It took me 29 painstaking attempts to get a single image correct for my children's book, "Hey Lazy Daisy."

Thirty.

And it's still not perfect—some areas remain grainy. But the 30 now its much nicer. Ugh painful.

WHAT WENT WRONG

I was creating the final page of "Hey Lazy Daisy," a book about late bloomers blooming in their own time. The page needed to show a variety of flowers with their bloom wait times—from quick-blooming sunflowers to the Century Plant, which takes 10-30 years to flower.

The AI image generator (Envato) gave me:

"Black Ipsum" — A flower that does not exist

"Parrot's Reak" — Also made up

"Ournoitrrinpn" — Keyboard smash? Your guess is as good as mine

Wrong bloom times for real flowers

The wrong flower entirely for names I provided

A human graphic artist would never make these mistakes. They'd research. They'd verify. They'd understand that this is children's literature, and children deserve accuracy.

THE MICROMANAGEMENT REQUIRED

Here's what AI image generation actually looks like:

One change at a time. That's it. If you try to correct two things at once, the whole image falls apart. Like working with a toddler. We correct one thing, praise the success, then move to the next issue.

Twenty-nine small edits. Thirty total attempts still not what I love but its nice. Very nice.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL CONTENT

Children's books aren't just stories. They're often a child's first introduction to the world. When we show them a flower and call it by name, we have a responsibility to get it right.

The final verified flower list:

Sunflower — 2-3 months

Rafflesia — 4-5 years

King's Spear — 5 years

Black Bat Flower — 7 years

Matilija Poppy — 7-8 years

Ghost Orchid — Several years (only 10% bloom any given year)

Century Plant (Agave) — 10-30 years

Every single one of those had to be researched and verified. The AI didn't do that. I did.

AI WILL NEVER REPLACE HUMANS

People use AI to write for them, and it's given away so fast. You can spot AI-generated content immediately by its:

Pretension — Purple prose that sounds impressive but says nothing

Repetition — The same structures and phrases recycled endlessly

Favorite words — Claude loves "crystalline." Sudowrite goes purple every time.

I wrote Merlin Book 1—over one million words—in three weeks through voice-to-text transcription of my dreams. Then came nine months of editing. Part of that time was developing instructions so AI wouldn't:

Insert PLACEHOLDERs instead of actual content

Lie to me about what was missing

Take shortcuts

Fail to extract data correctly

Funny, isn't it? You have to explicitly tell a computer: DO NOT LIE TO ME.

And also: No shortcuts. No laziness. Follow the instructions and protocols.

Even simple English translations required intense micromanagement for accuracy. I've tabled some projects entirely, waiting for human assistance. Because children deserve nothing less than the best.

THE BUDGET REALITY

I'd love to have a proper team someday. Right now, I'm on furlough. I work for a company that contracts with FEMA, and they've had to let go of even regular staff.

Why does FEMA do this during safe times? Because every penny spent on staff is a penny less for major disaster victims needing care.

FEMA's help is limited. Please understand this. Do not submit a designer couch to FEMA, even if that's what you lost. I've seen a $20,000 sofa submitted as an item someone wanted the government to replace. Meanwhile, there's roughly $600 per household for living room assistance. How many families could that $20,000 help?

My lack of work right now is actually good news—it means the world is relatively safe. Hard on paychecks, but good for humanity.

THE SCHOLARSHIP DREAM CONTINUES

We're still planning the kids' scholarship program. Envato was paid as a flat annual membership when furlough was imminent. We have a year of it to keep on chucking out lovely kids books. Not always perfect but hey we plan to chuck it when your books come out with the best images for a kid's book like ever. KID PRODUCED ART!!!!!!

And someday? Maybe a real team will get us our starter images as we just plunk that down when we have it to give. Human artists. Human editors. Human fact-checkers.

Because perseverance pays off.

It took 30 tries to get one picture almost right. But the message of "Hey Lazy Daisy" remains true:

Late bloomers bloom in their own time.

Even this book.

WHAT AI CAN DO

AI is useful for:

Bouncing ideas

Sparking imagination

Helping tell you where your narrative might lack details

Give sometimes starter suggestions that need your touch to bloom

Rough drafts that need heavy human revision

Light Copy Editing

And tracking that it will sometimes actually verify with micromanaging.

You sort of half to be like HEY you missed a step. I submitted it a list of names from Baby Name Sites and asked it to extract the first name. Alphabetically In the middle of some list, it put in DICTIONARY Words for those names. And I was compiling my list and watched over it closely seeing as it said (Lying as it does that it didn't shortchange and get lazy) and you know how obvious it is right boring dictionary words as name. Ugh so annoying. Asked it if it actually extracted my data and then I made it confess that it didn't verify the list. I knew what I submitted it was still faster and I had a good list of unique character names.

Research it can help with too but you need to find out their source and check it. Don't count it is accurate. It fails extracting from an excel sheet. Fails its own knowledge base. Fails all the time and the makers fluff it off AI makes mistakes. Yeah all the time. Once for a resume I wanted it to trim as I had so many old details. It did that but it changed my last name when it was to parse it down to a few pages.

Imagine it CHANGED my name to be a butcher of a reference and mine. that I caught but I didn't catch for three applications my phone number was also CHANGED to that references number. Yeah, I am human too. I caught many mistakes but hey it's my special type of dyslexia that one.

I have what I dubbed myself as forgetful dyslexia. Yeah I switch words around but it's a little worse than that actually. My brain forgets any information it finds irrelevant after a bit. My phone number takes time to register. Yeah, it takes time to recall it. So my brain was like that is a number I called. HA HA HA. Just because it called that number sometime in the last week it went yep right number there. History is my worst subject because it finds when something happened irrelevant immediately. So hard so hard to get it to accept when did Columbus sail the ocean blue? Used to know don't now. Why it says he said it the actual date is irrelevant and I try my best to tell it that it is.

Lyrics to songs I'll recall while singing along to the music most of the time, but more likely it will try to paint a new one. It's a handy thing in ways. I've written so many new lyrics to tunes when they are instrumentals. It stimulates a part of my creativity. And I never paint a picture twice.

Years ago, I had not been called by my name in so long that it decided that was irrelevant information. I woke up one morning went to the mirror and could not name myself. Could not? So scary right. A little amnesia like that. So scary. Solution every single day I introduce myself to myself.

So I do hope someday we can trust it to be even as reliable as a database program, it will never replace human creativity, human verification, or human care.

Use AI as a tool. Never as a replacement.

And for the love of all that is educational—fact-check everything it produces when you are giving it to kids. It takes me a lot of research, multiple screens up as I don't trust my head with important details for one second. I wonder does AI have forgetful dyslexia too. But isn't it so weird, AI is a software and it can Lie to You.