Hi Reader,

I made a cartoon of my goat Precious making soap, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I never thought that would be something I could learn how to do.

Yep, I used AI tools. Several of them.
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AI is here, like cars and cameras. You can still paint a portrait by hand if you have the skills and the time. You can still walk and ride a bike places. It's better for you and for the environment.

But most of us live in places that weren't designed for bicycles and pedestrians. So much depends upon the internal combustion engine, now and still, and AI tools are on the same track. My business wouldn't survive without them.

I'm sure anyone who knows how to make cartoons the old-fashioned way would see the fingerprints of AI all over the video I made. That's to be expected, since I'm a beginner using these tools.

I think about the time when people started using cameras. It took a while for people to accept that cameras could be used to produce art. Someone would look at your photo and say, "Oh, but you used a camera. You didn't make that picture, the camera did."

But if you had gone through the whole process of choosing the film and f-stops, going out at the time of day when the lighting is best, setting up your angle, you knew the camera didn't make that picture all on its own.

A camera can only record what you put in front of it.

AI fills in all the blanks you leave, and it fills those blanks with phrases it has seen ten thousand times before.

When I read manuscripts people send me where they used AI tools to help them write, I see blanks filled in the same ways all the time.

Something shifted in me that day.

In that moment, everything changed.

I didn't know it then, but my life would never be the same.

A weight I didn't know I was carrying lifted.

The silence spoke volumes.

Her words hung in the air.

For the first time in years, I felt seen.​
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Each one tells the reader that something happened, but it leaves out what it was that happened. If you simply state what you experience, the reader can have their own immediate experience and you don't have to decorate it.

I asked AI for a sentence about milking a goat in the morning, and this is what I got:

There was something sacred in the quiet rhythm of the morning milking.

Here's how I would describe milking Precious:

I rub my hands together so they won't be too cold, press my knees into the straw, lean in until my forehead touches Precious's flank and say, "Ok, Precious, let's get some milk." She squats slightly, giving me permission, and I squeeze two warm streams into the pail.

AI never would have written that.

AI is here though, like cars and cameras and every other new thing we can't live without, so let's learn the tools and try to use them well.

At the spring 2025 summit, Julia Stege talked about using Midjourney to create artwork for your book, and she shared cover art she has created. Here is her talk.

Would you be interested in a class on what I've learned and figured out about using these tools as a writer? Hit reply!

Laura

PS If you're curious to see the video I made, here it is.

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