59 - Exploring Empowerment, Not Replacement, with AI: Featuring Russell Nohelty

In this episode, we welcome Russell Nohelty to explore how authors can leverage AI for empowerment, not replacement. Russell shares insights into his innovative "Russell Bot" from Hapitalist, designed to provide personalized support, and his work with Plot Drive, a writing software that helps authors break through creative blocks. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

Speaker: 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 an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press, where we're teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process, and we're publishing AI forward books. And that is going really well.

I'm very happy with the books that we've put out there. We've already started getting some drive-by, one stars, this is AI, blah, blah, blah reviews, which just shows us that, the word is getting out there, that the books are out. And you know what? I don't mind. Here's the thing. I want people to read the books and make a determination of whether or not they think that there are good or they're junk on the merits of the books.

[00:01:00] Instead of just saying, this is an AI book. I was like no, no, sir, you didn't see that in the Amazon listing. It says right there that they're, that these are books that are used with AI and authors at the same time, basically. It's not like we're not, it's not like we're hiding it. So I want people to actually download them and read them, tell us if they're enjoyable or not, because we do put a lot of work into them, even though we use AI to help us with them.

So anyway we've been back from Vegas for a few days now. I actually had to leave Vegas a day early, because the the smoke and the dry air were just really, really bothering me, bothering my sinuses and whatnot. And I was, I was just ready to go home at that day, at that time. So I got on an earlier flight and made it home and spent the weekend with the family, and I've already been into Manhattan once this week.

So it has been very, very, very busy. And I'm sure it's been busy for by a lovely co-host as well since she's been home, because [00:02:00] she actually, I think, stayed in extra few days after me in Las Vegas. Danica Favorite, how are you doing today? 

Danica Favorite: I am great. Yeah. I did, I stayed extra in Vegas, although I also did catch a flight home a little bit early.

I've never done this before. I was act, I felt really bad asking the people at the airport for directions on how to do this. But I flew standby and caught an earlier flight home, and it was amazing. I like didn't realize how super easy it was to do. I was very pleased 'cause I also got home a little bit earlier than planned instead of late at night.

I got home in the evening and so it was great. 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 all stages of their journey from helping you format your book to finding the perfect metadata and book descriptions and AI covers, as well as getting your books out to the largest network possible.

And then finally distributing your [00:03:00] books. I just said distributing your books, but finally splitting your royalties. There we go. And I wanted to say thank you to everyone at Author Nation who came up to either me or Steph or both of us to tell us their experience with the podcast.

It really, it meant a lot to both of us. And we had this really sweet person Will, I wanna just give you a shout out. Like he came up to me, and he told me how much he loved the podcast. And he gave Steph and I both Starbucks gift cards, and it was just the sweetest thing. And I really want to just emphasize how much all of those kind words and everything mean to us.

Because it was really touching. It was so beautiful and this is why we do it. Like Steph was saying about people who automatically one star the book for being AI without even trying it. Like we have to stop doing that. And the fact that all of these people are showing us kindness is so important.

And I want to emphasize that need for kindness in our [00:04:00] world and just encouraging people and being kind and loving and just, again, huge thank you. The other thing I did wanna say is I talked to one of our listeners who had come to my presentation about Publish Drive and said, Hey, I hear you talk about Publish Drive on the podcast.

I don't really know exactly what you do, you talk about it, but and this is just an open invitation to anyone, if you wanna learn more about Publish Drive and what we do, feel free to reach out to us through the podcast and also for FFA and Future Fiction Press, if you wanna check out those books, if you want to learn about some of the amazing classes that FFA does, also reach out for that as well.

I think we don't often put that invitation out there, but we are always here for you. We just assume that it's an open invitation. And so I'm explicitly stating that, because I think people sometimes are a little shy to ask, and this is what we do, this is why we're here. And so thank you again for that, because I thought Vegas [00:05:00] was wonderful.

The AI sentiment was much more positive. I think every conference we keep going to is more and more AI positive, more and more people willing to give it a try. And so if you're coming to us for the first time and you're like, okay, I'm not really sure about this AI thing, we're gonna say the same thing we tell everybody almost every episode. We try to fit this in, that AI is a tool and you get to use it in the way that makes sense for you and your business. You don't have to use it for everything. Pick the things that make the most sense for you. And so today we have our good friend Russell Nohelty here, who has a couple of really cool ways he's using AI.

And we've had Russell on before, but since we've had him on the show, he's kind of branched into two different ventures that are really amazing and pretty exciting. The first is he's working with a tool called Plot Drive. And this is great for people who [00:06:00] are looking for help with their writing.

