Thanks to AI, I might finally be able to finish my book.

I feel like I’m saying something controversial with this announcement. If you’ve followed my writing, you’d know I never jumped on the AI bandwagon as an aspiring entrepreneur or creative person. But I have to give credit where it’s due. AI can be of great, potentially life-changing help.

I started my book more than ten years ago. It’s a memoir, with a working title “A Russian”; it documents my memories of the Soviet Union and Russia before I left it in 2013. While the initial manuscript was completed in just a few months, getting the book to the finish line proved to be an insurmountable task.

I worked with several developmental editors. For one thing, it’s not cheap to work with an editor. Then there’s the actual work — you never get the feeling that you can reach the finish line. The feedback I received overwhelmed me. There is too much to rework. Then your rework has to be reviewed again and reworked. I’m talking about developmental editing — we haven’t even gotten to copyediting or proofreading yet. While I enjoy writing, English is not my first language, so I absolutely need copyediting services if I attempt a serious literary undertaking. So my original draft, then the rework, the rework of the rework all need to be edited and perfected by someone else. A book is not a Medium blog. A book has to be polished to perfection.

Insurmountable in a direct sense — I restarted several times but never caught sight of the finish line so I gave up.