AI in My Author Toolkit: Editing Experiments and a Release Date for ‘A Healing Love’!

As some of you know, I’ve been using Google Gemini to get feedback on ‘A Healing Love’ during the writing process, and this is proving to be highly effective. I input the text I’ve written into a now lengthy chat, and the AI provides feedback on what works well and what could be improved. I then revisit and rewrite the sections that need strengthening and resubmit them, asking whether the changes I made effectively addressed the issues originally raised.

It’s like working with a human editor via email, but quicker because the feedback is more or less instant.

I’ve also extended my use of Gemini to my backlist, using it to generate feedback and create comprehensive notes on plot summaries, major characters, and thematic elements for each piece.

I’ll share some of the results eventually—they are fascinating and generally quite accurate.

I even went so far as to feed it all the novels at once and asked if the Westmouth setting was a convincing bit of ‘world-building.’ Does Westmouth feel like a real place? Is it vividly described? Could a reader visualise it from my descriptions? And is it consistent? For example, did I make the seafront a mile long in one story and two miles long in another?

The final thing I asked it to do for each novel was to craft some marketing materials. I wanted something short that could be used on X or other social media sites, along with a “Book Blurb” for use on marketplaces where the books are sold.

These AI-generated book descriptions, which I then heavily edited (particularly to remove any spoilers the AI occasionally included), are now live on my book pages across various marketplaces. I’ll also add these to this website when I can find the time.

The other ‘big’ thing I’ve done is issue an updated version of “Banging my Teammates.” The primary reason for this was to serve as a testbed. As I approach the completion of the first draft of ‘A Healing Love’, I need to consider the editing process before the release. I thought I’d test how I plan to use Gemini to assist me with this by running one of my existing works through it.

I fed Gemini the existing book—I already had a chat for this where I had done the analysis and marketing materials—and told it to act as my developmental and line editor as we went through the story scene by scene.

I asked it to check for spelling and grammatical errors, to maintain consistency, and to make any stylistic suggestions that would improve the text.

I think it worked quite well, and I’m pleased with the improved version of “Banging my Teammates” that I ended up with. Gemini wasn’t overly intrusive, didn’t try to change any plot points or the overall style of the piece, but it did pick up a few errors that I’d missed and some of the specific word choice or stylistic suggestions were a definite improvement over what I already had.

While I didn’t adopt every suggestion—far from it—I also never simply copied and pasted the suggestions I did like. I carefully considered each one, making deliberate authorial choices, quite often rewriting the text based on the suggestion and addressing the issues that caused the suggestion in the first place.

Ultimately, the revised story is still very much my own work.

I deliberately didn’t ask the AI to rewrite any of the story, and any changes that were made were my choice. I rejected at least as many suggestions as I acted upon.

But it wasn’t a quick or easy process by any means. On a 6000-word story, it took several hours over three days to complete the task.

‘A Healing Love’ is going to be over 190,000 by the time I complete it.

The editing process will not be quick.

Which leads me to thinking about a release date—something that felt a long way away at the end of 2024.

I’d like to give myself at least a month to complete the editing, but I’d also like to give myself a deadline to work towards. So I’m thinking the middle of June would be a good choice.

The Middle of June. Six Weeks.

I’m excited.