Just Chattin’
A podcast where I discuss a wide range of topics with family, friends, and anyone else I can get to sit still.
Just Chattin’
I Believe In You
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- AI "Writers" are pathetic losers. I believe you're better than that.
Oh, I'm so happy I can shit right now. Holy crap. It's chilly.
SPEAKER_00I'm so happy. It's chilly. It's probably only like 50 degrees. I'm so fucking happy. I love it so much. Fall is coming.
SPEAKER_01Nice weather that doesn't make Toby want to die. I will admit, you know, I've tried not to complain because we have had a relatively mild summer.
SPEAKER_00But I just love fall! It's just it's just so great.
SPEAKER_02I was like, I think I need a hoodie at least for the first walk today. And I'm like, yes, you do. Love it so much.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Sorry. Back to business.
SPEAKER_01As you will have noticed, this might be a short episode. We'll see. But I have shit, okay, on quote unquote writers who use AI. And I will continue to do so. If you want to know why, those have been it's been pretty well covered. Um I met somebody yesterday who you she was a medical transcriber, but she got fired for an AI program who doesn't do her job as well as she does. Barnes, don't pull. Hold. And as I said to her, I will say to the people that I'm not talking to today, okay? I am not talking to the gig people who think that you know having a computer shit out 50 books that all sound exactly the same so that you can trick people buying them on Amazon. Cause it's a sad asshole, because I don't want to work for it. I'm not talking to those people. I'm not talking to the those fucking losers, okay? You, along with everyone else who uses it, uh, who replaces human work with AI, I wish the worst. Not death. I do not wish death upon you because why should you get off that easy? But I wish starvation, homelessness, and I wish that while you can are now contributing to the destruction of human creativity and the world at large, I hope you are the people who get hurt first or the most. I hope that someday you lose the job that you have and are sitting in your car slowly starving to death, and then I hope a little voice in your head says, Is it still worth it? But I'm not talking to you people, okay? Today's podcast, I am talking to the people who are not losers, but who think they might be, okay? Barney, get back on the road, please. Thank you, buddy. Because any real writer who has ever written anything, from a short story to a hundred thousand page novel, or a hundred thousand word novel, I think Proust is the only one who made it that many pages. Um you have at one point thought, I can't do this. I I this I this idea sucks. I would estimate that every year. I have published fairly consistent No, leave it. I have published fairly consistently consistently for the last few years. And I would say that for at least the last three or four years, every single year, I write somewhere between 20 and 60,000 words that nothing comes of them. Okay. Um they are either sitting in a shelf or in a filing cabinet to be period, or I burned them. Um I don't do that often, but I did it once. Um but I would say somewhere between 20 and 60,000 words I throw away effectively or shel every year. So I get it, man. I also don't really like myself in a lot of ways. And I am a perfectionist and self-loathing, so I have never looked at a piece of that's why I'm so bad at marketing. Because to effectively market a book, you have to be willing to tell people, this is awesome. I think you're gonna love it, okay? I worked really hard and I did a great job. And even if that's how I feel about my book, on the on like on the surface, right?
SPEAKER_02Deep down, I'm like, I worked really, really hard, and you're probably gonna hate it. You're probably gonna hate it. I'm bad at this.
