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Jeremy Madsen

August 13: Authors & AI – Navigating Ethics, Benefits, and Tactics

August 10, 2024 By Jeremy Madsen

Scott T E Jackson

With Scott T. E. Jackson

Tuesday, August 13, 2024, 12:15–1:15 pm Mountain Time

We’ll explore the transformative role of AI in the writing world. From ethical considerations to practical tactics, you’ll gain a well-rounded understanding of how to integrate AI into your writing process while maintaining your unique voice. Whether you’re curious about AI’s potential or concerned about its implications, this talk will provide you with the insights needed to make informed decisions. [Yes, this description was written with AI.]

Bio: Scott T. E. Jackson is an author and marketing professional. Scott directs the digital advertising efforts for 18 partner businesses at Revity Marketing in American Fork, where AI and content marketing [read: “writing”] are evolving daily. Scott is passionate about writing and has published and self-published titles in fiction and creative nonfiction, most recently with Cedar Fort. He lives in Springville, Utah, with his wife and two children.

Watch the Zoom Recording
See Scott’s Slides

Summary and Key Takeaways

What is A.I.?

  • Artificial intelligence is essentially creating groups of mathematical formulas that “learn” by finding patterns in data.
    • They can identify patterns, compare patterns, and imitate patterns.

Morals, ethics, laws

  • As we deal with A.I., we need to keep in mind (1) morals, (2) ethics, and (3) law. These overlap but have differences.
    • Morals: What you personally believe is right or wrong to do
    • Ethics: Code of acceptable behavior defined by the group you belong to
    • Laws: Systems of formal rules enforced by government entities
  • The ethics and laws around AI are in constant flux and can differ between communities or countries. We’re still figuring this all out as a society.
  • To help navigate your own morals and ethics around AI use, start with your “Why.” Why are you running your business or creating what you create? That will help govern your “how” (how you use AI) and “what” (what you use it to create)

Issues of AI in the creative space:

  • Devaluing writing as an art or skill
  • Oversaturating the writing market with fluff and dross
  • Loss of your own creativity
  • Formulaic plots, characters, dialogue, etc.
  • Whose words is it stealing?
  • Worry about falling behind if we don’t use AI

AI is a super power. “It’s not a super power unless it can be used for evil” (quote from Hooked by Nir Eyal)

AI is the newest iteration of the age-old debate and tension between art and business. (Is “writing to the market” bad art? Is asking AI to “write to the market” bad art?)

Scott’s advice about using AI in your workflow:

  • Use AI tools to support your existing creative model and workflow.
  • As a solo-preneur, there are many, many tasks that you either need to do yourself or hire someone to do. Identify tasks that you would hire someone else to do if you have the money. These are the tasks you could probably have AI help you with.
  • Don’t be rigid in your position about AI. Play around and experiment with different tools, and different ways to use those tools, before making a judgment on whether you can or should or should not use something.
  • Ethical uses of AI with writing:
    • Idea generation and brainstorming (“Give me ten concept ideas for a young adult sci-fi novel”)
    • Research assistance (“How did medieval catapults work?”)
    • Editing and proofreading (“Analysis this blog post and suggest ways to improve the tone, flow, or organization)
    • Creative problem solving (“My characters are trapped in a dungeon with their hands tied. Come up with ten ideas for how I can free them in the next chapter.”)
    • Outlining (“I want to write a post about
  • Rather than spending your efforts tweaking your prompt to be exactly right, just test and iterate with a bunch of various prompts. Test out a bunch of options. You’ll learn through iteration what works and what doesn’t.
  • What is your final goal? What do you want READERS to take away with? How do you want your work to transform them? Use that to inform how you shape your product.
  • Your output is as good as your prompt. Things you can include in your prompt:
    • Persona: Who is the AI writing as? (e.g. “You are a Latter-day Saint writer and speaker who focuses on motivating youth”)
    • Context (“You are writing a collection of daily words of affirmation meant to help Latter-day Saint youth development mindfulness, emotional resiliency, and their spiritual connection to God and Jesus Christ”)
    • Task: What do you want the AI to do? (“Generate 50 one-sentence affirmative sentences, written in first-person, that could be included in this book.”)
    • Format: How long and in what format should be the response? (“Put them in a bulleted list”)
    • Tone (“Use an enthusiastic, casual tone”)