And for those people, this is gonna be a cool part for you. But he also has this really cool thing with his Hapitalist program called the Russell Bot, and it's really amazing. I just on a call yesterday learned something even more new that actually has been there the whole time that I didn't know about.

And so I'm really eager to hear from Russell. And again, like if you wanna use it for writing, Russell's gonna have some tips for you. And if you just want it to organize your business and organize your thoughts, Russell also has that cool tip for you today too. Let's get started. Russell, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing with AI right now.

Russell Nohelty: Sure. So I do a whole lot with AI. My name is Russell Nohelty. I'm USA Today bestselling author. I wrote all of these books and a bunch more. These workbooks were all done, at least drafted with AI. A lot of the articles that are in the later books were done with AI. I had to write three books [00:07:00] in like two weeks earlier this year, because when Writer MBA, my former company with USA Today bestselling Monica Leonelle collapsed, we took all of the books down that we had written together, which included a direct sales book, a Kickstarter book.

And I had to write those two books very, very quickly. I guess it was only two books. It felt like 10 books. Oh, and I had to rewrite a bunch of our Author Ecosystems book as well to release it with just my work in it as well. So I had to do work on three books really fast. I've had many podcasts previously, and I used AI, I've used AI to help draft books based on the work that we did in the podcast to bring it into other formats. I run a company called The Author Stack, which is a subsidiary of my press, Wannabe Press, where we've put out, I think it's like 60 books in the past 10 years, which I realize makes me almost [00:08:00] qualifying for a full line small press publisher, 'cause I think the number is eight. Most distributors want you to release eight books a year before that happens. And as in, as part of the Author Stack, I started a founding member program called Hapitalist, which is about investing in your happiness. Like you invest in your, in in your money and figuring out like how to balance these two things together and realizing that alignment changes over time. And as part of it, what I did was I created a digital brain based on all of the work. It's like 2.3 million words that I have written or spoken over the last 10, 15 years and put it all into this program that people can access who join Hapitalist and get 24-7, 365 live support. Not live support, but live support from um, I didn't call it Russell Bot. Everyone in Hapitalist calls it Russell bot. So now it's just become Russell bot. It's one of these [00:09:00] things that took a name of its own.

So yeah, between that and then my work with Plot Drive, which is a writing software that helps you break blocks with AI or without AI, like you don't have to use the AI to do it. I really appreciate working with Plot Drive, because it's like working with Microsoft Word, if copilot didn't suck terribly it's like what if, what if like copilot actually was good and like that. That's great. And so like when I saw it, I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is like what copilot should have always been. Yeah, I do a lot of stuff with AI. I want to throw something back to you, because I think the problem is actually now with companies that use AI, focusing specifically on how you can replace your tasks with AI instead of how you can be empowered with AI.

I actually think we've moved into, and when I, we've moved a lot of the messaging with Plot Drive when I started working with them. But I feel like [00:10:00] we, we the new challenge is companies need to realize that no one actually cares about AI. What they want is like to get their problem solved.

And it's like they don't care if it's AI or JI or like a little fairy that comes out and taps them on the forehead. What if we focus on how the messaging about how we empower humans instead of messaging on how we replace humans, which I think companies like Claude do a pretty good job of. But in general, I feel like a lot of these one star reviews and such are based on like, companies are not helping themselves, right?

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think you're right. I love that reframe that you gave about empowerment as opposed to replacement, because I think you're right. Those one star reviews are really about fear. And oddly enough I wrote this thing the other day that I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but you know me, I'll figure something [00:11:00] out.

Um, I is that empowerment piece of understanding that people are so afraid of AI, because I think they do use that word replace so much and thinking about, okay, what tasks can we replace? I think that's a really threatening term, but if we reframe it to how are we being empowered I think that's a really cool way to look at it because, that was the piece that I was writing is that AI is never gonna replace us because there are just pieces of our humanness that we need, and that the AI needs, in order to be effective. And that's something that I know Steph and the FFA talk about a lot. I just read The Seasons of AI Writing that the Future Fiction Press put out that Stacey Anderson, one of their founders wrote and that Steph and Elizabeth contributed to.

And it really is [00:12:00] about figuring out these places where we can be more empowered and the fact that it is our human brains and our humanness that makes anything that comes out of AI good. 

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I agree with that. I've always told people that AI doesn't replace your creativity. It enhances it, it levels it up.

Right? It's gonna give you that next extra boost. I also find that what I like it for is basically getting rid of repetition that I don't necessarily need in my life, right? There's a lot of repetitive tasks that we do every single day that can be handled by AI, but there's still like your tasks and your, you need those things done.