SPEAKER_01Please, just it's okay, don't read it. I'll just write the rest next of them for me. Yeah, it's fine. Okay, yeah, it's just I get it, it's fine. Meanwhile, they're walking away. Like, I was gonna buy the book, but he freaked me out. So, to those of you who want to write a book and feel like you can write a book, but you have that nagging feeling in your head that calls you a fat a fucking loser, I feel you, okay? I am one of you. I am one of you. I have published two full-length uh two full novels, two collections of short stories and noveletes, and two separate novelettes. I have published six different things currently available. I published other things that look like shit. So I got cover readers, it doesn't matter. I've published, okay, and I still feel like you. And it's totally fine. I wanted to have the this little talk while I walk the dog and look like a lunatic to my neighbors to tell you you don't need AI. Okay? I believe in you. I mean, I'm doing my best to focus on believing in you and not the fact that it is going to cheapen your work. Okay? The AI cover is going to cheapen your work. It's it's gonna look like shit, man. But I see posts where people are like, what if I write the book with AI? What if you write it with a friend? Do you have one of those? I have wanted to do that for years. I don't have one of those. I don't have anybody I know who writes books. I'm trying to convince people to write books. I've been asking my sister to write a book with me for like eight years or some shit. But if you don't feel that you can handle it alone, get a friend. Hell, that book Will Grayson, Will Grayson, each author wrote every other chapter. Terry uh Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman wrote Good Omens together. You can do this, man. I fucking believe in you. And that nagging sense of self-doubt needs to be told to go eat a dick. I don't know if there are children present. Tell her to go eat a dick. Okay. Although it must be said that that you know that sense of self-doubt and Is this good? That's what makes you a fucking writer. The work is what makes you a writer. Cheating, having a computer come up with shit for you, and guess what? Bouncing ideas off of it, it's still cheating. You don't need that shit, man. You do not have to be one of these people, you do not have to be Stephen King who cranks out a novel every three months. Which, by the way, have you ever like I know everybody lauds Stephen King. He's like, oh, he's so prolific. Yeah, but they're not all great. Okay, they're not all they're they're not all the shining. Some of them are in fact pretty bad. Like it. Have you ever read it? Even if you could somehow look past the child, Orgy, it sucks. It looks impressive on a shelf because it's like 1100 and change pages. But they it it sucks. There are writers who only wrote one book. Harper Lee wrote one book, and then they posthumously published an old draft of that of that book as a new book. Like assholes. Sorry, I'm fat. You are more than capable of writing a book. As much as some of us, us being writers, would like to pretend that this is some ancient black magic that only we can do, like we're DD wizards or some shit. Alright, go get across the street, get across the street. Don't chase the truck. We don't know him. As much as we would like some of us would like to pretend, and when I was younger, I did I did this. I pretended like, well, because I can do it, you can't. You know, not everybody can write. That makes me special. I have ideas. Ideas mean absolute jack shit. Nothing. Nothing. You know how many fucking ideas I have a week? No. Everybody has an idea. What makes you a writer is that you sat your ass down and wrote the book. Okay? And it's not that hard. All you have to do for your first draft, okay? Actually, don't even don't even start there. Don't even start at the first draft. I want you to take that little idea, okay? Ideas, I shouldn't have said that they're worthless. Ideas are like children, okay? They're unformed, don't do a lot, and everyone can have them. Almost everyone can have them. Take your idea for your book and say, Okay, so what happens then? What happens then? Just say you're gonna have 25 chapters, okay? Get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Write it with your hand, okay? No, we're not going that way, we're going this way. Okay, we're going this way. Good boy. Number it old school, like when you were in school, one through 25. Little bitty outline, just a couple of lines. Maybe just one line. What happens in that chapter? Chapter one. Meet MC, main character. MC's mom dies, whatever you think, okay. It can take days, weeks, months, depending on how on whether or not the idea is free-flowing. Okay, to fill out that paper. And guess what? It's okay. It doesn't matter how long you take, we're all gonna die in the end. Every writer is gonna die with something unfinished. That's fine. It's cool, baby. It's all good. Pay attention. Thank you, buddy. Dink yo. Spend a two weeks. Give yourself two weeks to figure that out, okay? Is two weeks standard? Absolutely not. I have done the whole fucking range, okay? I have sat there in one creative fucking explosive diarrhea fest where shit just poured out of me, and I had a whole outline done in an hour or two. And then I have three of them, maybe four, in my notebook right now that I made at the beginning towards the beginning of this fucking year. It's almost September. And guess what? One of them, four chapters outlined. Four. You do not need to compare yourself to other people, okay? How are you doing? Come on, buddy. And I still fall into this trap, okay? You compare yourself like, well, Jack Kerouac wrote on the road in two weeks. He was on drugs. Uh Georges Simon or Georges Simone, I know he's fucking French. He used to lock himself in a hotel room and write 40,000 words in a week. He was on drugs.
unknownHe was on drugs.