Specific Use Cases

  • You can use Dall-E to iterate possible images for a cover design, then hand them over to an actual artist as a comp or example of what you want.
  • After AI generates material for you, you can say “Make it 20% shorter” to have it cut out some of the fluff.
  • You can use Chat-GPT to shorten your synopsis or create an elevator pitch based on a synopsis.
  • Bookle.ai: Can create an entire book based on an outline or idea

How do traditional publishers feel about writers who use AI?

  • Their traditional concerns are mainly about the IP rights. They don’t want to publish something that will turn out to be in the public domain because it was made by AI.

Comments from Participants in the Chat

Jeremy Madsen: One of the best author-related uses I’ve seen is an author feeds their lengthy book synopsis into AI and asks it to generate 10 different back cover blurbs for the book.

Heather Pack: When I taught at BYU, I went to a training seminar on this. ChatGPT is able to create Book of Mormon verses that students didn’t realize weren’t in the BoM and used them in Sac. Mtg. talks.

Ben Kelly: So, in relation to idea generation, I have used A.I in the past to not necessarily create ideas, but more to open avenues of possibility. For example, I’ve given A.I a synopsis of my book and asked what I could do to improve the plot. I feel like this is an ethical way to get advice for general directions to go with my work (Political scapes, possible conflict, types of problems to navigate, etc.)

Tiffany Thomas: I use ChatGPT to help me when I get writer’s block. I feed it my book so far and ask what should happen next. Nine times out of 10, it’s really not that good, but a phrase or a concept will get my creative juices flowing again.

Jeremy Madsen: I’ve used ChatGPT and Copilot to brainstorm possible names for characters.

Jeremy Madsen: I find it’s useful to give the same prompt to two or three different AI tools (Chat GPT, CoPilot, Claude). The responses can be quite different.

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

July 25: Intentional Editing

July 18, 2024 By Jeremy Madsen

With KayLynn Flanders

Thursday, July 25, 2024, 1:00–2:00 pm Mountain Time

The good news: Your story can be anything. The bad news: Your story can be anything. In this class, we’ll examine editing as permutation, and help you learn how to edit your story—with all its wonderful possibility—with intention.

This session will also be helpful for editors editing others’ work.

Bio: KayLynn Flanders, author of the Shielded duology, holds a degree in English language and worked as an editor for many years before turning to writing. KayLynn is a medium-adventurous foodie and spends her nonexistent spare time traveling, playing volleyball, and attempting new hobbies. She lives with her family in Utah between some mountains and a lake, but you can find her online at kaylynnflanders.com.

Watch the recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

June 27: Mental and Emotional Health

June 14, 2024 By Jeremy Madsen

With Dr. Iesha Gibbons

Thursday, June 27, 2024, 1:00–2:00 pm Mountain Time

Emotions are a necessary and never-ending part of our journey as people, which is why I want to focus on emotions, what they are, why we feel them, and what they can teach us.

Bio: Dr. Iesha Gibbons is a licensed marriage and family therapist who works at Redwood Family Therapy in Saratoga Springs, Utah. She received both her masters and doctoral degrees from BYU after completing her undergraduate degree in Florida. She specializes in couples, focusing on communication, healing from affairs, and sexual health. Dr. Gibbons lives in Utah with her husband, two beautiful children, and a grumpy cat. She loves and misses the beach and enjoys watching movies, reading, and dancing in her free time.

Watch the Recording

Summary of Takeaways

What is the purpose of emotions?

  • It’s part of what makes us human
  • Emotions help tell us what’s important in the world around us. They help us focus on problems or highlights.
  • Each emotion plays a role. Fear protects us from dangerous situations. Happiness gives us guidance and direction. Anxiety drives us to prepare for situations or resolve issues. Guilt helps us know we did something wrong.

