I’m not sure when I first started blogging, but there was a 19 in every day’s date. I’d already been published by a major traditional publisher and had hit a bestseller list under a pen name, but my very first regular posts—raw, reflective, and homemade—had a following of 70,000+.
Indie publishing was just taking root, so I turned those daily articles into 150-page, 6×9-inch trade paperbacks with covers I designed myself in Photoshop using photos I’d taken with my Minolta. Yep, DIY all the way.
The Hidden Work Behind Organizing Books
You know what was almost as time-consuming as writing those “blog books” a day at a time? Putting the chapters in a particular order—by category, then by theme, then by emotional impact. I had to space out the centerpiece essays, insert “breathers,” and balance tone and pacing so readers weren’t overloaded with either information or emotion.
That part has always been the hardest for me.
From 2005 until around 2012, I blogged almost daily—deep essays on healing, self-discovery, and spirituality. I ended up with 15 ebooks and print books from those years before I accepted a position in an organization where publishing was off-limits due to security concerns. It was a rare opportunity, so I let go of indie publishing at the same time that indie publishing was supposedly just starting (laughing here at that belief).
But I didn’t stop writing.
The chronological collections were easier to compile. The harder ones—organized by topic or emotional arc—took much more time and effort, especially with my reading disabilities. I’ve always had a harder time juggling large volumes of text, and that’s before accounting for all the versions and notes.
What Didn’t Work
Around 2017, I started thinking seriously about what to do with all the essays and articles I’d written over the years. I hired a virtual assistant to summarize them—thousands and thousands of pieces. Six months later, I had less than a thousand summaries and they were completely useless. Fired her.
Hired another. She made it through 100 articles and ghosted after she earned a certain amount. Slightly better but I had to rework most of them.
Hired a third. He made it through 3,000 posts that were already tagged and categorized, and added them to a spreadsheet with URLs, titles, and categories. No summaries, but enough data for me to start color-coding. A tiny portion of the Excel file is shown in the image above.
Still, it was slow. And I wasn’t getting any younger. I’d be dead of old age at this rate. While I waited for help, opportunities passed me by. Some lucrative, and some personally important to me. Sure, in indie publishing, you can miss the window and still publish the work, but that doesn’t mean anyone’s climbing through that window to get to your work or knocking on your door demanding it and throwing money or accolades at you.
When AI Became the Help I Actually Needed
Last year, I started experimenting with AI assistance, and that changed everything.
With the help of one of the Gemini models, I published two collections of essays on Federal Acquisition—each sourced from 30 to 75 articles I’d written on various platforms and retained rights to. The writing wasn’t the problem. It never was. It was the organization. The mental labor of “putting things in order.” The physical labor of my eyes hurting too badly to keep reading and summarizing. At a writers’ conference, an AI-positive author recommended using Gemini to group essays by theme in non-fiction and suggest a reading order. I tried it. What would have taken me weeks per book took hours. Even with hours, I was still the slowest part of the process.
“Have you ever abandoned a project because the organizing part felt too overwhelming? Because of an injury, illness, or disability? What would it mean to have real help—not in doing the creative work, but in getting it out the door?”
The Secret Project and a Perfect Pattern
Two weeks ago, I wanted to do something special for The Secret Lives of Librarians readers. I got through about six pieces before, as usual, my brain blew up. Instead, I spiraled into an entirely different idea I’d never thought of before. A secret project. It’s nearly done now, after less than a week of part-time work.
There are 63 pieces in the project, and yes, there’s a reason for that number. Again, writing them wasn’t the hard part—ordering them was.
Last night, I worked 12 hours straight trying to finish revisions and make each one perfect. Then I ran all 63 pieces through the newest Gemini reasoning model. I asked for an analysis of each essay with about 10 fields—including a one-line summary. Once I had a sense of theme coagulation, I prompted Gemini to recommend a reading order and explain why.
And it was perfect.
A Job That Took Me Months—Done in a Minute
It took longer to type the prompt than to receive what amounted to an annotated bibliography with companion pairings and emotional pacing suggestions. It even identified which pieces served as breathers between heavier ones. I’m so far down in the muck with these pieces that I cannot objectively discern what’s heavy and what’s more gentle because many are too close to the bone.
I only made three changes—one being a personal one: I wanted the piece about my mother after her funeral to open the book.
The rest? Spot on.
What AI Really Did for Me
What I love most about AI-assisted work is pattern recognition. I’ve known that since 2017, when we were exploring how AI could be used in missile defense. I just never imagined I’d be using it to pattern-match my own writing.
Last night, AI accomplished what would have taken me, myself, and I literal months. And now, a project I care deeply about will reach the people who need it—not someday, but in a few days.
A Southern witch returns home. Secrets won’t stay buried. A chance to confront and heal—or face the consequences.
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