SPEAKER_01Pick an old writer, there's a damn fucking good chance they were on drugs. I don't know why I whispered that. Probably because it's pretty early in the morning and I'm getting all hyped up and shit. Give yourself a deadline. If you're someone who works well on deadlines, if you're not, that's okay too. Let it, I mean, let it run out of you, let it fall out of you. It don't matter. Because it's yours. Do not write to try to make money. Write because you have to. Okay? Because depending on the subject matter, but also not, writing a book is an exhausting fucking process. Okay, baby. Exhausting. You got emotions, you live in the life of another person, sometimes multiple people. You I mean shit can get pretty emotional, and then you get up from the typewriter and your mother's like, can you take the dog out? I'm like, someone just died in my arms, babe.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01So if you don't absolutely yeah. No, you mind your own business. They're at their house. So if you don't have to write a book, maybe and I don't okay. Not have to, but like, if you feel if if you feel a burning knee, like you in it has been in the back of your brain for years or months or whatever, and you're like, this story needs told. That's the idea you run with, okay. If you're just writing it for fun, don't take it so seriously. Okay, the amount of writers who make a living on this it is so low that I think mathematically it would be expressed in hundreds or thousandths of one percent. Okay, like a fair number of those people you see on social media are like I'm at two million dollars shutting out books for the AI, or I made eight hundred thousand dollars because I wrote books. There's always more information there, okay. Either the books were practically free and everyone threw them away, or they're lying, most of the time they're fucking lying. Come on. Or, yeah, they made 800 grand, but they spent 500 grand in ads. No one is an overnight success. It takes 25 years to be an overnight success. Okay? Right for you, right? Because you have a book inside your brain, and if you don't get it out, it might shit itself in your brain, and that's called an aneurysm kids. Sorry, I kind of lost the thread here. Oh. So you fill out your outline, you've got your 25 chapters, and a little bit of thing, right? Start writing chapter one. I always have a page goal because I have I'm autistic. So I'm like, I want to reach this many pages because it'll help me, because I'm a chronic underwriter. A whole different issue. You just write unt until you feel that the story is done, okay? Then write chapter one, move on to chapter two. Don't the only time you should ever look back is if you forgot a detail, okay? And even then, not that important in the first draft. Okay? I had a first draft of a story that I worked on before finally realizing it was never going to work. I just couldn't make anything work. Okay, I worked on the one story for I don't remember exactly, something like between 13 and 15 years. Yeah, somewhere around there. Let's say let's say 15 years, just for math. I worked on one story for 15 years. Okay, on the on one of the very first drafts, might be uh let's say it's the first draft because I wrote so many drafts of that thing I don't actually remember. Character had a little brother, he was two, okay. Halfway through the page I forgot, or through the draft, I forgot his name. And made him a girl. In the next draft, it started out, I believe his name was Timothy. That's a cool motorcycle. Name was Timothy, and he was like two, I think. By the end of draft one, I had accidentally turned his name into Pai, and he was a chick. He was a little girl. And then after that, I believe in the next draft she was four, okay? So tiny little detail like that don't matter. Don't look back. Never look back on the first draft. Just write, write, write, write. Type smack, scratch, whatever, how you smack how you write.
SPEAKER_02Thank you Come on, buddy.