How do we manage our emotions?

  1. Listen to your body. What is your phisiological state telling you about your emotional state?
  2. Talk OUT LOUD to yourself about your emotions and why you’re feeling them. (According to Iesha, we need to talk out loud to ourselves a lot more!) Name your emotions out loud. “Hey, sadness. I know that you’re here. Why are you here?”
  3. Accept the fact that you’re feeling an emotion. Acknowledge it. Only then can you do what it takes to manage that emotion.
  4. Listen to what your emotion is trying to tell you. When you listen to an emotion and give it your attention, it will usually then go away or at least become more manageable. If you listen, your emotions will give you the information that you need.
  5. Strive to be emotionally present in your current moment. If an emotion from another part of your life is trying to distract you from your current situation, set it aside—and then come back to it later and listen to it. Don’t just ignore it forever.
  6. Challenge the negative thoughts that are behind your emotions. Verbalize them. Then question the assumptions that they are built upon. We change our emotions by changing our thoughts.
  7. Question and reset your expectations. You may be expecting unreasonable outcomes from yourself or those around you.
  8. Make sure you’re meeting your physical needs (through proper nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate sleep).

How can we use our voices (our books, music, platforms, etc.) to help people be emotionally healthy?

  1. Show that emotions are a necessary and integral part of the human experience. Show that emotions, even hard ones, can be beautiful.
  2. Show that it takes strength to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is not a weakness.
  3. Normalize therapy. From Iesha: “I think every person needs therapy, just like how everyone needs a primary doctor.”
  4. Normalize talking to others about your emotions
  5. Don’t disparage or discount people’s emotions as real and valid (especially those on the other side of an issue than you or with different lived experience from you)

Additional insights:

  • Procrastination is an emotional response. It often comes because we’re avoiding an emotion that we would feel if we worked on the thing we’re procrastinating.
  • Anger is a secondary emotion. It is a powerful emotion that protects us from other emotions, such as being vulnerable, or feeling hurt, or stressed. When we experience anger, our job is to unveil and manage the underlying emotion that anger is trying to mask.
  • About boundaries. Cutting a relationship off after having an issue with them is not setting “boundaries.” It’s being reactive. Boundaries shouldn’t “punish” someone else. That’s abuse. Nor should boundaries just seek to avoid conflicts. That’s selfish and short-sighted. Boundaries should help a relationship work better. Talk to the person you’re having problems with and establish some ground rules for behavior or communication that you will mutually expect from each other moving forward.
  • Guilt helps us know when we did something wrong. Shame tells us that WE are wrong. Work to decrease shame, but pay attention to guilt.

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

April 30: Where will you be in 5 years? What will inspire you and what might stop you in your journey?

April 12, 2024 By Jeremy Madsen

With Dr. John C. Pulver

Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 7:00–8:00 pm Mountain Time

If you could choose your “future self,” what image comes to your mind? Do you see roadblocks, or vistas? We’ll discuss how to empower yourself to arrive where you want to be, what might be holding you back in your progression, and how you can use both personal and Godly powers in your quest for positive change. We will discuss the emotions and mental conclusions we carry with us and how they impact our behaviors.

We will also discuss the power of music and lyrics to inspire us to conviction and action, and we’ll take 4–5 minutes to listen to some of the newly-released Articles of Faith music composed by Dr. Pulver.

Bio: Dr. John C. Pulver creates uplifting and life-changing perspectives for people everywhere, using what he has gleaned over 4 careers, 3 college degrees, and decades of research.  John is a retired professor of human behavior, a retired therapist, and the author of Growing Beyond Your Family of Origin Experience and The Family Awareness Questionnaire, as well as multiple articles. John is also a composer, and in 2023 he published in English and Spanish new music to all the Articles of Faith, available at climbingupwardmusic.com or YouTube. His books and articles are found on the sister site climbingupward.com.

