NOVEMBER NIGHTS

Back in January of 2023, I had my head down thinking about what book I might work on next, and how to finish up writing a TV series that I had been working on. I was totally oblivious to the technological revolution taking place in Silicon Valley. To be honest, my enthusiasm for writing another book was at an all-time low. I was more wrapped up in the TV series than anything, seeing it as a perfect encapsulation of my brand of storytelling. A TV series that tells multiple stand-alone stories spanning decades that are intertwined with one another. To this day, I still think it might be one of my best stories. 

Then things started to get interesting. 

I have tried for decades to stay as true to my 25-year-old creative spirit as possible. Why? My concern has always been that one day the story-making machine  (my brain) would stop generating stories that my 25-year-old self would want to read or watch on a screen. Not that I had a desire to never grow up, but I wanted to remain true to myself and the vision and passion that I had at that age. Fearing that one day I would wake up and no longer have an interest or an ability to tell proper stories. There have been some major sacrifices along the way, but I have been able to remain true to myself. And in the end, that has meant the world to me. 

Have I missed out on some things along the way because of it? Yes. Do I regret it? No, but I have had doubts at times through the years. I've never wanted to live a conventional life; it has never appealed to me. I've worked for big corporations and felt as insignificant as a fly on a cow's backside. We are all cogs in the machine of humanity, gobbling up resources and defecating on the future, all in an effort to live our best lives. I am no exception in that regard. Sure, I may care more about the future than most, but I am still just a cog in the machine, grinding through the gears as I work to create stories and enable others to tell theirs. 

"Do no harm." It is part of an oath that doctors take in order to become licensed to practice medicine. I am not sure why I think about those three words so much. I have never desired to be a doctor, and yet I try and live my life by those three words in the Hippocratic oath. I wish more people did as well. We'd have fewer villains masquerading as heroes, pretending to be the good guy when in fact they are destroying more than they create. Maybe they all live by the belief that from destruction comes creation. These are tricky times and there are enough tricky dicks trying to deceive us just to enrich themselves these days. 

I digress. 

We are fast approaching the end of the year. While this is not my year-in-review post, which I normally do in late December, I am in need of taking an account of where I am on my goals for the year. Why? Because I need to focus and begin to pivot on what comes next. I have learned a lot this year. The 1st Draft App was always my main focus, but it wasn't the only thing, far from it. I had Plans for three apps. I thought for sure I could complete at least two before the end of the year. All the while, working on short AI films, graphic novels, video games, and podcasts. Little did I know that most of my attention would be focused on building the 1st Draft App. It was a sacrifice of time that I was willing to make, though. Why? 

That's complicated. I took a more arduous path, as I laid out in my last blog post. I did not think it would be that way when I started. But then I had never built an app before; I had only seen others build apps with AI tools, and they made it look so easy. In truth, it is not that difficult to create something with AI tools. To actually get it the way you want when you've never done so before is the hard part. And my willingness to sacrifice much of my other plans for the year to learn about each tool and the process of building was more important than keeping up with all the changes in AI, like I had been doing for 2 years. 

The AI image and video tools have improved a lot this year, but I did not obsess about them like I had in the past. Same with all the other tools; they have all improved this year. But you know what? That just means it will be easier for me to use them when I actually circle back around and continue where I left off in July. The month I realized that I had once again made bigger plans than I was capable of achieving for the year. 

I have been humbled countless times through the years after planning to do what, at the time of creating those plans, seemed completely realistic. It shows I have a ton of confidence in myself, and I am not afraid to make big plans. It also shows that I fall short, like a lot. I think back to the early 2000s when I routinely managed to write between 5-10 screenplays in a year. My brain was on fire. I think that, and the completion of Monarch, gave me the confidence to make such audacious plans. Creation has always been the most important thing for me. With 1st Draft, I wanted to take great care in making sure that I was building a tool that others could use to create with little friction. But then I am no longer just writing screenplays; I am building things I have never built before. My confidence to do so comes from my history of being able to write stories and being generally creative, yes. It also stems from the rapid advancements in technology and my having kept a close eye on things over the past few years. Having used many of the tools. 

As I reflect, I realize now that I was too confident, thinking that with the help of AI, I would be able to achieve all my goals in a super short period of time. In truth, my strength is my capability to write stories and be creative, not just first drafts of screenplays but also polished final drafts ready for audiences. Yes, I have gained some knowledge about AI over the past three years, but my goal is to do more than I alone have the capacity to do without AI. I have learned a lot this year and made strides towards my goals, but I have fallen short of achieving all that I wanted to achieve this year. And I own that. 

