For years, I’ve been listening to Joanna Penn sing the praises of using artificial intelligence [“AI”] to assist in various aspects of the writing and publishing process. Last week, I took the plunge (sort of).

Draft #4 of my current novel is fairly massive. As I worked on Section 3, I found myself wishing I had an outline of all the chapters and scenes to that I could ensure that I wasn’t repeating something I’d written weeks ago and that I wasn’t skipping over something I’d meant to drop in. If I were a best-selling and/or wealthy author who has an assistant, I’d ask my assistant to prepare the outline. As it was, I started an outline a few months ago, and the time it took sketch out just a few scenes made it clear that the task would not only be onerous, but would eat into time I’d rather spend writing.

Maybe it was listening to Joanna’s podcasts about using AI as a tool, but finally, I decided the time had come to be brave. I already had the free version of ChatGPT, so I asked it to outline Section 1 of the book. (The three sections are separate Word documents.) ChatGPT produced summaries of the first two chapters before informing me that I’d exhausted the capacity for the free version and I’d have to wait 24 hours for it to reset.

At this rate, it would take at least three solid weeks to get this outline, and likely longer. Rather than keep coming back every day for another chapter or two, I began researching other AI products to see what else had the capacity to outline a manuscript without being exorbitantly priced. ChatGPT had urged me to upgrade to its $30/month level, but I couldn’t tell how much of the book it would outline even then. I spent a few days trying to decipher AI lingo, including such terms as token and harness, and to sort out the parts I needed to care about.

Then, it dawned on me: I should just ask Joanna.