I opened myself up for penetrating questions
I’ve recently published a collection of my stories from my years on the Medium platform and so far it’s selling steadily on Amazon.
I’ve put some of my best work into it and I wanted to have an expert interviewer ask my questions about the book and how much of myself I’d put into it.
As I have an interest in AI and have been remarkably impressed with the ability of Google’s NotebookLM product to summarise and discuss a text, I fed in the text file and an article about how to interview a writer, and commenced the interview:
I am Britni Pepper. Please ask me a question as if you were interviewing me to get the real stories behind the stories in the book. I will answer, and you will keep asking questions until I say “Pass” and then you will choose a different topic.
It went fine at first. Great questions that really opened up my philosophy behind the stories. I had to look deeply inside myself to answer the robot interviewer.
However. NotebookLM is pretty good at summarising content but as it turned out, not so hot at asking the sort of brief, pithy questions I wanted.
It would take my responses, expend on them, tie them together with other sources including my previous answers, give away some of the secrets of my stories, and then sit back, satisfied.
Ah, was there a question in there?
Then it would ask me a question, taking a few hundred words to do so. Let’s just say that it does a way better job of answering questions than asking them.
Some good Q&A in the interview and it is worth a read. As is my book.
From now on, my strategy, unless Medium really lifts their game, is to publish short stories on Amazon and every so often put them into a collection.
Dr Yildiz has some great ideas and case studies about how to present myself and my work as a writer and I’ll be looking at what works for him.
Thanks for reading. If anybody knows a robot that is actually good at asking questions, I’d be keen to try that out.
Or a perceptive human. Leave a comment and I’ll shoot you a freebie copy to await either a review or an arranged interview.
Britni
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