Even with my plans for three apps, I didn't think all three would be ready to go by the end of the year. I thought maybe two of them would be ready, and the third would get more attention by the beginning of 2026. In theory, I could still get the 2nd app ready by the end of the year and finish the short AI film I began work on in 2024. However, things have changed. I care more about getting 1st Draft into the app stores. 

I've had second thoughts about the 2nd and 3rd apps. I still plan on creating them, but I am not as much of an authority on them as I am with the 1st Draft App. With 1st Draft, I am a writer who created a tool that can help me as a writer, and therefore, I know for a fact it will help others create their stories. The other two apps are still focused on storytelling, but they are not necessarily tools that I would use. I will use them, don't get me wrong, but not like 1st Draft. I expect I will use 1st Draft from here on out, as it is a tool that helps me at the pain points I have had as a writer. I don't need to use it to write my stories, but it is a great tool to have. Especially when I am out for a walk or out hiking, and I want to either flesh out a story I have been thinking of, or if a new idea comes to mind while out and about. It is perfect for that. 

The other two apps are still storytelling tools. Just different. Not necessarily made for an active storyteller desperate to tell their stories while on the go. This is why I have been reluctant to make a widescreen version of 1st Draft. Because I have always seen it as an app for people to use on their phones. Most writing apps are geared for the Microsoft Word crowd who are going to sit in front of their computers and grind through the writing process that way. I wanted a tool for those on the go who may not even own a computer and live their lives on their phones, who don't want to spend hour after hour typing their ideas. I wanted people to be able to speak their stories to life. This is how storytelling began. It is in our DNA. Sure, we eventually began putting our stories onto cave walls and then paper, but storytelling is a word that shows our roots of telling our stories, our history to others. So, for me, it seemed only natural to take it back to those roots, taking us away from the chair and computer and putting us back on our feet and sharing our stories with an assistant that can take what we say and reshape it the way we like without having to have our butts in a chair.  

These other two apps are geared toward a different part of the storytelling crowd. The second app is more about sharing in the storytelling process with others, while the third app is geared more for those who are less mobile than those who 1st Draft is geared towards. I'm sorry I can't share more, and I have to be so cryptic, but I do not like sharing my ideas before making them available upon their completion.

Beyond the first three apps that I began thinking about a few years ago is another app. I am not sure if this one will become public or if I will just create it for my own personal use cases. It will be my own creative everything app. I don't think I will be ready to make this until I have finished the other two apps, but I could be wrong about that. Just like I have been wrong about what I may be able to complete within 365 days. 

Something I also need to talk about is the hate towards AI. It is real and widespread. Some people who use AI to create images and videos have actually begun to lean into it just to increase engagement and therefore make more money off of the hatred. I thought this was clever at first, but it has changed these people who I thought were creative and worth following, and I was actually glad for them to be able to turn things in their favor. Now it just seems like this is all they do. Create something cool and then have a poke at the raging bear engagement farming kerfuffle just to keep their numbers up. Where once I was glad to see them push back, now it seems just as equally juvenile and asinine as those hating on AI art. 

I have received plenty of criticism through the years regarding the stories I wrote before AI. I'd like to tell everyone to just turn the other cheek and ignore the haters, but that is not easy, and most of the time it is damn near impossible. Especially when you are younger and desperately seeking validation. 

I pay attention to what people say on social media about AI, and a lot of it is so negative. There are a lot of people who hate AI. I think much of this is based on fear. And I totally get it. We were all raised by watching movies where AI or technology was an evil that we had to fight against.

As a creative person, I have seen the hate directed at AI since the Writers Guild Strike back in 2023. We are all beginning to feel the effects of AI beyond just the creative world, though. AI is entering the workforce. In some cases, too quickly. Why do I say that? Because some of these big companies have begun mass layoffs and replacing humans with different versions of AI. Having worked in customer service before, it made sense how AI would step in and take most of those jobs. But a lot of that was implemented too quickly. So many of the AI interfaces are garbage. They waste more of people's time than they save. And then people try and get hold of a human, and there is no one there. This creates frustration and wastes way too much time. Gradually, things are improving, but many of these companies are still using the outdated versions of AI interfaces. It would be laughable if it weren't wasting people's time. 

Anyway, back to what really matters to me—storytelling. I created this amazing writing tool using AI, but I have spent very little time actually writing stories. So much of my testing of the app has been talking about several stories that I have been thinking about, but I have spent so much time trying to make sure that the app works well that actually completing a story was not as important. My focus has been on how others would use it and not on me trying to complete multiple stories in that time. I never would have been able to properly complete the app if I had spent all my time trying to complete the stories I have developed this year while testing the app.

