Links Mentioned in This Episode:

eBook: ChatGPT for Creative Writers – The No BS Myth-Busting Manifesto

Push, Tumble & Fall (Novel)

The Lunatics (Novel)

How to reach Ana:

• Website
• Podcast
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Ana del Valle Distasio – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state.

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm excited for our conversation today. I think it's going to be really topical and helpful. So, I'm speaking with Ana del Valle Distasio, and she is an award-winning author. She's a former Silicon Valley gal, creative writing graduate, technologist, and she's the host of The Novelist Studio podcast. So, you can look that up in whatever app you're using to listen to this. 

And she's committed to empowering aspiring writers to bring their dream of being published novelists to life. And she has, because of her background in technology, she guides her students to write stories that work, but also how to use AI tools to supercharge their creativity, no matter their level of technical expertise. So, we're really going to get into that today. She's also the author of two novels under the pen name S.N. Blue, The Lunatics and Push Tumble Fall. And her novel Valley of the Dudes is coming out in 2025. I'm really excited about that. I love the cover to that, by the way, Ana. So good. Welcome. So glad you're here.

Ana:

Thank you, Rhonda. I am so excited to be on your podcast and to be just chatting with you.

Rhonda:

So I'm so glad you're here. We're going to have a great chat. tell me a little bit about how you got started writing. I know you have a bachelor's degree from San Francisco State University in creative writing. But how did you, when did you decide to take it seriously and really dive into your own writing journey?

Ana:

Yeah, thank you  for that question. So I, you know, like I think like many of us writers, I have been writing since I was six years old. You know, my first, my, first thing I ever wrote was in Spanish and it was a love story because Spanish is my first language. So I had to learn English when I was like eight or nine years old when I came to this country. But, so I've been writing for a long time and I think that my dad was my biggest cheerleader. He thought that, you know, I was great, but he was my dad, right? So he really sort of just kind of fueled that fire for me  and when I went to the university, decided that I was going to go all in with creative writing. So I do have a bachelor's degree in creative writing. yeah.

Rhonda:

Okay. And you published your first two novels under a pen name S.N Blue, but this latest one is under your own name. What made you make the shift there?

Ana:

Yeah, I think, well, I think I've grown as a writer and I may write fantasy at some point again in my life. But I think that I learned very quickly that writing is a business, right? And I want to make sure that I carve out my readership. And when I wrote my young adult fiction novels, it was, I think that high fantasy and fantasy were, urban fantasy, I should say, things like Twilight, et cetera, were very prominent. And so, it really taught me a lot about the business of writing.

And when I realized the market,  the total available market in different readerships like women and humorous fiction, and I knew that I had a humorous fiction women's novel inside of me. So, I decided to make that shift because I have grown as a writer and I'm really excited about being able to do something different that's outside of fantasy. And the Valley of the Dudes, I'm assuming that is based on your experience as being a woman in Silicon Valley.

Ana:

Yes. There's definitely some of that. I mean, there is a very wide gender opportunity gap in Silicon Valley because obviously technology has been a field that has been led by men for many years.  So, I definitely experienced that. My colleagues and I were doing the same job and they were getting paid a lot more than I was. The numbers are something like  white women get paid like 75 cents on the dollar as white men do and women of color get paid 50 cents on the dollar.  So that's very white.

Rhonda:

Wow.

Ana:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

Wow. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to that. So then as a book coach, you work with writers, but you incorporate AI. And that's something I don't do. I've used, know, I've dabbled a little bit with AI for other things. And I've certainly read some novels. Shawn Michaels has a great novel out. I'll try and find the name of it. And I, you know, and he co-wrote it with AI, which was interesting. So there's actual sort of AI in there as a character.  And, but it's something I'm not familiar with from the point of view of using it as a novelist would, you know, as a creative partner, if you like, a co-creator.

So I guess the first question that comes to mind for most people, they really do worry a lot about this is whether or not AI is gonna steal my work if I use it. Can you just talk about that particular fear a little bit?

Ana:

Yeah, yeah. And I have to say that this is a very new area. And for anybody that's listening, if you have any of these concerns, there are valid concerns. We just have to unpack this because it is a very sophisticated technology and it's really very fun to use.

So, let's start with, is AI going to steal my novel, which is something that I hear a lot. And the short answer is no, it's not gonna steal your novel because it's not a data repository and it doesn't keep data so that it remembers word for word. The way that AI used and I, and you know, we've all seen the headlines, right? 204 books, Nora Roberts said they stole 204 books  and all these other writers  coming out and saying, hey, chat GPT, open AI, et cetera. So here's what happened. Let's unpack that headline because that's what it is. So, what happened was that open AI, which is a company that owns chat GPT, chat GPT is the name of the product. Chat GPT is like a robot librarian that learned how to speak by reading a bunch of books.

