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This is author MJ Muñoz here with a 20 minute writing session update from February 15th,

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2024.

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I actually, it's supposed to only be 10 minutes but something happened and I ended up going

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20 minutes so I thought you know I'll just stick with it and what you're going to see

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here over the next three or so minutes is a condensed version of me writing for 20 minutes

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and it's, it's you know writing is rewriting they say and so that's what I have recorded

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here and I figure I'll just be as open, you know I want to continue to be as open and

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transparent with my creative process as possible so this is part of it.

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I, not with any shame or trepidation or nervousness I admit or you know tell you, you can plainly

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see if you looked at the beginning of this video that I was using ChatGPT as part of

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my creative process.

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I actually, actually it was Claude, I'm using Claude AI, I pay for that, 20 bucks a month

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and I like it.

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I think it's a very good tool for me to use and I specifically in this instance am using

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it to, I used it to generate abilities of Digimon like characters, character traits

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for them, something about their look, you know a lot of different things.

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I directed it to make them look a certain way or to give me information about them.

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I'm currently writing a Grobug Tale book and it's a chapter book, middle grade chapter

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book or I guess it's a middle grade and I have a character interaction that I need to

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make between these four critterbot guardians and this character Hopper who's a Grobug who

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doesn't quite know he's a Grobug yet and it's, anyway I know Hopper fairly well because

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I've written him for a while and I have a good sense of his personality and what he

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thinks and the way he is although I'll also be showing him as he's kind of waking up in

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a new world with lost memories and not quite knowing who he is so I needed to figure out

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who well I can be a little bit vague with who he is as I'm trying to figure that out

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and I figure his personality will come out as he's interacting with these characters,

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the critterbot guardians but I also, well but I did not want to get stuck on figuring

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out who these critterbot guardians are and as strange as this may sound to some extent

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it doesn't really matter who they are.

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I'm not going to spend a lot of time developing these characters because I just need them

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to be characters to serve a purpose and that purpose is to tell this little bit of the

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story to help texture and contextualize who Hopper is and what he's doing in this world

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and how they as these guardians of this world interact with him and I know the broad strokes

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of it but just you know what are their specific personalities like and how do they interact

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with him?

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I don't know.

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I didn't know so I asked Claude to help me with that and it gave me some stock stuff.

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If you look at the beginning you can see I'm revising a lot of what it put in.

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It went a little too technical.

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It wanted to talk about Cinderstripe having like 3000 degree flames coming out of his

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claws or whatever and I thought that's silly.

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I don't need that.

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I want to use like a more soft magic system.

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I don't need to know the particulars of how hot the flame is or whatever and just I wanted

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to be simple.

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He shoots fireballs out of his mouth.

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He swipes at enemies while his claws are fiery or hot because his paw pads have flames coming

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out of them.

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He's got burners on his back that he can burst fuel from to jet propel himself forward and

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he can shoot out a stream of stuff to make a flame wall to either trap prey or to defend

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himself and whoever he's with and whoever he's protecting.

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So those are the things that matter not the degree of the flame and those are just silly

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like fun Digimon like abilities that were generated for this character who uses the

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element of fire and is in the shape of a tiger even though he's like a cyborgish sapient

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human intelligence level type being.

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So yeah I am refining all these ideas because I don't like some of them and I'm rejecting

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some of them and you can see in the video process or you can see in the process me rewriting

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that stuff to bring it more into alignment with what I want the tone of the story to

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be and how I want it to be simpler.

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What I'm going to do with this is refine it down to a point where it's a quick reference

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which I also had Claude help me do because I came up with what are the abilities, what

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do they look like, what are their names, how are we going to develop them, blah blah blah

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and I went through this whole iterative process and then I said okay let's combine these into

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a quick guide for me to have to reference and then it was too condensed and I asked

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it to un-condense it so it did so it just expanded that stuff out and now I'm editing

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that that's what you're seeing on the screen if you're looking at that part and it's good

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it's interesting it's very useful I'm still putting in the creative work I'm still making

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the character arcs I'm still going to have to make these characters who they are and

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I think it's really interesting and the people who Poo Poo AI assisted writing, that's fine

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my wife doesn't want to do it at all and I've told her that I'm doing this and she's like

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oh that's kind of weird why don't you just write it yourself well you know because I

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am writing it myself I just have you know a robot man, Frank, Frank is what I call him

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to help me you know speed through these ideas and the nice thing is I get to reject a lot

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of them and then come up with my own and it's just it's almost like the Edison thing like

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if Thomas Edison had somebody helping him there who you know showed him how not to make

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a bunch of light bulbs then he said okay fine I won't go that path I'll go another path

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he would have gotten to the light bulb a little more quickly I think so that's what I feel

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like it's like it's an amplifier of my my ability and effort so it's pretty cool I'm

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digging it and yeah so I'm got to keep plugging away at this book this is actually well I

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intend on well it doesn't matter what I intend it only matters what I do so I will continue

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to work on this book and others and I will update you on when they are released when

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they're available and you can find all that information over at MJMunoz.com as always

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until next time folks take care be well!