It's just that you don't necessarily have to be there doing like, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, right? Let's get, let's get some automation in there to do those things and make your life a little bit easier. So while I understand why some of the companies use the word replace, because it is [00:13:00] taking, taking the burden off of humans about certain repetitive things or certain tasks that we just feel like this is a low level task.

We can get somebody else to do it, or we can get an AI to do it. I can see why in this regard, like replace is not really, it's not really the right word to be using for the kinds of stuff that we do. We're doing lots of creative tasks, and we want to level up those tasks and make those tasks easier and more fun and have better output.

We don't necessarily want to replace us or replace other people in those processes. 

Russell Nohelty: Yeah, so I, one of my favorite, well one of my least favorite questions that people ask me, but the reasons that I did this digital brand was people ask me like, how did you break in? Or how do I break in? I was like, I don't know.

Like I wrote a book called How to Build Your Creative Career, that I wrote at that time because it remembers for me. I don't have to do the thing, but it's not enough to read the book and if you talk to [00:14:00] me, I'm literally not gonna remember. I don't know how I broke in. I can, I remember there's five pieces of it and like strategies that I used, like I don't have to, to know that anymore. I never had to know it really, because like it's in the book and that, and now it's like in the bot. And if you talk to me, we can talk about like the things that I care about now and things that I don't care about now. Just because I don't care about it anymore does not mean you don't care about it.

And not, does not mean it's not important. Just like my life is much more about like how to balance like happiness and success over time and that's what I want to talk about. And so and also because I know Steph, we both have pretty severe brain fog things going on. It's I can't tell you the steps, I can't tell you the framework that I did.

If you talk to me, what I can say is there's a great strategy. This is what you should do. And then when someone says, what, how do I [00:15:00] do this strategy? I'm like, great news. You have 10 options. You can take the course, you can you can, talk to the bot. You can read the book, you can go and look at any of the YouTube videos that I had.

But like all of those things seem like a kiss off. They've always said like people are like, why won't you just tell me? And I'm like, I don't know. But if you want me to tell you the best I can do is a Russell bot that will tell you, you can talk to it, you can call it, you can message it and like it will tell you all of the steps and it will pitch a perfect game at scale.

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I love that. And I really appreciate the Russell bot, and that difference between the Russell bot and the thing, because I also do have brain fog stuff going on. Lovely perimenopause stuff happening here. As Steph and I talk about a lot and like some of the steps parts is where I get confused.

And so people will ask me a question. I'm like, I don't know. I know, but I like the effort that it [00:16:00] takes to look it up. And it's been really interesting, because there are things I have looked up with the Russell bot, but you know, like there was one day where I was just having a rough day, and I reached out to Russell, I messaged him.

I'm like, Russell, I'm having a meltdown here. Um, I and, and he was like, cool, when are you free to talk? Let's talk. And the conversation we had was not a Russell bot conversation. That was a conversation between two friends and a mentor and all of this stuff that it didn't, having the Russell bot didn't take that away, but Russell and I got to connect on the important issue as opposed to Russell telling me, here's the steps from my workbook, go do it.

He was like, okay, so let's talk about this. And he did refer me to a couple of workbooks and said, Hey, have you tried this workbook? But ultimately not having to go through all of that stuff of here are the steps, here are the things. He had a place that he could send me, and then we could talk [00:17:00] on that heart to heart friend level.

And ultimately that's what we both needed, and that's what we both thrive on. And like thinking about that, and again, to me it was just an enhancement, because it was a great conversation. And also there was a direction where I could go for resources that one of the things I'm working with my coach on is this idea of how often are you in your zone of genius?

Because we all should be working in our zones of genius. And what this bot taught me and this conversation with Russell has taught me is that the interpersonal conversations Russell has now can be more in his zone of genius. And the places that aren't his zone of genius, he can say, here, here's the Russell bot.

Talk to the Russell bot. And as we were in one of his Hapitalist meetings yesterday, someone mentioned, you know, I've talked to Russell bot about these things, and I'm also having a conversation with Russell. [00:18:00] So. It isn't a Hi, we've just replaced Russell. We've given that idea of Russell, the human gets to be in his zone of genius and for the pieces that aren't Russell's zone of genius, there is the Russell bot.

Steph Pajonas: Again, it's an enhancement, right? It's an, it's leveling up the human by using the AI as part of it, and I love that. Russell, I need to know about the Russell bot and where it is and how people use it generally. 

