a capture of my writing process: in a 3min low quality gif

in all its tiny glory (it might only work on desktop, it’s not previewing full gif on my ipad — just me renaming files)

i captured my writing process for an article that i published in december 👇

Experiment with chatGPT & DiffusionBee

instead of just letting it sit in the folder for me to review alone, i figured i’d share it.

the original workflow capture is 240MB+ & 4+mins, and i was curious what it might look like scaled down to 320px wide & trim a little off the beginning (it’s only more of me upscaling&saving).

i kind of like it.

you can get the general idea of what is going on, but it’s not so crisp that i’m concerned about people analyzing each frame, because this is a personal process that i wasn’t intending on getting critiqued (outside of myself).

i find it helpful do capture my day while i’m doing different activities, and then review to see if there’s any patterns that i do that i’m not aware of + it helps me to document more manual processes.

it’s one thing to say ‘my process for saving images is pretty manual’, but this first part of the gif is me going through &

1. copy & paste over details (prompt + negative prompt, seed, dimensions, etc.)
2. select image to upscale
3. image upscales and opens in new tab
4. select → save image
5. rename image
6. repeat() until all images in that ‘set’ are done (usually 4 images per prompt, but sometimes more. it gets a lot easier for me to lose my place so i’ve cut back and also like the variations of doing smaller batches).

📁 file storage

there’s some meta-processes that aren’t necessarily documented.

where i store these files for one.

i’ve got them on dropbox && manually backup to an external hdd monthly.

my current path is 00-WIP / 04-DIFFUSIONBEE / YYYYMMDD / { generatedfiles.png }

🏄 fluid creation process

what happens during this ‘boring stuff’?

during the time that i can get more into a rhythm and not have to think about what i’m doing, other ideas will pop up.

i got to a section of images that i had gotten the prompt ideas from early experiments with chatGPT.

i thought it might be interesting to share, so i started the writing process.

writing takes a lot of energy out of me, so sometimes i’ll hop back and forth between writing & creating assets.

exploring ideas and how i might want to share them sometimes sparks ideas for writing (and writing sometimes sparks and idea for visuals).

it’s a fluid~process 🏄

i cut this to show in a little more detail. i’m exploring ideas and seeing how stuff ‘feels’

a little later on i grab some references from an article i remember reading and then hop into my email for an announcement that i wanted to reference.

there’s more formatting and tweaking that happens inside of the medium editor.

i saw that a few images looked wonky when i uploaded them, so i’d remake & re-upload.

the writing itself took place in a notion page that i then pasted into grammarly (i know there is a desktop extension but i don’t like it running and prefer to have the extra backup of knowing there’s an edited version stored in grammarly).

you can see a bit of me creating the dropbox folder that i’d then share in the post too.

why post this?

i’ve always been interested in how other people do things, especially around more personal ~creative type tasks.

there’s a lot of things that tend to happen behind the scenes.

part of this covers a little writing + visual idea exploration, sandwiched in between more ‘admin’ type of stuff that i do (e.g., upscaling, saving, renaming files).

there’s also an infinite amount of ways to approach ~everything, and this snapshot is just that — a snapshot of how i happened to do stuff on a particular day.

having the manual process of going through each generated image allows me to have at least a rough chance of remembering types of art that i’ve got saved (instead of having it auto-batch this for me).

the manual process also gives me time for other ideas to come up.

it’s a bit boring and repetitive, but i’m also looking at things that inspire me and have got the space to think in-between all the clicks.

that boring & repetitive bit starts to build up some energy around doing something less-boring, like externalizing some of the ideas that have popped up.

in summary:

• this is a peek at how i wrote an article, including more of the admin-prep-pre-work-stuff.
• boring manual things allow me to think of other ideas while also doing something that future-self will be grateful for (i.e., actually being able to find the images i want to see).
• if you are doing something that you’re bored with, try to spice things up by documenting it. you might find areas that you can improve, and sometimes that act of just knowing that you are recording yourself can give a bit of an energy boost.
• i originally recorded this process because i was forcing myself to write & share something that day. the decision to write something + record the process was enough for me to actually write something and then do the most shit-inducing thing for me, publish.

whatever your process is, know that there is someone out there who is sincerely interested in knowing more.

Best,
Kelsy