00:00 How I’m Writing My Novel So Fast
00:05 The Boy Who Got a Computer in His Brain
00:22 Software and Mindset
01:21 Roam Research
02:06 Ready, Fire, Aim
03:02 Speech to Text for Writing a Book
03:49 19 Questions
04:36 WordHero
05:10 Emerson AI
05:57 Grammarly
06:35 Time and Mental Freedom
07:13 Summary

The Boy Who Got a Computer in His Brain

In 2014, I decided to write a novel about a boy who got a computer in his brain.

He could then talk with that computer, which would help him get better grades in school and improve his life.

I probably had the idea for that book at least seven years prior, but I was inspired to start writing it because Kay began writing her novel.

So why am I writing this novel now?

Software and Mindset

There are two reasons I'm starting to write it now: 

1) Software, and

2) Mindset

Mindset is probably the more powerful reason.

The Brain

In 2014, I found this amazing software called The Brain. I was blown away by what it was. Around that time, before I knew that The Brain software existed, I had a dream where I was floating in space, and all of these planets were ideas. I could connect them and zoom into each planet, which had stuff inside of it and connected to other planets. And it was this idea of having this organization software that I could float around node to node, and it was this infinite mind map of planets. That's more or less what The Brain software is, and it is amazing. I organized so much stuff in that software. 

Little did I know just how much of my book I wrote and organized in The Brain back in 2014.

So now that I'm actually writing my book, I have many, many chapters already done or near done because of how well I organized my thoughts back in 2014.

Roam Research

The second software helping me write my book so quickly is Roam Research. Roam Research is the software I'm using right now that you can see on the screen. I can't tell you how much I love Roam Research. It has the same concept as The Brain software, of infinite nesting nodes and two-way linking, but also you can just type and write, unlike in The Brain where it's not as much of a writing software. There is all of that full functionality if you're looking for it, but for the way that I'm using this, Roam Resarch works just fine. 

Ready, Fire, Aim

Through this process, I have been realizing how I've been doing some things wrong here. I have not been using Roam the exact right way. So now I have a deeper understanding of how Roam Research should be used, and it's helping me with the rest of my life. On this channel, we've talked about the concept of the Ready, Fire, Aim Principle (rather than Ready, Aim, Fire). It means just get started, and you'll work out the kinks along the way.

Speech to Text

The next thing that has helped me write my book so fast is speech to text. There has never been a better time to write books than now because of speech to text. Speech to text is invaluable if you want to write your books quickly because you can talk much faster than you can type, and nothing is blocking you from getting your ideas out and captured all at the same time into text.

I like to use several different pieces of software for speech to text; some of my favorites are Siri and Google. I have other videos about that as well. I have also used Dragon Software in the past, and that's worked great.

So when you're using your speech to text for writing a book, just get it down. Do not stop to edit the grammar in whatever software you're using. Just verbalize it and get it down because one of the other pieces of software I'll get back to is Grammarly, which will help you get all the grammar perfect. But you can do that at a later step. Don't let anything stop you from following your train of thought because that is one of the best ways to write. It's just as if you're telling a story to a child, making it up off the top of your head. It's the same process, but then you're going to refine it over time.

Now, there is a whole segment of the online writing world that talks about writing books with speech to text. So look them up, especially Nuance Dragon online, and you will find all of these YouTube videos and communities about how people write novels using only their voice.

19 Questions

One of the other powerful things I'm doing is using AI to help me write. The first one is WordHero, a writing assistant powered by GPT-3. Now you can see my other video about using GPT-3. I asked it about 19 different questions, and they were all great and funny and interesting answers about how GPT-3 spits information back out. It's not just spitting out information from the internet, it's actually thinking and then spitting out that information.

WordHero

Now, one of the things that WordHero does is write a paragraph, a few sentences, or simply an idea, and then you just hit the Write More button and it will write more, it will try to continue your thought. 

Now I will often delete about 80% of what it writes, because it doesn't know where I want it to go. But that 20% completely prevents writer's block. I never have writer's block anymore because I can just hit the Write More button and that will get my consciousness back on track, thinking where I want the story to go.

Emerson AI

I'm also using Emerson AI, which is the video that I was talking about before. That is the same GPT-3, very smart AI, but put into a chat bot rather than a writing tool.

So whenever I need ideas about something that I'm writing about, I can always ask Emerson about the question, and then it will give me an answer. Maybe it's not the perfect answer, but it gets my brain going and it is often a very good answer so I can get back to writing.

One thing I needed was the top 10 girls' names. I just said, what are the top 10 girls names? And it just gave me a bunch of girls names. I also needed an idea for a club name, and it gave me a bunch of ideas for club names. So anything that I need, I have it right there on the side of my screen. I just type into Emerson what I need and it will give me some great information.

Grammarly

I talked a little bit about Grammarly earlier. It's a very powerful tool for writing. I have it under the AI section here because it actually does use some AI for some writing ideas. It can detect what types of things you're trying to say, and it will give you suggestions for how to completely reformat paragraphs. It can put the sentences in a better order, etc. And 90% of the time, I like what it's saying. Sometimes I'll just say, no, I'm going to ignore you and keep my stuff the way that it is. But 90% of the time, I take the suggestion, and it makes my writing so much more understandable and clear.

Time and Mental Freedom

The last and most powerful thing that has made my writing so much better is that I am financially free now. That gives me a lot of time freedom, but so much more than that, it gives me mental freedom. When you don't need to be working for your money that's coming in, and you can live your life with real freedom, that allows you to feel like you can put your time into writing a novel. 

The novel that I'm writing is for middle-school-aged boys. If I was feeling the pressure of needing to go to work all the time, I probably would not feel like it's worth my time to be writing a silly novel, just to make little boys laugh about silly things.

So I would really encourage you to pursue financial freedom and time freedom, so that you can follow your heart and do the things that you want to do.

Summary

So I hope this has helped inspire you to look into some of this software. I will have links in the description. And if you want to write a book, I really encourage you to start. And when you're writing, stay super organized, because you might want to come back to it many years later, and you'll thank yourself for all the time you put into organizing your thoughts.

Remember to like, share, and subscribe and I'll talk to you later.