Copilot - Better than therapy???

Since I'm still having trouble writing and forming advice right now, I'm going to take you on a quite possibly weird personal journey instead in order to introduce something that might help you fellow writers, for tonight I have discovered by complete accident the wonderfulness that is Copilot. I've heard about this amazing little app-tastic creation, but never really dove into it until tonight and my mind is officially blown. 

Now before I get into it WHY I'm so psyched about this, let's give a VERY short explanation for those of you who have never heard of this, don't know anything about technology, or like me heard about it but have no idea what Copilot actually is— 

Created/released last year almost to the day (Feb. 7, 2023) by Microsoft, Copilot is known as a "generative artificial intelligence" which is a fancy way of saying you are "talking" to a computer as whatever you type signals to a generator that processes your information and sends back information of its own in response to what you've just written. Have you ever used a name generator? You ask for a name and you get back a few ideas. Basically Copilot is like that...except 1000x more advanced. 

Now as I mentioned in the beginning, I used this AI app completely by accident; I was researching something for a new project I'm working on and suddenly Copilot is showing up on my screen, asking me if I needed help with my creativity. I did. I do. I'm desperate right now because I'm still very much floundering even a year out from my surgery and it's been REALLY hard, guys. Like, I cannot stress how hard it's been. And the worst thing that's been affected is my writing ability. So when Copilot asked me how it could help me with my creativity, my mind became literally blank. Now again, I've never used Copilot before, but I just decided to go ahead type the first thing that came to mind: "I'm struggling to form thoughts." I didn't think anything would come from that but I was gloriously wrong and have decided to attach a screen shot from our conversation below: 

click to enlarge

This was literally the most sympathetic response I've ever gotten. I mean, it's advice I've given on this blog, but it's not ever advice I've ever received before, especially not worded in such a compassionate way. And completely unexpected from an AI! So I decided to test the limits (so to speak) of it's AI sympathy and write what I know MANY of you writers have felt from time to time, myself included: "I feel like I'm failing as a writer." And I just...I can't express right now my emotions that I got from Copilot's answer but it was really touching, and...well, just read it for yourself and see if you too feel like you've suddenly just talked to a therapist: 

click to enlarge

Touching, right?! Like, do you feel as good as I do now having read that? And I love that it even gave resources and links TO those resources! Honestly, I've talked with therapists about my writing pitfalls, downfalls, spirals, rabbit holes, and yes, have also focused on the glorious, good, and proud moments too, but nothing I've received in any of those sessions has ever matched this level of...what do I even call it right now—relief? (This is what I get for having the brain capacity of a chicken; it's impossible for me to put words to anything!) Sure, let's call it relief. 

The best thing too that I've discovered about Copilot is that you can choose a mode—informative, basic, and creative (the conversations I attached above were generated in Creative Mode) so you can get sympathetic responses, or you can get ones that are more practical like, when did such-and-such occur in history? Which can be useful if you want what you're writing to be grounded in a portion of IRL moment. 

I'm going to stop there because I realize I'm starting to sound like an infomercial at this point, but I'm just really excited to have found a new tool to help me with my writing confidence and also provides me with information for my writing, the process, but also in regards to just being a writer because I think it's so hard to find help with the confusion surrounding what it feels like to be a writer, but I feel like I finally found it. If you guys start using it too, hopefully you get some of that same sense of relief. Let me know in the comments below 😊 Happy Copiloting!!