Russell Nohelty: Oh yeah. It's hosted on its own site, but you get to it through my Hapitalist membership, my Hapitalist membership is at https://www.theauthorstack.com/p/hapitalist or you can just go to theauthorstack.com and it's like capitalist, but with an H. And it revolves around this philosophy of  B E H A P I which is B E H A P I And the idea is B is belief, which is mindset. E is embodiment, which is body work.

There's a [00:19:00] bunch of different names for it. I call it body work, but there's a whole bunch of different components in there. Heart H is heart for the projects that we work on. A is audience for the audience that we build. P is prioritization, doing the right things at the right time. And then I is income and that forms the happy compass.

And there are like three pillars of Hapitalists. The first are the breakthrough sessions. The breakthrough sessions are bimonthly, which is twice a month, not every other month. Bimonthly sessions where you sit in small groups online, and you talk through your biggest problems in small groups. You do two of them, each session.

So you do one, then come back and you get broken up bit into another area. And we are very bad at knowing our alignment issue, like where we're out of alignment. And we're even worse at knowing when the internal alignment that we once had has drifted and that we're no longer in alignment.

So because [00:20:00] everyone in Hapitalist is on the same path with the same methodology, like we can all look out for each other and know all of these things. And like to me that's the most important part of Haptalist is like being able to come. But not everyone agrees with me. So like between the sessions, we have the Russell bot and the Russell bot is trained on all of my material and it helps you individualize all of the things that you're hearing .

And the third is the resources. So what generally happens is you'll go to a Hapitalist session and be like, you should look at X. And then people are like, okay, great. I read this Kickstarter book and, but I don't know how to apply it to my own thing. And the next Hapitalist session, breakthrough session is in two weeks.

So I don't wanna wait two weeks. So and I don't wanna spend $300 to get on Russell's calendar and he probably doesn't even have an opening for the next [00:21:00] few weeks. So the Russell bot allows you to take, it has ingested all this material and it then can say, okay, this is the framework. How does this apply to your situation?

I have a one of our members has never been to one session, but like she does VR, movies and such, and she's used Russell bot easily, like second or third most among everyone. But her connection is about like how to take all of the things she's thinking and how to process it and synthesize it.

So she'll be like, what about this thing? What about this pitch? And then Russell bot will say maybe you should rearrange it this amount of time, which is something that you can do in ChatGPT or Claude or any of these things. The advantage of Russell bot is it was exclusively trained on my methodologies.

So if you want something that you know has been trained on good [00:22:00] methodology, and you like my methodologies, and you're happy with those, then you can use it specifically in that way. So it's three pillars, one of which is past work that ranges from Substack and Kickstarter to mindset stuff.

And my next book it all it, it gets trained. The minute that I write something, it gets trained even if it's not coming out for six months. All the material and then the individualization and then the in-person connection. And my philosophy of Haptalist is that between those three things, you can keep yourself aligned at any one time and you can get, you can get back in focus figuring out what's your least, what your path of least friction.

That's what we call it, the path of least friction, which is, how can I get to where I want to be with the least amount of effort, but knowing that it [00:23:00] is still effort, like. i'm gonna stop, I'll go on to a whole nother, like 20 minute thing on Hapitalist.

But so that is how I think about how it integrates and like why I don't want it to be, I don't want it to be just by itself, because you need the resources to read all of the things and to be able it, it gives footnotes, so it tells you where to go for more information. And then the in-person is really important, because like you can then bring what your problem is and talk through it with people.

And most people want to talk through stuff, and it's very reasonable it's $300 a year. And I do that specifically because I want you to be able to easily re-up it every year and be like, this is easily worth $300. 

Danica Favorite: It easily is. And one of the things that I didn't realize until you just said it, again, every time I turn around I'm learning something new about this Russell bot, that [00:24:00] how many times we're talking to an author and we're listening to people talk about, oh yeah, it's in my next book and you have to wait for the next book.

I didn't realize that this is being trained as you're writing things. So it's not wait for the next book. It's literally the most up-to-date information. So I think that's really cool. One of the things I want to go back to is talking about Plot Drive. And I liked what you were saying about, you know, being in Microsoft Word and how the AI tool in there is terrible.

'cause I was just writing something the other day and just for grins and giggles, because I was mad I used, like I started a sentence with the same word, like in one paragraph, and then the very next paragraph, I did it again. And I hate doing that. And I know that's a fault a flaw in my writing. So I asked it, I was like, oh, Copilot, that's its name.