SPEAKER_01That was adorable. Um just I use a typewriter. Some people still write old school pens and pencils. I would recommend one of those personally, but I am a much more analog, tactile type person. Um and quick side note to the AI argument, you being disabled has nothing to do with it. You're just you're just you either are being in one of the lazy shoots I mentioned at the beginning, or you don't think you can do it. Okay? There is dictation software, and guess what? Lots of old writers before there was software, they hired somebody to type for them. That's probably pretty expensive these days, but it does technically still exist. So there is no reason that you can't judge if you I mean you could write a book and not have fucking hands, okay. I believe in you, you can fucking do it, man. Everybody has at least one book in them. It's a fucking spectrum, okay? I believe maybe not everybody, because there are genuine people who are like, yeah, I like to I like stories, but I don't want to tell them. I don't care. But I would say most people have one. Lots of people have two to five, two to three to four or five. And then there are the other end, not the top, not the top, not the bottom. Okay, this is a fucking speedometer. There is one side and the other. I don't know if you've ever, I'm sure you've been in a car and looked at the dial. Zero and 120, they're pretty level with each other, okay. There are those of us who, if we don't continue riding forever, will probably die. And it could not matter less what end of that spectrum that you wrote. On JD Salinger published like one book, maybe four, I don't remember, and then kept writing the rest of his life and just put that shit in a filing cabinet. Okay. So here's what you do. After you are done with your first draft, put it in a drawer. Put it in a folder, or if you have a cover page, write on the cover page. Do capital letters in your own handwriting where even you can read it. Do not fucking read before at least three months from that date. I am currently still in the having somebody look at it and tell me if it's stupid stage. But I wrote a book in August slash October. Because I broke my own rules. Don't listen to that part. But I wrote a book in August of 2024. And then maybe November. It might have been November. About three-ish, two, three months later, I looked at it and I'm like, that's dumb. Added a couple pages, put it away till January 25. Added a few pages in January 25, and then put it away. It is now the towards the end of October of 26. And I'm and somebody's reading it. Okay. It does not have to be that long for you, but at least three months. And in the meantime, if you don't have another idea, which there is no judgment on that, you wrote a fucking book, man. Actually, I'm gonna backtrack. You're right, do not fucking read until at least three months. Write the date. If you finish on January 1st, you put fucking April 1st. April is the fourth month, but it's three months after you finished. Because you're going to forget. You're gonna be like, has it been three months? I don't remember. Put the damn date. Because if you can you will check the day and be like, and whatever you do, whatever self-control you have or don't have, do not allow yourself to read that manuscript. Okay? Now you have finished a book. It is in a drawer. Excuse me. Pat yourself on the back. Have a beer, have a soda, have an ice cream, have a fucking treat. Something that your brain associates with. Holy crap, I did a great thing. Because you wrote a fucking book, man. You wrote a book. An entire ass book. That was not written by you by AI. It was not shut out by some computer. This it was not you know, you didn't write DN blah blah blah like a third grader. Which that's a whole different conversation. They're in third grade. You took a block of an idea like a seed. You planted it in your brain. You nurtured it, you watered it. It grew into a tree. You made a fucking book. I have to go exchange dogs, and then we're gonna have a part two. But in this metaphorical time, give yourself a pat on the back. Alrighty, uh so go this way, buddy. You have patted yourself on the back, you have put your manuscript away, and now for the next three months at least, if you do not have another idea, if you do have another idea, and start with the outline, repeat. Or take some time to go for a run, you know, exercise, eat, sleep, shit, fuck, repeat. Until that next idea percolates, okay? Now, if you don't have another idea, then just go live your life. Go live your life, go see friends, go to movies, go read books. Um, there's nothing sadder than a writer who doesn't read because their books are shit. Doesn't matter how much effort they put in. If they if you don't read, you can't write. Okay, okay, come on. It's okay. It's a tractor trailer coming. Take a pause, take a pause. It's gonna be alright. Oh, here we go. Here we go, buddy. Oh, don't run away. And nobody died.
SPEAKER_00Nobody died.
