Book Update

It’s been nearly 2 years now since I announced that I was working on a personal book regarding my faith journey tied to St. Francis, St. Clare, and the hill town of Assisi, Italy.

Honestly, I thought I would be a done a year ago. But then I hit sort of writer’s block. I was struggling to say much else about the historical figures or even myself. So, I set it aside for a while. I didn’t touch it for a bit.

And then it just got easier to keep it at arm’s length and pretend like it wasn’t sitting out there waiting on me to return. Kind of like some of the friends I’ve lost touch with since retirement. Instead of concentrating on how they may have left me behind, I realized they may just be waiting for me to return.

Anyway.

Someone asked me about it at Thanksgiving. I was embarrassed to say that it was just sitting there. Unfinished. I made some lame excuse about writer’s block (like I did above). But it sparked something in me.

I went back and re-read what I had so far. Prologue. Introduction. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 largely finished. Chapters 4 and 5 about half done. I thought about my unfinished dissertation that cost me my doctorate.

After a proverbial butt kicking, I started writing. Within hours I had the rough draft of the entire book done. But, before I send it somewhere to be proofread by human eyes, I’m using Ai to do some editing for me.

ChatGPT has scanned the book. I asked it specifically to identify areas where I needed to share more of my personal story. I asked it to look at the historical references I had and suggest edits that might be more in line with the traditional stories of Francis and Clare.

Once I’ve gone through and looked at those suggestions (and they are many), I’ll run it through the Research mode of Perplexity Ai to look for areas I may have inadvertently plagiarized. It will give me the works from which it may have been lifted. And then, I can either add a footnote with the original work cited, or re-write / delete the offending sentence or paragraph altogether.

I’ll get ChatGPT to give me the proper citations for the songs lyrics I’ve used. And, the midst of all the things ChatGPT has “offered” to me, I will ask it to design a book cover as a beginning spot from which I can build.

And THEN I will send it somewhere for a fresh pair of eyes.

It is yet to be determined if I will do a print-on-demand version on Amazon (used widely) or something like Blurb (mostly for photo books).

Fingers crossed.

It might finally be a reality soon.