them for my own images and whatnot. And it's just so much fun.

I just, I love going through 'em being like, oh, look at this one. It's [00:36:00] very cubist. Oh, look at this one. It's kinda like a red dot on the background of everything, whatever it may be. That's where I spend a lot of my time, sometimes if I'm just looking to be a little creative and try something else, M idjourney is definitely my go-to. I understand that one. 

Jill Cooper: The art and covers are addictive. I get to make new art. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. I get to make new art. It's fun. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And it's so fun because like I said, we have this chat with Jill during the day, and she'll just, look what I made. And it is fun. It's fun to watch that experimentation, and I love that, the AI is giving everyone a chance to play. I give Jill a hard time sometimes about, okay, when are you gonna use this cover? I want the story for this cover, but it's also nice to just be able to have those opportunities to play.

Jill Cooper: And you can play faster than if you're like doing it before AI, like it would take you maybe weeks to play. Now it's oh, I just had this quick idea and I just wanna see like where could it [00:37:00] go? If I wrote this type of story where, what kind of cover would I give it?

Steph Pajonas: And then you play and 

Jill Cooper: It's just fun.

Steph Pajonas: Run with it. Yeah. 

Jill Cooper: Yeah. And sometimes that's enough. That's okay, now I got out of my head. I don't need to actually write it. But sometimes it lingers. You're like I guess I'm gonna have to write that idea that I had five months ago, but sat on and now here I am. 

Danica Favorite: And that's sometimes some of 

Jill Cooper: Three books later 

Danica Favorite: tormented.

We get tormented by these ideas that she's just playing with. We're like, write this. But that, I think that's. That is true. Like previously people couldn't spend six months on a cover just to play with it. It was, I'm spending six months on a cover because I, now that I've wasted six months on this, I have to do something with it.

Whereas now, okay, I spent six minutes on this, I can use it or not. And I think that people say, oh, AI art, it's not creative. I call. Bullshit on that. Can I say that on our podcast? I don't know. We 

Steph Pajonas: go for it. You might as well. 

Jill Cooper: You just did. 

Steph Pajonas: You just did. 

Danica Favorite: I just did. I [00:38:00] just did.

But really, we say, oh, you can't be creative as an artist with that. But the truth is this gives us more opportunity to play with new ideas, new colors, new styles. Steph was just talking about the Cubist stuff. I'm like, oh, I didn't know that. I love Cubist stuff. I wanna go look at the Cubist stuff.

And that was something that you couldn't do previously. And so to me that makes us more creative, because we can play with more ideas. And again, we can play, we don't have this pressure of, okay, I just wrote this silly little story that is super fun for play. There isn't the pressure that I just spent six months on this, so now I have to sell it to make that time worthwhile.

I can just say, nope, I played with it. I'm done. I don't need to sell it. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. It's nice that we can now play and not have to completely devote our lives to our tiny little ideas that we've had. [00:39:00] Right? 

Danica Favorite: Yes. 

Steph Pajonas: Only if they really stick with you. Like Jill was saying, sometimes it sticks with you for a few months and then you're like, eh, I guess I really do.

Jill Cooper: It's nagging at you. Yeah. One of the things I played with was making like a pub menu for my cozy Lit RPG, and I am gonna end up putting in the Kickstarter, but it was just like an idea like. What would this scroll look like that's hanging outside the tavern, for Man of Buff Pastries, what would be on the menu?

And it's like everyone that has seen it like, like they really love it. So I'm totally gonna put it in there. 

Steph Pajonas: Excellent, excellent. Do it, do it, do it, do it. 

Jill Cooper: I will. I will. 

Danica Favorite: I think about all those fun little pre-writing stuff, 'cause I have a huge pre-writing process that now you can actually do something fun with it, and I like that Jill has done this fun pub venue. It is super cute. And now she can make it part of her Kickstarter thing, because she could actually make it look pretty as opposed to like chicken scratches on a notebook.

And I, I love that AI is giving us those abilities to do the things that maybe we didn't think were possible even six months ago. And [00:40:00] now what we're gonna see six months from now is gonna be really cool. I'm excited to see where we're gonna go with that. 

Steph Pajonas: We definitely have a lot of opportunities ahead of us, which is lovely.

I love it. Alright, so we're wrapping up here. So Jill, please give us some URLs to send people to so that we can put 'em in the show notes for everybody who drops by. 

Jill Cooper: Okay, well, I don't have a link for the Kickstarter yet, but they can always visit us at thewritingwives.com.

I'll probably use that to help push it a little bit too. And then you can always find me on Facebook under Jill Cooper. If you're an author, I will accept your friend request. 

Steph Pajonas: Perfect. And they do have a fantastic Writing Wives Facebook group as well for people who want to come in and learn a little bit more about Facebook ads, all the kinds of things that they do at The Writing Wives, so come join the group as well, because I love the group. So I'm gonna go ahead and 

Jill Cooper: Aw, thank you. 

Steph Pajonas: pimp it for you. 

Jill Cooper: If you do need help with the genre and trope, you could always find us at storytellerlab.net [00:41:00] also. 

Steph Pajonas: Oh, excellent. 

Danica Favorite: Yes. And they also have some great Facebook ads resources on there as well. We're just gonna pimp all your stuff, Jill, because 

Jill Cooper: Okay. 

Danica Favorite: It's really a great resource, and I know you don't like marketing, so the pimping yourself isn't always the piece that you do, but we want to share 

Jill Cooper: irony 

Danica Favorite: the love. Make sure you're looking for them online, because a lot of really good resources and a lot of free resources in their group and Facebook page as well.

Steph Pajonas: Excellent. 

Jill Cooper: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been a blast as always. 

Steph Pajonas: Thank you, Jill. We're so excited that you were able to come and chat with us today. So for anybody who stops by, come to bravenewbookshelf.com. Read the show notes for this episode. Like and subscribe to us on the YouTube and the Facebook and any other place that we are, and sign up for our newsletter too while you're on the website so that you can get the show notes the next day after they air.

I put those together as well. Danica, do you have anything else to say before we leave? 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Just reminder [00:42:00] that the like and subscribe really does help us. And we wanna get the podcast seen as much as possible and share the AI for authors love, because there's so many things that, again, just really great things for people to learn and do. And make sure you're following Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press on all of their socials as well as Publish Drive, and we'll see you all next week with another great guest. I'm really excited. We've had a really good fall lineup and a lot of great people to come. 

Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. Can't wait to see you guys all next week in the next episode. All right, so from all of us here, we're gonna say bye now. Bye. 

Danica Favorite: Bye.

Speaker 2: 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 [00:43:00] notes.