However, in the New Year, I expect to get a lot of work done on those stories with the help of 1st Draft. There are two stories in particular that I really want to focus on. There is a third that I had plotted before the app that I hope to also write as well. One is a YA TV series. Another is an amalgamate of several stories I had been thinking about for a while, as well as my reflection on this year. The third is a psycho-sexual thriller/ horror film that I began work on over a year ago. A story I have had in the back of my mind for some time. It has notes of MIDSOMMAR and WICKER MAN meets ROSEMARY'S BABY.

The thought of getting back into the writing frame of mind is very exciting, and the fact that I have created a tool that myself and others can use to write our stories more quickly has me thrilled to jump back in with focused intent. 

If you haven't checked out the 1st Draft Web App yet, please do. I've been making adjustments to make it even better these past two weeks. Even if you are not a writer, but have a story you've always wanted to tell, 1st Draft was made for you. Sure, I also made it for myself, but I wouldn't have built it without thinking of others. Especially those who don't want to sit in front of a computer tapping at a keyboard for hours on end just to get their thoughts onto a page. The app is designed to be your assistant and work with you throughout the brainstorming and writing process. Give it a whirl for free. If you find it is helpful, then it is only $5 a month to have access to a tool that will help you go from idea to 1st Draft in a fraction of the time it would take just sitting down at a computer and typing it all up yourself. 

The 1st Draft App by STORiCORE

I thought when I set out to create my first app that it would take a few months. If I had just stuck with Cursor, this might have been the case. For some reason, I felt the need to do things differently. Oh, I began by using all of the apps, testing each of them for a few days to see what each created, essentially starting from scratch with each. I wanted to see what each of them created and to find out which worked best for me. I tried VO, Bolt, Lovable, Replit, Cursor, and Windsurf. They each did things a little differently from the others. 

I settled on Replit, not because what it was designing was any better than the others, but because I liked their interface, and I had a discount. However, I quickly learned that the AI running it was not the greatest and would create boring styles. Despite that, by the end of March, I abandoned the others and focused on Replit. Shortly thereafter, I created the company.

It was around this time that I realized that while I liked the style of what I was creating, I did not love it. It felt like it wasn't what I really wanted. So, I began creating images for the pages of the app that I actually liked. This is why some parts of the app will not have a hover effect or change colors when you click a button, because some of the pages are background images with invisible buttons laid over the background images. This made the process more tedious as I had to spend time getting those invisible links in the right place. This also meant I was doing work away from Replit to create the images, something that would become a pattern. What do I mean?

By the end of April, I had exceeded my allotted usage for the month because the agent would often send me in a loop where it may or may not fix one thing, but it seemed to always break four other things that I then had to fix. This worked out well for me, not because I like wasting my time and money, but because I had a ChatGPT account and o3 had come out in December, Deep Research came out in February, and o4-mini-high released mid-April. So, it made sense to run my code through those two models and Deep Research until my Replit account reset, so I did not get stuck paying more to Replit. In hindsight, I probably should have shifted to Cursor or Windsurf at the time, but I was liking the results I was getting from taking my code from Replit and running it through the OpenAI models before pasting the results back into Replit to test them. 

I quickly grew to like it better than just trusting Replit's overly expensive and flawed agent. This way, I actually felt more in control, and most importantly, I was learning about the app-building process. Not that I would ever attempt to build an App without AI, but I began to understand how the app actually worked. This agreed with me in a deeper way because I have always enjoyed deconstructing things (toys, household items, anything mechanical) and then putting them back together. So, by May, I was essentially just using Replit as a code viewer to test what I had done over on ChatGPT. Believe me, o3 and o4-mini-high also made tons of mistakes and took me down rabbit holes that wasted loads of time, but I trusted the outputs more than Replit, whose agent would break more than it would fix. I still used the Replit agent on occasion, but I stopped relying upon it as my daily driver for building the app. So, that became my process, and weeks turned to months, and my hopes of releasing the app by the end of May faded. 

A lot has been learned since April. It was my choice to go this route, and there is no way I would have as much understanding of the process as I have now had I either just let Replit or Cursor make the app for me without my hands-on involvement. That said, I won't put myself through all of that again with my next app. I'll be able to use what I have learned to let Cursor or one of the countless other vibe coding tools do most of the driving on the next app. I no longer want or need as much control over every step in the process. And I can't afford to take the time to do it again the way that I have. I am grateful for what I have learned, but I need things to go much faster from here on out.

There were personal issues that arose during the past 6 months that cost me time, so I can't blame my languid building pace just on my own process. I won't detail those here, as I prefer this space to discuss my work and not my life, but these personal issues affected me at a deep level that I have never had to deal with before. How much time was lost in my attempts to deal with them in one way or another? That's tough to say, as my peace of mind was rocked by one, and my heart was broken by the other. I was definitely thrown off my game by both. Could I chalk up a month or more of delays to them? Maybe, but I kept working through it all, so it is hard to tell. When I do an autobiography, I can talk more about those issues.