I said, Copilot, how do I fix this? And it rewrote the whole thing, and it did it so [00:25:00] terribly and I was like, oh my gosh, why can't you be good? You should be good. So tell us a little bit about Plot Drive and how Plot Drive works. 

Russell Nohelty: Sure. I wrote a book called How to Write Irresistible Books that Readers Devour, which in the last couple months has been used as like the basis for how their version of Copilot works, which is called Co-Writer.

So, if you can imagine a Microsoft Word dashboard there are like three elements to it. There's on the left side, there's the document and the middle, there's the writing, and then the right is like the co-pilot or co-writer is what we call it. So, um, each one of those works differently. And there's a fourth thing that they do.

So I'll go to the fourth thing first. They have this thing called buttons. Oh, actually, sorry. Now it's called tools. It's called tools now. And what the buttons do [00:26:00] is allow you to either take one of the pre-program buttons that are based on my methodologies or make your own button to do anything with literally pushing a button and then it does that thing.

A lot of people did not like this aspect of Plot Drive, because it seems to take all of the joy out of writing away. And the thing that we want to do is help you break blocks and get back to writing, stay in, get in flow faster, and stay in flow longer. But there are some things that you just wanna push a button and, and, and fix.

So for instance, one of them is, I hate taking my 200 word thing like idea and then building it into an article. But people want to read articles when they go to the Author Stack. They don't want to read just like my 200 word tweet. So I made one called turn into article, and it just takes my like [00:27:00] Facebook post or whatever, and it, with a couple of it goes, boom, boom.

And then suddenly I have an article that I can edit. And that's vastly better, because the thing that I hate about turning that into an article is like pulling out an example and like expanding on this point and doing all of these things that are exhausting and would have to be done to every article to add the same context stuff.

So I don't wanna add the context to stuff. I just wanna have the idea, I'm a visionary type human, I'm not a detail type person. And so buttons, boop, boop, boop boop. You can, you can do it you can boop yourself. That's been around for a while. People thought that like that wasn't good enough and we agree.

The main thing that has changed in the past couple months even is that you have a co-writer that works alongside of you, and you can ask them questions, you can ask [00:28:00] them to do actions. You could just brainstorm. One of the things that Jay, one of the co-founders did when we were at Author Nation was he said, I want to write a new fantasy, romantasy book.

I don't know much about romantasy. So co-writer, go and like search for the significant deals in romantasy, and tell me the tropes. Now anyone who uses AI will be like duh, you could do that in any model. Yes, you can do that in any model, but it makes, what I realized recently was I then have to leave the dashboard to go do the thing. And so it's bringing all of these things together in one, like under one roof. So you don't have to do that context switching. You also don't have to go back in the infinite scroll. The thing I like about the button specifically is I realized how much time I spent arguing with one of the models to give me what I wanted.

And I don't have to do that anymore. I just have to train it once and then it booms, [00:29:00] and like I was spending sometimes hours trying to get it to do the thing on longer pieces. You have a co-writer, you have, you have tools, and then you have a very clean interface. You can take all of that stuff away to just write, to do distraction free writing.

So that's where the middle part is. And then what I love about, um....but what I dislike about doing projects in other platforms is that if you, if it ingests something, then it ingests all or none of it. You can use all of it, you can delete it. And with Plot Drive, because you have in the document or you can toggle on and off anything.

So if you want just like four chapters to be used to train this next step, you can do that. If you write fiction and nonfiction, you can have those separations and just toggle on, toggle off whatever you want, whenever you want. And it gives you that context to make those like really [00:30:00] narrow band decisions.

And overall when you're talking, when you have all of these things working in tandem together, it like really lets you surgically slice what your problem is and get to the root of it. So most other softwares or all softwares are based on uh, like our, like I love all of these other softwares, but they often tell you that in order to, you are having this kind of block.

So as long as you filter through the way that I think your blocks work, you will have success. Where I think Plot Drive is different, but some people might find chaotic is that my blocks never come from the same place. Some of them are document blocks, some of them are ordering blocks. Some of them are co-writer blocks.

I need to research something. Some of them are tool blocks. I don't wanna have to go and do all the work to argue with. And [00:31:00] regardless of where the blocks come, you can just stay in your zone of genius more often, as Danica was talking about. And yeah, I, I appreciate how it goes about breaking blocks.

Danica Favorite: You are all about breaking the blocks. So I think it's interesting that, even in this other thing, you're figuring out, okay, where are people blocked and how do we break those blocks? Usually. We say what does your workflow with AI look like? But I feel like we've covered a lot of really interesting workflows.

Are there some workflows or things that you would suggest people try? 