Watch the Recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

January 25: Resolutions Reimagined: Setting Effective Goals & Using Networking to Succeed

January 19, 2024 By Jeremy Madsen

With Tiffany Thomas

Thursday, January 25, 2024, 7:00–8:00 pm Mountain Time

Come learn how to keep your 2024 new year resolutions by setting effective goals and making deliberate plans that align seamlessly with your creative professional and personal aspirations.  This session is not just about goal-setting; it’s an interactive experience where you’ll have the opportunity to network with fellow LDSPMA members. Connect with like-minded professionals, share insights, and build meaningful relationships that could be pivotal in your journey to success. Whether you’re looking to enhance your career, boost your creative projects, or simply want to get the most out of the year ahead, this webinar is the perfect kickoff to a productive and fulfilling year. Join us to transform your resolutions into actionable, attainable goals.

Bio: Tiffany Thomas is a chocoholic former math teacher and homeschooling mom with Crohn’s Disease who has absolutely no idea how she’s ended up as a published author of novels and children’s books. She and her husband Phillip (who is a mechanical engineer) also work together on their blog, Saving Talents.  She enjoys spending time with their family, geeking out over sci-fi with her husband, and working on their budget.

Watch the Zoom Recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

August 22: Basic Business Law

August 5, 2023 By Jeremy Madsen

With business attorney Lary Larson

Tuesday, August 22, 2023, 7:00–8:00 pm Mountain Time

This session covers the legal and practical aspects of setting up a business, including the following:

  • choosing the best organizational structure
  • tax considerations
  • protection against liability
  • business licenses and other regulatory requirements
  • insurance issues
  • employment issues
  • accounting needs
  • basic laws regarding contracts (particularly licensing) and intellectual property protections
  • what we should all know about the role of litigation in business.

Bio: Lary S. Larson is a member of the Idaho State Bar and American Bar Associations. His practice is principally involved with tax and estate planning, commercial transactions, and litigation. He attended the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and received a law degree from Brigham Young University. He has been an active member of his community as a part of many councils and boards. He also currently serves as a bishop at BYU-Idaho.

Watch Recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

May 17: Building a Career in Writing that’s Not Fiction: Writing Content for the News, Web, and Public Relations

May 13, 2023 By Jeremy Madsen

A discussion with Dr. Natalie Barfuss

May 17, 2023, 12:00–1:00 pm Mountain Time

This session focuses on ideas for publishing nonfiction writing, with a quick introduction to the inverted pyramid writing style often used for news writing, press releases, and web content.

Natalie Barfuss teaches in the School of Business at Lethbridge College in Alberta, Canada. She has a bachelor’s in journalism, a master’s in business administration, and a PhD in communication, with an emphasis in integrated marketing communication. She’s built her career writing for the news, other media, public relations, online, and promotional materials. She will tell you more about her publications in her presentation, which will include a little Journalism 101.

Natalie enjoys working with businesses, especially nonprofits, to help them build their organizations. She’s also a member of the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce and volunteers with the Windy Slopes Health Foundation. She’s also a mother of four.

Watch Recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

March 21: How to Slay the Perfect Synopsis

March 14, 2023 By Jeremy Madsen

A discussion with romantic suspense author Robin M. King

March 21, 2023, 12:00–1:00 pm Mountain Time

You’ve written a killer book, but many agents want a synopsis with your query. Learn the easiest ways to make a killing with your synopsis. Don’t have a book written yet? Robin will show you how to create and use a premeditated synopsis for your future books. She’ll also give tips for executing back-cover copy that slaughters the competition of other indie authors.

Bio: Robin M. King is the author of the romantic suspense novels Remembrandt, Van Gogh Gone, and Memory of Monet. She received her bachelor’s degree in education from BYU and has been teaching for over fifteen years. When she’s not writing books or being a copywriter for LitJoy Crate, she leads a clandestine life as a wife and mother of six. Don’t tell anyone, but she’s also an undercover marathoner, karateka, singer, seamstress, baker, and household appliance repairman. She’s represented by Liza Fleissig at the Liza Royce Agency.

Watch the Recording

Filed Under: Monthly Zoom Discussion

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