Hello writer pals, and in case the title misleads, this post is not about human-eating moths. This video’s the introduction to a new lesson 49 in the Complete Freelance Writing Course, a review of the Moth’s How To Tell A Story. And here’s Lorna’s recommended for writers booklist.

A month of immersion in AI – experiments, workshops, a symposium even! – has left me cravingly hungry to remember how human to human connection is at the core of writing, and there seemed to be no better way than getting this than a book on live storytelling technique, based on the Moth project. For any of you wanting to brush on your storytelling, this website is a terrific resource.

The Creative Penn is another wonderful resource for writers, and Joanna Penn last week held a webinar on The AI Assisted Artisan Author. If you’d like to read more in detail on this from her, here’s a useful post.

For writing students, there were 3 points that leapt out at me from a couple of hours, packed with usefulness. The first is that publishers and author organizations are now issuing guildelines to authors on ai assistance. Number two is that for fiction self-publishers ai tools like Pro Writing Aid’s Virtual Beta Reader are going to be mega useful, and if you’re after a traditional publishing deal, it would be most handy before submission.

Finally, it’s interesting that prolific and most tech-savvy Joanna Penn herself is choosing to focus on fiction now, with ai replacing a lot of the usefulness that might come from writing non-fiction. She loves research, and if you’re ai dubious or nervous, then this may be a good place to start.