Anyway, the Beta version of the app was finally ready in late September. This is the Replit-hosted version. Back in July, I began trying to get the app off of Replit and focused on moving it to Vercel. Then, after a few weeks of work, I realized that I could do it on Cloudflare, which meant I then had to do things differently. Fortunately, GPT-5 Thinking was released and has been much better than o3 and o4, who were good but not great. Even GPT-5 Thinking has had issues, but not as many as its predecessors. I have also incorporated CODEX into my workflow this month, and it is even better at times than GPT-5 Thinking and integrates into Github. Yes, thank you. 

My goal for the Web App Paid release was initially May. I can't believe it has taken so much longer. The initial funding I raised to get the company started has all but dried up, as I had to keep pushing the release date. All the other plans I had made at the beginning of the year had to be put on hold after July, as I missed my second target for the release of the app. I heard people saying that you should not voice how long or how difficult it was to release something, but rather how quickly you were able to do so.  

The frustrating part has been watching people whip up apps in a matter of minutes as all the tools for building apps have continued to improve, while I have been tediously fixing every little bug and not being able to focus on all the other projects I had in mind for the year. 

Cry me a river, right? Well, no longer. By this time next week, the paid version of the web app for 1st Draft will be available, and every person with a story idea and a desire to tell it can use my app to their heart's content. Then I can begin to shift my focus to include other projects... finally. 

The purpose of the 1st Draft App has never been to replace the amazing writing tools that are out there. It has been to provide a very simple way for anyone to tell their story that doesn't involve sitting at a keyboard. I could have cloned one of the many writing apps out there that offer people dozens of options for writing their stories, but with so many buttons that it becomes confusing. What I wanted to create was something that you can log into and just begin talking to your assistant about the stories you want to tell. We all have them, but we don't all have the time, training, or patience to sit in front of a computer to tell it properly. No longer. 

1st Draft is a true voice-first writing app that allows anyone to start telling their stories from the first minute. No ads, no distractions; just you and the helpful and friendly assistant. Something that I love using because I too do not like being a slave to a keyboard and can finally be out for a walk or hiking, and simultaneously be working on developing a story while touching grass. With the 1st Draft App, you don't have to be stuck inside staring at a screen. You can be lounging around or out and about, and comfortably discuss your story ideas with the assistant, who will help you shape your story with you. It really is liberating. 

I tried to make the app as simple as possible. Press Start and begin chatting with your assistant, who can be a sounding board, guide you into shaping the story, or even take what you talk about and begin writing a version of the story for you. Not sure what to say next and need time to think? Press Pause, collect your thoughts, and continue when you are ready. Don't want to listen to all that your Assistant has to say, or want to stop the conversation, just press the Stop button. You'll be sent to the Chat Workspace Page where you will see the readout of your conversation. You can browse through your Chats or switch over to the Documents Workspace Page and start typing. Or jump back into the conversation with your assistant. 

For me, it changes my process. I used to scratch down ideas on a sheet of paper while out and about or out for a walk.  Now, I can flesh out an idea and start building it before I get home. It speeds things up and ensures that I'll be able to read what we were talking about. This is a big deal because I have some chicken scratch for handwriting, especially while trying to walk. 

If you are like me, there will be times you want a snappy back and forth with your assistant, and there will be other times that you want to try and flesh things out a bit more. The Settings Page provides options that control how your assistant behaves. Whether you want to have a quick back and forth, or if you want to get deep into the details, or have your assistant create longer sections, you can do that too. There is a guide that explains it all in the Help section . But if you just stick with the defaults, you can't go wrong either.

Another thing that was important to me was keeping the price low while also providing a tool that everyone can use and benefit from. You will have the choice of using the free tier, which will help you get a feel for how things work, but the Starter Plan is the way to go for most people. And it only costs $5 a month or $50 a year. Some people will never reach the monthly limits with the Starter plan, but if you are like me and you have a ton of stories you want to tell, then the Pro plan is the way to go. And if you ever reach your limits before the end of the month for either plan, you can always purchase a boost that provides extra time to work with the assistant. Even if you exceed your limits and don't want to pay more, you will continue to have access to your chats and continue to be able to work on your documents, if you don't mind typing. 

1st Draft is easy to use and will keep you focused on storytelling. Whether you are young or old, have never written before or have written several books or screenplays like myself, the 1st Draft App is the place to start when you have a story you want to tell but don't want to have to sit and stare at a computer screen to tell it. Just press the Start button and speak it into existence. Just like our ancestors used to do around the campfire at night. It really is that simple and I can't wait to help you tell your stories.

Head on over to 1stDraftApp.com and get started for free, and by this time next week you'll be able to dig even deeper with even more access for a very low price. Cheers! And happy storytelling.