Russell Nohelty: Yeah. Okay. So let's say you are AI hesitant. The biggest AI block that I think can be helpful for anyone is for you to go into your ....just upload a chapter and, or an [00:32:00] article or whatever and ask, what am I missing here?

It is very easy and almost nobody ever does it, but every single person on this planet could benefit from like having someone look over their shoulder and say, what...what, l ike where am I blind? We all live through one lived experience, every single one of us. And it doesn't matter, like creed, nationality gender, sex, any of that stuff.

Like we still are filtering everything through one lived experience. And where I think AI doesn't get enough credit for is allowing you to live outside of that lived experience. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that's really helpful. As a writer, being able to put that in, because you're right, we don't always know where our blind spots are.

Like I said, I could tell you that I know one of my bad habits as a writer is I'll start the same sentence with the [00:33:00] same word too often, and, but I know that blind spot and I know to look for it, but, I knew that because I had an editor point it out to me multiple times. But like I know there are still places where I have blind spots, and if we want to go as a writer, that's one of the things that I've said a lot. I think Steph and I have talked about quite a bit is for me, it makes me a better writer.

I know I'm a good writer but I also know I'm not a perfect writer, and I'm not the best writer, and there are ways I can always improve. And one of the things I was just sharing in the AI for Writers Group the other day is even in my prompting, I know I'm a good prompter, but I sat down with ChatGPT one day and I said, Hey can you tell me my blind spots and how I'm prompting you?

And it did. And I was, and it gave me some really helpful tips based on what it knows of how I work and what my work is. And I think what you're saying about using that is as a beginning [00:34:00] writer, you don't have to even take those suggestions, but to even be made aware of where your blind spots are is really, really cool and really helpful.

I think that is something that I really hope people, if after what, whatever stage of writing you're at, after you get off of this listening to this please go and ask AI. Whether that's in your current work or something else in your workflow is just say, Hey, what are my blind spots? And use that as a learning tool.

Just pick one and use that to improve. So yeah, 

Russell Nohelty: There's ano, there's one other one that I really use a lot 

Danica Favorite: Yes. 

Russell Nohelty: Where I think that could be very helpful, which is, okay, so we all know there are things that we do in writing that make our work better. But we don't talk enough, oof. I've never actually said this out loud to somebody on like a in public, but there's also a bunch of stuff that we do to make our work worse.

Like we [00:35:00] all really suck at some part of writing. Like mine. I don't think about the romance aspect very much, I know other people, they like only think of the romance aspect. So I also said earlier that I'm a visionary kind of person, which means I don't like getting bogged down into the details, which is sometimes great, but like when I'm, when I want to write a scene or a chapter, I'm like, oh, I have a really cool idea for this monster fight that's like really 12 fights.

I'm like, I'm not writing that. I'm not gonna come up with 12 different demons that this person has to fight and then make 'em increasingly ugh. It sounds terrible. So like I just don't do it. And like it makes historically has made my work worse because like I want to do it.

I know that it would be make the book better, and I just avoid those things. And so if instead we say, okay, I know I really want to do these, this thing, but [00:36:00] like I just use AI for these parts I know I want to do, but am bad at then also it's making you a better writer. And we talk about what better means, but like this is a tangible way that my books are better. In my books, in my new series that I wrote with AI this year I do what's called the snapback, which means the minute that like you meet, you actually meet the big bad guy, you then pretty much are snapped back to like how all of the elements that make it. And some of these chapters are like 10,000 words long.

I wanted these things in books, but because it's like 13 frigging mini scenes, it's again, torturous for me to write these things. Like I want to write anything else but those, but they make the book better. And so if all you do is go into your whatever program you're using and [00:37:00] say, what am I missing here?

And like, how can I make this better? And then you use your gut to say this really needs like a something, but I'm not good at doing that. Only use it AI for those two purposes like that, you, your work will be tangibly improved. 

Danica Favorite: I really love that, and I think that is something that I have seen an improvement in my writing with as well.

So back when I write, wrote historicals, yes, all those brown spines there, those are historicals. And I do not care what people are wearing. I like, I literally don't care. I struggle before every conference with what to wear, because I wanna look nice, but seriously, you guys can't see what I'm wearing.

I'm wearing like a sweater and sweatpants. And that's my daily uniform and having to wear something else or think about something else. It's [00:38:00] annoying. And so when I write characters where I know in some books, particularly historicals, it matters what they're wearing, and if you're writing a character about a socialite, it matters what she's wearing.

