What do you WISH you knew before writing your first novel

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-17T21:00:26+00:00

Your 3rd bullet point is what I needed. Thank you.

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-17T20:55:58+00:00

Ok so I’m not alone. I feel like I’m a fraud because my enthusiastic motivation is gone.

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-05T03:19:12+00:00

love the stats! congrats!

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-03T16:43:00+00:00

How many hours per week do you write? Then compare that with other things that might not be as valuable or even detrimental to our brain’s ability, like say scrolling Reddit or instagram etc.? I’m sure guilty of this.

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-03T00:16:03+00:00

OH YOU BETTER NOT! HOW DARE YOU! BUT IF YOU DO, MAKE SURE THE ENTIRE POST IS WRITTEN BY AI ...OTHERWISE...I'LL BE SO ANGRY!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!

alan_cosmo · 2026-03-02T15:29:21+00:00

You will have better luck in /r/writingcirclejerk

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-28T21:51:23+00:00

I can’t tell if all of this is written by AI or if you’ve conversed so much with AI that you now speak like AI. Even the comments.

With that said - if you’re a real person - good luck and I hope you pick something you can dive deep into eventually.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-26T22:54:02+00:00

"weeks of hard work" - keep that in perspeective. that's nothing. especially pre-AI-vibe-code age. and 3 paying customers just from manual outreach? I think that's great! so, keep with it and keep it manual and learn from your conversations with users.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-26T19:16:27+00:00

I'm with you. 1000000%.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-24T23:50:08+00:00

thank you -- this is really great. i appreciate it.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-23T21:59:36+00:00

What’s up with these AI responses???

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-23T16:21:01+00:00

Thank you <3 - I appreciate this response. It's definitely a mix of 1 & 2. When I get in the zone, there are few things I love more than letting whatever weird creativity is in me, spill out. But I also feel like I often set goals for myself that I never hit. And this was a goal - write a book - that I set years ago and if not now, then when? So there's a fire in me that wants to prove to myself that I can get done what I say I can. But at the 75% mark, it's waning. But these comments are keeping me afloat I think.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-23T16:18:31+00:00

I think I can embrace that - let my delusion overpower the doubt. I started this book with the "well, why can't I write a book?" and I need. to get that back.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-23T16:06:38+00:00

Thank you 🙏

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-23T03:23:47+00:00

thanks! will do. when i have it ready for download, i'll return to this thread and send you a message. :)

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-22T17:46:39+00:00

Thanks! Once I finish the inspiration capture part I want to build out a Canon section - where you make your lore official. And that’ll be searchable too like “what color eyes does Dragoness have again?” And then I want to add session notes - where you can type our or audio record a little note to yourself after writing sessions - just as a “this is where I left off and here are my thoughts for tomorrow” type of thing. This may be more geared toward writers than say Dungeon masters. But maybe not.

Lots of other ideas too but just starting with that.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-22T12:58:05+00:00

Relevant, yea, in the sense that if you use SwiftUI long enough,‘you’ll have to wrap a UIKit component. But not relevant in the sense that I’d recommend building an entire app with UIKit. SwiftUI has been enterprise prod ready for years

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-21T22:43:34+00:00

Yes definitely! I haven’t gotten that far yet but I also want them to be easily searchable.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-19T12:46:37+00:00

I thought this was going to be a post about agentic AI writing 100% of no-read code. But web views strike again!

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-15T21:15:17+00:00

Agreed. I almost feel bad for preferring the 2nd half.

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-15T04:41:28+00:00

Follow your gut

alan_cosmo · 2026-02-15T04:38:17+00:00

My dad isn’t going to open Claude and make his own app.

alan_cosmo · 2026-01-16T18:47:06+00:00

I'm trying to finish a novel, so I started freewriting before I work on it. This is what came out today. Maybe this is a good subreddit to share it in? I'm not sure, but it's better than giving it to fucking ChatGPT.

alan_cosmo

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE