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Should I be panicking over this? (Regarding ChatGPT)

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So an agent currently has 50 pages of my manuscript, which is exciting (because it's been the only request I've gotten aside from a "this was super close for me"). Anyways, I haven't really been editing the rest of the manuscript because I am not that certain they will request more and time is limited these days. But I also just now feel really off about it.

  1. I did not use AI or ChatGPT to write my novel (though I did put some chapters into ChatGPT to see what it thought of my characters). Now, I'm terrified, because while I had so much fun with ChatGPT praising me and identifying themes in my story, I'm scared that it will fail the AI detection, since now my work is in there. I just had so much fun asking ChatGPT to rank my characters and identify the most emotional scene of the chapter, that I got carried away. I never asked it to write chapters for me; the worst I probably did was ask for a synonym. I didn't ask it for outlines; all my outlines were handwritten and this went through so many beta reader edits I was exhausted.

  2. However, I put drafts of my query letter into ChatGPT. I don't remember if I even took away anything from the suggested drafts, and the scary thing is that I didn't feel wrong about it. I am extremely honest and ethical with my academics (never cheated, do not use ChatGPT on papers because 1) it's easy to tell and 2) I'd feel immensely guilty). But for a combination of these reasons, in addition to not wanting my real name on the manuscript, I'm considering not submitting the full if the agent asks, even though I feel awful because I just wasted their time. I am now overthinking every way I might've cheated during the writing process, even though I began working on this story well before I was aware of AI and sought out so many rounds of beta readers, etc. I'm almost hoping the agent doesn't request as it is causing me to be quite uneasy, even though I spent hours drafting/editing the query letter (weeks!).

Posted May 4, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

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