And it doesn't remember word for word what it reads. It just, you know, it learns how to talk by reading books. And what happened was that OpenAI, which by the way, in 2023, brought in $2 billion in revenue when they just started having chat GPT available to the general public in October of 2022. So that's a very big, very big first year for OpenAI.

So what happened was that they use these books without compensating the author for anything over than the title of the price of the book, right?  And they, OpenAI violated the law of fair use because the law of fair use states that you can use copyrighted material in order to teach or to quote, but you cannot use it to make revenue and OpenAI is making a lot of revenue.

So, they are fixing that and they are looking for ways to compensate the authors. And I'll take this just one step further. Even HarperCollins has adopted an opt-in option for their authors to allow for an extra 25 or $5,000 in their pocket for the robot librarian to use their book to learn how to speak. Now, the important thing here to remember is that it does not remember word for word. So even if you decide to go ahead and take the extra $5,000 in your pocket. They're just gonna use your book to train the robot librarian for three years.  It has a cap on it and then that's it. So it's not gonna steal your novel.

Rhonda:

Right, it's not gonna steal the idea. It's not gonna steal the text. It's like cut and pasting words from different novels.

One of the challenges I find, I don't know if everyone else has had this experience, but I feel like a lot of people have gone into chat GPT and played around with it.  And the output kind of sucks, Ana. So like, how do we, how do we deal with that? I don't want someone co-writing my novel who, you know, can't write.

Ana:

Yeah, totally. We can, we can touch on that. But first I want to go back to something that you said, you know, cause I hear this a lot. It doesn't remember word for word, but it just cut, cut and pastes from different places. I just want to make sure that we clear that up because it doesn't cut and paste anything. That's not how it works. It just remembers mathematical patterns of speech. For example, if you say, hey, what are the top five words that after  peanut butter and it's probably going to remember jelly, right? So that kind of stuff.

Rhonda:

Thanks for clarifying.

Ana:

Yeah, so back to the second question. You know, I've used ChatGPT, and I get this a lot from some of my students that I'm working with. You know, two things can happen. First of all, the output is, your output is only as good as your input. So there is a level  of learning how to use these models  specifically for creative writers. And that's what I have done. So I have really learned how to use ChatGPT, and I've been working with ChatGPT for two years now.

And I have developed this way on working for specifically for creative writers that you have to learn how to prompt it and learn how to really weave in all the craft methodology that goes into traditional craft, right? Otherwise you're just gonna get a very generic response back.  And this is what I really aim to do for my students is to make them a chat GPT super user specifically in the creative writing space. So they have the best creative ally assisting them every step of the way from outlining all the way to developmental editing.

Rhonda:

Okay. And is when we do that is like, if I'm engaging with chat GPT in a co-creation process for a novel, am I doing the writing or is chat GPT doing the writing?

Ana:

You're absolutely doing the writing. And this is where it gets a little bit slippery. And I've actually had students come to me because AI took over and wrote their novel for them.

Rhonda:

Wow.

Ana:

Right?  And that could happen very quickly. That could happen very quickly. It is, if you use it in the way that I have developed it, what's gonna happen is that you're going to accelerate all these very manual pieces of writing, like outlining a novel, building in your soft plots, really having very deep character backstories so that you have a very well three-dimensional character that shows up on your page but you're really doing all the writing.

You're using ChatGPT just to accelerate all these very technical pieces of novel preparation. And then I never would edit a novel with ChatGPT unless I was on my second or third draft that I have developed myself, because there's definitely an art and I  have been editing my last novel, Valley of the Dudes with ChatGPT.  And of course I already had a third draft. Right? So I went in with something very strong  and then ChatGPT has been an amazing developmental editor in terms of polishing my piece, but it's all my original work.

Rhonda:

Interesting. I never thought of that. I mean, I think, you know, we've used, I think of it as supportive software for editing for years, right? ProWritingAid, Grammarly, and then AutoCrit. And they have you know, it's software, it's  programmed to do certain things. Now they do incorporate, you know, AI tools within them. But it never occurred to me to use ChatGPT as a developmental editor. So how does that work? Are you basically asking it to, you know, go in and check for consistencies, that kind of thing?