Like I, I guess is Prada clothes or is that just a handbag? I don't know. But 

Steph Pajonas: I think it's, I think it's both. Go ahead. 

Danica Favorite: Both. 

Russell Nohelty: Yes. Both. Why not both? 

Danica Favorite: Why not both? But here's the thing. I don't know, and I don't care, but I know my readers care and I know it's important to the characterization. So I can ask AI, great, what would this character be wearing? And 

Russell Nohelty: Right. 

Danica Favorite: When I wrote historicals, and this was pre AI, I would spend hours researching this for a couple of details to sprinkle in my book that I don't care about, but I know as soon as I get those edits back, my editor is going to say, okay, but what are they wearing? And 

Russell Nohelty: Right. 

Danica Favorite: They and again, like my answer is, I don't care.

Put them in whatever you want them to wear. And then my editor's no, you ha you're the author. You have to pick. And so [00:39:00] AI can pick for me. So I think that's a really great tip to say, okay, what is the part of writing your book you don't care about or you don't like writing, but you know your readers care about.

Steph Pajonas: I had the same problem with my books in the very beginning. I struggled with descriptions. I love dialogue. I love like building up my characters and whatever their internal thinking is. But like, when it comes to descriptions of the restaurant that they're in, the park that they go to, the walk that they're always doing every single day, all that stuff, I'm just like, eh, gloss over it, with a few words and that's it.

And the AI has been really great at helping me flesh out those things. I still keep them rather minimal, because the AI wants to talk about everything, like everything in that restaurant from like the noises to the scents, to the, the patterns on the plates. I'm like, we don't need all of that.

We just need something in order to make it a little bit realer in the head of the reader. So I still [00:40:00] will get a description and pare it back, and do that kind of thing, but it has made my writing exceptionally better over the years. So I am, I'm a big fan of this as well. I know my writing could absolutely be worse just, just me alone.

It's like, oh uh, you're gonna be missing some stuff, but you add on the AI and it's just give it a little bit of a little oomph. I like the little oomph. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. 

Russell Nohelty: And also it might prevent you from entering a genre at all too, because let's take Cozy Mystery for an example. Look, if you're writing Cozy Mystery, you need to talk about food a lot.

Like you talk about tea, coffee, and baked goods, like those are things 

Steph Pajonas: or knitting or hobby, right? Yeah, totally. 

Russell Nohelty: Well, I think that even if you love knitting, you still have to talk about food. It's just it's just like a, it's like a very food heavy genre. And if you are like, I love knitting.

I got a great idea for a cozy mystery series, but I hate the baking or cooking or whatever, all of the things. Well, you could just be like create a recipe for me and then [00:41:00] write a scene where they're cooking this recipe, like once every 10,000 words or something like that.

Because it is excessive. I love it. But like cozy books have a lot of like food, specifically baking, coffee, and tea. And I love reading them. I hate writing those things. So again, it's like you might say, I don't want to do those things, but I know I have to. So either you're gonna, you're gonna not do them, you're gonna do them poorly, or you can use AI to like, or you can suffer through them, but it's not gonna be the joy.

It's it's not gonna be like joyous for you to write those things, 'cause you don't like to write those things. Especially if you're a visionary kind of human. Just like the details of the thing. It's like, who cares? Just imagine the thing, but like 25% of people have no imagination. So they literally can't imagine stuff.

So like you, you need to do all of these things and balance them all at one time, in one book and like in [00:42:00] one career. And yeah, all of this stuff. Is makes you a better writer and makes people resonate with your work more. And if our goal is to like empower writers to get into flow faster and stay in flow longer then, and like do the things that are joyous.

Guess what? In general, being on a group call with a bunch of writers and talking about the things that are blocking you is a joyous event. Even if nothing gets done, just to have two of them a month is worth the $30. But like most people don't love combing through information and pulling out this and then having to individualize it.

So the ability to be like, okay, let's go back and forth here and see where you're wrong, where you like messed up. Again, that is that is keeps them in their joy longer. There are some people that do really like reading those books. My wife [00:43:00] is one of them, so it's not everyone, but most people, what they want is the framework and then the individualization of that framework.

And so if you can keep people in the joy longer, if that is just your only goal, then there are parts of AI that, that definitionally have to work for you, because like they will take you out of the things that you don't want to do. And nobody likes a hundred percent of their job. Nobody. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I, and I really like where you're talking about being in your joy and being in the flow state, because that really is you in your zone of genius.

