The compromise that I hate most

I’ve had jobs impacted by changes in industry, and I’ve had jobs rendered pointless by them. The occupation that would shape the first half of my career (content manager at a TV website) did not exist two years earlier during my senior year of college. By the time I had left WQAD my job was on the verge of being hampered—in terms of web traffic, our main metric of success—by the onset of social media.

I transitioned into a front-end web developer, pausing to flirt with product management. The advent of technologies and tools like MEAN stacks and bootstrap frameworks was the beginning of the end. Ten years later, I’m not even building my own WordPress themes anymore. I’ve cancelled my own host and am typing this on my Squarespace site.

I watched automation impinge upon my the manufacturing industry while my father was a factory foreman. I’m watching AI and chatbots adversely impact my wife’s profession. My sister is an artist and watches AI eat away at her industry. My son has interest in film composing; the first AI service that creates compositions out of nothing was launched this summer.

AI book covers are the norm on RoyalRoad, and I get it. (I’m about to explain how much I get it soon.) But I told myself I wasn’t going to do it. Point of principle, point of pride, point of snobbery—call it whatever you want.

Unfortunately, principles aren’t cheap. Neither are the costs of services, appointment co-pays, medications and lost work hours dealing with all of the above. If you consider these excuses, I wouldn’t blame you. Regardless, I’m left with a compromise. Yes, I find it embarrassing to admit—but I feel not acknowledging it would be even more embarrassing.

So, yes, I spent the last two days tweaking prompts to create the characters used on my cover and on this site. I hate how far into the process it brought me before I needed to step in and modify the images.

I have some graphic design experience, which is how I created the background mesh weeks before. That experience also helped me with the characters when even the almighty AI couldn’t quite get what I wanted. But my skills at handrawn shading and lighting are woefully lacking.

My one sole point of consolation is that this wasn’t a job taken from a graphic designer, because I couldn’t hire one in the first place. I assume that’s why a lot of other writers in my position start out in similar way and then (hopefully) hire an artist if and when enough money rolls in.

My ultimate goal is to put this on Kindle unlimited next year. I can’t imagine that happening without hiring someone to draw these characters by hand.