Ana:

You can do so many things when it comes to developmental editing. I mean, first of all, when you're working on your drafts, you can get real-time feedback as you're drafting, which is just, it's worth, it's weight in gold. And in terms of how to use it for developmental edits, so it's more than just looking for inconsistencies, but yes, you could actually ask ChatGPT to come back and, know, where are my inconsistencies? Where could I get stronger? What are you recommending? And then you could actually go in and make those edits.

And if your draft is advanced enough, it could do the edits for you real time, just like a real developmental editor would do. And I know that this is a very touchy topic and I've gotten a lot of pushback from editors, but the reality is that the writing world is changing and tools like ChatGPT and others are just revolutionizing the way that the industry works. And unfortunately for editors, they are not being, what's the word, protected, right? The way that writers are. So the Writers Guild of America, The Authors Guild, they have done a really great job at saying, hey writer, you can use these tools, but you can't create an AI-generated story. It's not copyrightable.

However, if you use these tools as your creative ally in these forms, then it is your work 100%. But editors don't have any kind of protection that way.  And what I tell editors all the time, and I've spoken to a few about this, and I feel very confident with the developmental editing capabilities that ChatGPT has because I am using it.

What I say to these editors all the time is, you need to have an AI strategy, right? Because if I hire an editor for three, $4,000, I want to make sure that I'm getting their expertise through the lens of an AI tool that is worth a thousand brains, right? I just don't want their human brain. I want their stacked value on top of what ChatGPT can offer.

Rhonda:

Interesting. Yeah. And how does copyright work? Like I think you mentioned with The Authors Guild, like it's a hundred percent your work. So are there any limitations to being able to retain the copyright?

Ana:

You know, what I always tell writers is that they have to go in with a very strong draft already. Because otherwise, AI is going to write the novel for you. So, and  this is the way that you can keep full copyright control. Right?

You use AI  as an ally to develop your novel and then you go in and you do these very rich edits with AI, but you got to have your work. It can't just be co-written by AI. Otherwise, if AI co-writes anything, then only the human authored portions are copyrightable. But if you edit with AI in a very advanced draft, what's the difference between hiring ChatGPT to do your developmental edit on your third  draft than hiring an editor.

And I will preface that Rhonda, that you do, it's not as easy as just putting in your manuscript in ChatGPT and saying, hey, can you do a developmental edit on this? No, there is a framework that you have to follow that is very grounded in structure and that's what I teach.

Rhonda:

Gotcha. So, the novel I was thinking of is called Do You Remember Being Born?  And it's about a poet who is asked to engage with an AI tool. And so it's like the story of the poet, but there's some poetry in there that, you know, he used AI to actually write. So if you check it out, it's been reviewed by the New York Times. It's really kind of interesting. And I know Stephen Marsh did something  kind of similar, I think.

There are some novels that are kind of exploring the AI as a, that are incorporating AI written, and I'm using air quotes here, AI written material into a novel, which to me is interesting, but not what you're talking about. You're talking about using it as a generative ally to like, help me  make sure my outline is sound and my structure is sound and my character backstory and the development of my character arcs and all of that is solid. And then I write the novel and then I ask ChatGPT for some support with questions related to developmental editing. Do I have that right?

Ana:

I mean, yes, yes, that sounds right. I mean, I would, probably go in with my first draft and ask for inconsistencies and not developmental edits yet, right? Because that's where you get a little, it could get a little bit tricky if it starts developing the story for you on your first draft.

Rhonda:

Right. And do you have to be very clear with ChatGPT, like do this, but don't do that? Like, do you have to tell them what not to do? Or can you just I mean, you've got a framework you've set up, so it's  very clearly directing what to do, but do have to tell it what not to do?

Ana:

Yeah, you have to tell it what to do and what not to do. So, think about ChatGPT, like it's just like an employee that you have  and you have to train it and you have to tell it what you want and your expectations. You have to set it up in the right way so that it remembers everything that you've talked about. So, and listen, it's not a difficult thing to do, but it definitely requires  time and practice in order to do this. Like I said, I've been working with this and I'm very comfortable with it for two years.  Right. So, but it definitely has a learning curve, so to speak. Right. But once you learn how to do this, it's like, you know how to fish. Right. And it's teaching you how to be a better writer.real time, like, you know what, this is what's wrong with this chapter. And this is what you're doing good. And this is what you're not doing so good. So, I mean, the fact that it's giving you real time feedback, where else can you get something like that?