And that continually goes back to how do we stay in that place the longest? And I wanted to go back what Steph was saying about, it will write these descriptions for me and it will, you know, and even you Russell like, oh, it's doing the pieces of the writing that I don't like to do. Here's the thing, you are still the author, and as an author, it's your [00:44:00] genius and your skill as an author that's going to say, yes, this piece of the description that AI gave me is good and I'm going to use it. This piece is not in alignment with what I'm writing in the scene. And so I'm gonna not use that. And those are still the choices we make.

And even in these conversations we're having with a group of authors as part of the discussion about where our blocks are, we still have that ability to say, this is what resonates with me, this is what I'm gonna throw out. And to me, this is really important that we continually emphasize our autonomy as humans and our skill as humans.

And like if you are getting an answer from the AI that you don't like, you just say, yeah, I don't like that. I'm not gonna do it.

So we are getting ready to wind down and we've talked a lot about some really cool things. Do you have a favorite AI tool or can you give us a couple of your [00:45:00] favorites? 

Russell Nohelty: Well, I can say that Plot Drive is where I do most of my writing now. So I would give you that one. If you go to russellnohelty.com/ai you should be able to have a conversation with Russell bot and so that's the other one.

And it saves me so much time and energy and effort having to go through these blocks with a lot, with people constantly, 'cause my problem with coaching has always been I just want to do strategy coaching. I'm very excited about strategy coaching. Like the nitty gritty things I'm not very good at.

I always, when I had done coaching before, t was like very much like nitty gritty and it was, it was very much like you didn't do what I told you to do. Like how did you even get here? And now to be able to look back at people's conversations and give them these, like more [00:46:00] hand holding things without me having to hold their hands.

Danica can, can like, can confirm or deny since she's in Hapitalist, like people seem to be very committed to the thing and the journey of Hapitalist at least, and Russell bot, because I am also present in that community. They are my resources. It is my, like they are my breakthrough sessions that I am facilitating, but it allows me to teach way less, which people don't like as much.

Though they will listen to me talk for hours and allow me to say, okay, if you wanna learn more about this, go talk to Russell bot. Here's this resource, here's his workbook. I hate making workbooks, but I love having them so much better. And so having this ability to like, and then I guess the other one is I make the workbooks using the GPT 5 training models.

So there you go, go to [00:47:00] russellnohelty.com/ai or get Plot Drive. Or if you want to make uh, you need the thinking model, otherwise it won't do very good. But like the thinking model has given me basically all of the workbooks that I have and there's 13 of them or something like that.

Steph Pajonas: Excellent. You've given us a lot of things for the readers, to the listeners to go find out about Russell. I, I always do the same thing that Danica does where I'm just like, I keep thinking that there's readers on the other side of this podcast, which there are, but they're mostly listeners. Anyway, I'm going to be putting all of those URLs into our notes so that people can go and check out the Russell bot and Plot Drive and your workbooks and everything that you've got on there. Are there any other URLs you wanna send people to before I forget?

Russell Nohelty: Just the theauthorstack.com. 

Steph Pajonas: theauthorstack.com. Excellent. Excellent. I'll put that in there too, because I'm a subscriber and so I know that you were around very well as well.

Okay. Excellent. I want to [00:48:00] make sure that people do come by and check out all the notes from today's podcast so that they can go and find everything that's going on. I wanna thank you for showing up, because I love talking to you and love hearing what you are up to, what you're doing, all the cool stuff. I mean, I just saw you just like last week, but it's nice to see you again and repeatedly, which is nice. Everybody who's listening. Please come by the bravenewbookshelf.com. That's bravenewbookshelf.com. And check out the show notes from today. Sign up for our mailing list, because we will send you the notes in a newsletter the very next day after a podcast goes live.

So, you know, if you don't have time to, always drop by the website, you can come and sign up for the newsletter, and just get it straight into your inbox, right? And then we definitely want you to drop by on YouTube and and subscribe and listen to us there. Leave some notes, leave some comments.

We'd love to talk to you. Danica, what else do we have to tell [00:49:00] everybody about? 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, so YouTube, absolutely. We also have Facebook, so make sure you're liking us on Facebook. Any way we can get the word out is fantastic. And remember to like and subscribe to both Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press and Publish Drive on all of your favorite social media channels as well.

Steph Pajonas: All the things. All the things. Okay. 

Danica Favorite: All the things. 

Steph Pajonas: All right. Again, thank you Russell, for showing up. We loved talking to you, didn't we? 

Danica Favorite: We did. We did. It's always a pleasure. 

Steph Pajonas: It's always a pleasure. Okay. So for everybody out there, we will see you guys in the next episode. Okay? All right, 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 bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show [00:50:00] notes.