SPEAKER_01Good job. Okay, back to what I was saying. Do your best to completely forget your story. Not just what happens, but the effort of writing it and all that jazz. Just back of the brain. Okay. Now we're gonna fast forward to when that time is up. You're gonna reread it. Once. You're gonna reread it. And do your best to save it for the first time. And you're gonna set it down. And you're gonna come. And you'll be like, well, that could be different. Well, that could be different. Okay? Now you're gonna reread it a second time with a pen or a pencil. And you're gonna make little notes. Like, this should be different. That should be different. That should be different. That should be different. Uh no, I like that. Okay, that fuck that. Yeah, okay. Then you're gonna write your second draft. The second draft is where you polish it up a little bit, right? And here's the important part. You find a person to read it. Now but when you're going to hand your second draft to a person, this needs to be someone who you can trust to be really honest. Okay? I I you I you love your mother, I love your mother. Your mother's great, okay? But unless your mother is autistically, brutally, crushingly honest like mine, having her read your book is a waste of energy. Cause she's just gonna go, I'm so proud of you. It's great, it's I love it. I wouldn't really normally read something in this genre, but but I love it. And that's sweet, and that is awesome. It's not fucking helpful. Okay. My mother, once upon a time, I was still trying to be nice, and I said, Yeah, that's not helpful. Tell me where it sucks. I need you to read it as someone who's reading my book, and she went, Got it. I gave her a pen, and she started marking up that draft as she read it. She has done that to at least almost the first two free cast books. I believe she did it with the third one, and I think somebody else read most of the thought bubbles, but she still contributed some revisions to those. Now, if you don't have anybody in your life that you can trust to be that honest, there are Facebook groups, there are in-person writing book groups, there are people who do it for money. Just find someone who is not afraid to look you in the eye and go, okay, so I like it, but your main character is retarded. Okay, why is she this dumb? So then you, because and and you need to remember something, because this is the stage where a lot of people can get real fucked up, okay. I used to. I used to take almost every fucking note as a personal attack on not only my writing ability, but also who I was as a person. Noble's trying to figure out why the fuck I'm talking with this to this thing. It's not. They are trying to help you, okay? Because do you know who is going to try to be mean? Anybody you hand the finished book to. That that might happen anyway, but you need to make the book as best as possi as you can, as good as you can, so that you can point to them and be like, you didn't even fucking read it. You're a troll. So And here's the thing. You don't have to listen. Okay, let's say that they say your main character we'll take an example, right? The book that my sister Joni's Joni's reading for me, she tells me, she's like, you're too like your main character and then the the the girl, they're too far apart. Like, and I I was like, well yeah, he's supposed to be like way less experienced than her. And Joni's like, yeah, that I got that, but like, she's a bitch. She talks to him, not like the more experienced partner in the mission. She talks to him like he's a third grader following her around. And I paused and I'm like, No, you know what, that's fair. Sh I did a little too much, like they are too far apart to come together later. That makes sense. And another example. There's a joke in the first freak house book where uh one kid's bullying the other one being a dick, and it's like, oh, did you get a girlfriend? And the teacher says, just because you can't get a girlfriend doesn't mean it's impossible. Don't don't be an ass. Now, the next joke when the kid when the bully is like, I can't get a girlfriend, some another student says, just call you because you call your right hand baby doesn't mean that that it's your girlfriend. I'm not a comedian, but I think that's a pretty solid joke, right? Originally it was the teacher who said that. I still remember my mom when she was marking up, she's like, even if he has like tenure and stuff, that's still pretty inappropriate for a teacher to make that joke. And at first I was like, uh well. And then I read it, I'm like, yeah, you know what, that's pretty fair. So then I made another student do it, and it worked better. Okay, this person is not out to get you unless you paid them, like, instead of like let's say you don't have friends and you can't find a group that's not assholes because it's the internet and they're all assholes. That's not true. That's not true. There are good people in writers' groups on that are trying to help each other. I'm just a cynical twat. But I know we're walking right into the sun. Where was I? Oh. Let's say you decide to go the paid route, okay? Even then, if you find uh anyone resembling a reputable editor, they're gonna they're they're there to help, okay? For them to be there out to get