I’ve written before about using AI tools like Claude Code at work, and how it has made me wonder about using Claude Code for my manuscript.
In the last week or two, that curiosity has grown.
Sign up for a class, revisit the manuscript
I signed up for a creative writing class, Visions and Revisions though Madison Writers. Madison Writers was the Madison Writer’s Studio and used to be part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among other things, it ran the Write-by-the-Lake retreat that took place during the summer. COVID change the economics, but they pivoted and now do their own thing. They have in person and online classes and events.
My manuscript is a goal for me this year. Exactly what that means I have left purposely open-ended. I haven’t touched my manuscript since I earned my MFA in creative nonfiction in January 2020. I graduated, did a reading, then promptly stuck it in a drawer.
Between COVID, buying my first house, adopting a dog, a lay off, a job that I’ve now been in for four years, which is also the longest period of time I was laid off, much has changed.
Signing up for Visions and Revisions meant revisiting my manuscript. Though I have been refining my docs-as-code tool chain for creative writing, I haven’t really given my manuscript a thorough read. I’ve skimmed it, pulled out some excerpts I’ve published in the creativeNonFiction section to practice my docs-as-code tool chain for creative writing, and get accustomed to markdown. But I haven’t had to read my manuscript, start to finish, to do that.
I had to read my manuscript from start to finish for the class because I have to submit 4 pieces to workshop, and revise, over the course of the class.
AI tools for objectivity?
While reading through my manuscript, start to finish, I found myself unable to objectively read sections. The events, even to this day, are still too raw for me to distance and view the work objectively.
Though I do have more compassion for the me on the page, and while that does provide perspective, it does not present objectivity and makes it difficult for me to see past the emotion and view the section as a piece of the complete work. I don’t seem able to disconnect, or disassociate myself, to be able to read sections and consider them within the body of the work.
I find myself wondering if Claude Code, or another AI tool, would be better able to objectively review my manuscript. Have it find common themes, point out where it is strongest, where it is weakest, where there are gaps, and then provide suggestions on how to bridge the caps and strengthen the weak parts.
Stumbling across an Evernote Notebook full of stuff related to or perhaps relevant to my manuscript, makes me wonder if there are AI tools or ways to let AI tools go through specific Evernote Notebooks, and look for patterns and potential things that can fill the gaps and strengthen the weaker parts of my manuscript.
Can AI pull it all together?
In other words: how can I leverage AI tools to pull all this data together from places like Evernote, review my manuscript, and then map gaps and weak points to data from places like Evernote?
There is also part of me that wonders if this is all a distraction from the work of reviewing my manuscript. Fair point.
However, I also keep thinking it is worth the effort to try. There is still emotional residue, even more than 10 years later, so an AI tool may be best suited to objectively review my manuscript and all my notes and related data points to provide a complete picture. A complete picture of the time frame presented in my manuscript.