Rhonda:

Well, I have a writer's group. I get feedback, you know, like I've I have, yeah, I, I haven't done this, Ana. And I'm going to say I have some I have some real questions about it. Like I have questions about the fact that like anything else that's human, it's trained on material that has inherent biases.

So, the stuff that comes out can be biased and sometimes even just weird, right? So, you get around that in your work by being really clear with the framework. So, I'm a little concerned about biases, but also concerned about the climate impact. They're saying that by 2026, like it actually will be between Japan and Russia in terms of energy use at a time when, you know, climate is a really, it's a significant issue.

And then there's every time I use ChatGPT and I use it for like, and I do use it, like, don't get me wrong, I do use it. So, I get the, and it's hard to not use it because it's cool. But like every time I ask it to take 12 pages and summarize it in 500 words, there's a worry I have about am I now losing the ability to summarize something into 500 words, right? By letting a machine do it to me in the way that like now all my math is done on my phone's calculator. Do you know what I mean? So, do you think about those kinds of things? How do you, did all of those questions kind of percolate, you know, for you?

Ana:

Okay. So, I'm gonna answer the three things that you brought up, which is climate, bias, and loss of ability. So, in terms of climate and what's happening, so it does take a lot of compute power to run something as sophisticated as a large language model like ChatGPT, but DeepSeq, which is ChatGPT's competitor from China that just came out two weeks ago, and as a result, Nvidia stock dropped 18%, which was a loss of 600 billion in market cap.  So DeepSeq has already figured out how to use these large language models as effectively and with a lot less compute power. So I'm not really that concerned about the climate change. that's going to eventually?

Ana:

It's gonna, you know, just like every new technology at first, it requires a lot of resources and then it changes. So, I think we're gonna see that change this year. Um, so I'm not really that concerned there. Um, in terms of bias, I have to agree with you. There have been times where my character profiles have been very, very, uh, bias and  not put it politically correct. Um, and, and, uh, very stereotypical and I've had to train my ChatGPT to not come back and give me those things. 

And in terms of loss of ability, you know, God, I just saw Bill Gates on, I think he was on Jimmy Fallon, cause he's got his new book. He turned 70 this year, Microsoft turned 50. It's a very big milestone for Bill Gates, but they asked him sort of the same question. And I will try to mirror what he said. And he said that  what he thinks is gonna happen is that humans are actually gonna get smarter.

Because we're actually gonna have the ability to, you know, we're not gonna just have the great outlier minds in pharmacy or writing or whatever, right? We're actually gonna have the ability to learn very quickly with AI on upskilling anything that we need to upskill in. And  so I'm not so worried that I won't be able to summarize 500 words if the ROI is gonna be that I'm gonna become an expert at scene structure.

Rhonda:

Right, yes, I get you. So it's trade-offs, like you get something better. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's really helpful. I like hearing these different perspectives on it, for these big questions around AI.

So what do you think are the mistakes that writers make when they first, they're like, hey, I'm going to go in and I'm going to open up ChatGPT and I'm going to ask it to help me with my novel. What are the mistakes that people make when they do that?

Ana:

That is such a great question. Thank you for saying that. First of all, if you're going to experiment with ChatGPT, get a paid version. It's only $20 a month. And make sure that you go to the privacy settings and you toggle off train the model because then you have that extra layer of privacy and you can be completely, you know, a peace of mind that nobody's using or work to train the model, even though it's not going to remember word for word, why not take the extra privacy? I always say, take it, right?

So the second thing is that when you first start working with ChatGPT, it could get very overwhelming very quickly.  Because first of all, you're going to be amazed by it and you're going to ask it a bunch of questions and then you're going to very quickly lose track from all the information overload. And then you can also very quickly move away from using it as a creative ally and suddenly it's writing such great pros for you that you're very tempted to just continue down this road because you're gonna feel like I'm never gonna be this good. I'm never gonna be as good as ChatGPT, right?

So this is what I see happening a lot and it's normal. I remember being there when I first started using this tool. And then I very quickly learned, you know, how to organize my  ChatGPT so that it remembers certain things and I can keep track  of projects and different things and really train my chat GPT. But it takes time, you know, it's not an overnight thing.  And, but I will say it is a hundred percent worth it.

Rhonda:

I love that. You know, I think you're one of the few people in this space who's really making the most of AI for working with novels. So I want to encourage everyone to go check out Ana's website, www.thenoveliststudio.com and you can learn more about her there and also, you know, engage with her and see  exactly how she's using AI to help  generate new creative work. Thanks so much for having this conversation with me today and I really appreciate it.

Ana:

Thank you, Rhonda. It was great to be here.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.

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