you, either you have to have personally attacked them or given them a check, and in the memo, right, in the memo section you wrote, please be as mean as possible. And that's not writing, that's a fetish that you need to discuss with a therapist or a hooker. So now you've gotten your notes back. You take Ow shit. I think I got a hair splinter. You take a look at them, or preferably you take a little break. So just calm down from that brutal, brutal process that is receiving notes. And you say, I'm gonna go live my life. Right? I'm gonna go bang my significant other. I'm gonna go get an ice cream cone, I'm gonna go to church. It really doesn't fucking matter what you do. And after a little bit of time, could be six hours, six weeks, doesn't matter. You read the second draft with the notes, and you're like, This one makes sense. I don't agree with this one, this one's and you polish this into your final draft or your third draft. Now, quick little note to all the perfectionists out there. You're never gonna be happy. If you are anything resembling my level of perfectionism, at no point in time will you ever be satisfied or happy with your work. That's just not a thing that's going to happen. Um So you just at a certain point you're gonna be like, this is good enough, and we move on. Because otherwise, you you're gonna flash forward you're gonna fast forward 25 years, you're on draft 192, and you're still not fucking satisfied. It's not that your book is bad, it's that it's your brain hates you. When I was in barber school, I my uh kept trying to get everything absolutely perfect, and one of my instructors finally was like, At a certain point you just have to accept what it is and move on. They're either gonna be happy or they're not. You can't, you know, you can't do this for you every haircut can't take four hours. So now you have written, typed, dictated, whatever. Your third and or final draft. This is where you like just metaphorically and maybe literally jerk yourself off because you finished a fucking book, man. You finished a motherfucking book. I'm so goddamn bad you you did it by yourself. You're a writer. You're not an AI slap loser who pretends to be a writer and pretends that they've ever had a creative thought. You are a creative thought. You are a hot piece of creative ass. Just just strip naked look at yourself in the mirror and think that that body wrote a book. That's not a thing I do. I just got literally worked up there. Um I don't even own a mirror. It's not an Amish thing, I just I broke it, so I guess I technically have two pieces of what it used to be a mirror. Anyway. Anywho, anywho's it who's this is where you get into the publishing side. Someday, if I wish upon a star, I and figure out distribution in a way that doesn't make my company worthless. I might be able to help with that. Okay, because that is my goal, is to publish books that are not just mine, but other people's as well. Currently I'm only publishing mine, and those written by friends and people I know directly. Um But someday I might help you. But for now, you can either submit to a traditional publisher, send out query letters to agents, agents, the middlemen who I'm sure exist for a reason, but I've never had one. That's a whole other story about what um about why unfettered access to the internet is a bad idea for teenagers. Um you can go the self-publishing route. Which is fun. Um at that point you're s either formatting it yourself or getting a form formatting done for you. Come on, buddy. We're going the mile today, my man. And just to note, uh, the saying is don't judge a book by its cover, but I think every single one of us knows we do. That's its job. It's it's it's it's attraction. It's the same way that relationships work. You might stay for a stunning personality, and because she makes you laugh, but you noticed her ass or titties first. Or her face. You know, you noticed his muscles, his cute face, his nice beard, his great butt, like whatever. That's what you noticed first. And you're like, you slid up to him and you're like, hey, sweet ass. And then it made you laugh, made you cry, and you're like, oh, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, or at least a significant portion of it. Would you like to have sex? That's how books work. Good cover. People go, ooh, sweet cover. Hey, that sounds pretty good. I'ma buy that. AI is not the way to go. Okay. I'm not saying that you have to spend $12,000 on a cover. You don't. AI is not the way to go because as a reader who hates everything and everyone involved in artificial intelligence. They look like shit. If you've been to a Walmart recently, I don't even know if those ones are AI, but the AI only makes covers that all look alike. There are 75 books in the Walmart book section right now that all look the fucking same.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01But as a reader who buys way more books than I should, let me tell you what your AI cover says to me. I didn't write this fucking book. That's what it says. I am a lazy shit who could not be bothered to do fuck all. This is a cash grab. I'm not creative. I had a computer shit this out. The end. And that's not true for you, my man and or lady. That's not true, baby. You done wrote that book. And do you really okay here's another metaphor? You are chef, okay? Your book is your dish and you have just spent months, maybe years collecting all of the beautiful ingredients, chopping, dicing, slicing, sauteing, boiling, mashing, cooking. You have put your blood, sweat, and if you're anything like me, a whole bunch of tears. And staring at the ceiling, wondering why God cursed you to want to write books? Is God an asshole? Are you good at this? All of that time, all of that effort, all of that love and work. And you have made a fucking Chinese meal. Do you really want to put it in a tego box made of recycled elephant shit? Cause it might have pretty gilt gilded edges and nice fun lettering, but everybody knows it's made of shit, baby. Do you wanna cover it up with one of them silver dishes that you know one of your bitchy kiss kitchen assistants wrote in her own, you know, ass blood? Fuck everyone! No! You wanna put that shit into Go Box that makes people smile? Makes people see your restaurant go. I've never eaten that, but I'm gonna try it today. Now this is not an ad, okay? I have never ever made money Um off of this podcast. Okay. It has cost me quite a bit of money over the years both for the hosting and gas and time and all that jazz. So I have spent money on this podcast, but I have never. Wait. No, I've never even found a dime while walking on the podcast. Okay, so this is not an ad. Get covers. They don't use the AI images, they take stock photos. They do they do stock photo covers and they arrange them in whatever artistic or autistic way that you want. That's how they work. And they're brilliant. They're great. I've checked multiple times. They don't use the AIs. They've done all of my covers. They look good. They're nice and sassy. I love them. Okay? If you have a friend who's an artist and you can pay them a reasonable sum to do a cover, fucking do that, man. I was not in that situation. I had old covers I made on KDP Cover Creator and they looked pretty fucking bad. And good artists are worth the money that they charge. Absolutely lutely. They are without hesitation. They are worth that money. I ain't got that money. Okay. I was in a very similar situation to where a lot of people are. A lot of people who resort to AI because they think it's easy. I mean it is easy. But you get what you pay for. You know what I'm saying? It looks like shit. I've never seen an AI cover that wasn't very obviously AI. Um sorry my throat's hurting. You get what you pay for, but that whole thing where uh sorry my uh ass and knees are hurting. I'm gonna need a break before I walk the little girls. What was I saying? Oh my budget for a cover did not include any artists who were good enough to draw a cover. I put out stuff like on Reddit and everything. And they were like, how's this? And it looked like it looked it was terrible. Like I don't know if they were still learning or they're just not good at it or what. Or if it was that that's the art they were willing to put forth for my budget. Either way, it just didn't work out. Okay. If a bunch of people subscribe to the website and buy books and everything, maybe I'll pay for a better artist in the future. But for right now, get covers is where it's at, man. And if it's revealed that they use AI, I will and have been lying to me, I will use, I will issue a public apology and I'll find somebody else to do human-made covers. But okay, so you found your covers. And it's like if you want to publish on Amazon and Ingram Spark, 40 bucks, okay? 40 bucks for both covers. It's fantastic because their measurement requirements and stuff are different. It's great, man. Now I think we're coming up on the end of the therallel podcast. And you wrote a book. Okay? You wrote a fucking book. I'm so proud of it, and you did it by yourself. You did it for real. You put in the work, and the work is what makes you a writer. I'm so fucking proud of you right now. You are just so cute. It's just so nice. I love it. If I was there with you, I'd give you a slap on the ass and a cheesecake for your success. Maggie Hash! I'm proud of you. And I believe in you, okay? Worthless shit's gonna be worthless shits. I I you know there's nothing to be done about those people that are lazy and stupid, and they're like, I'm gonna have Chat GPT or Cloud or whatever shit out of 135 different novels by the end of the day. You're a baby. There have always been worthless shits like that. It's just a lot easier for them to be worthless now. That's all. You, my dear sexy little writer friend. You're not one of them. You're one of us. The humans. We shall rage against the machines. Alright. Been holding my arm at the same angle for basically an hour at this point. It fucking hurts. So I love you. I'm proud of all of you real writers. And every time you don't think you think you can't do it, fucking bookmark this episode, baby, or send me a little message, and I will make a podcast just for you about how fucking awesome you are. Cause I fucking love you, man. Seriously, I want some fan mail. Like, I don't even care if you're mad at me. Just like the little link down in the in the episode description says send us the message. Boom. All the uh you know, boom, like thank you, you rock, or eat a dick. Whatever. I love you. Bye.