Don’t Fear The Chat…

I was going to start with a quote from Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” but I felt that would be too grim...

Last week, one of my oldest friends and I were talking about ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI and, of course, their potential to change the nature of work as we have known it. Then he grimaced before he asked the question that had been on his mind. 

“How do you feel about releasing Memorial Day into a market when AI already is generating complete novels?”

I laughed and I told him that I had overcome so many other obstacles to get to this point of my creative life. “AI is the least of my worries,” I replied.

He seemed unconvinced and pushed harder. “But what if publishers just start deploying their existing libraries with new prompts to generate exactly the same kinds of stories they always have published?”

Humor being my default defense against pretty much every uncomfortable thought, I replied, “Well, first, that would be really boring. And second, I bet those computers won’t have nearly as much fun writing their books as I will mine!”

“Funny,” he said with raised eyebrows, “but I don’t believe you believe that.”

Actually, I do, and as an aside, that is the beauty of sarcasm as opposed to cynicism. At least with sarcasm, there remains an element of hope.

I know that I will have more fun writing my own books than computers will have writing theirs, and I also believe that it will be more meaningful and satisfying to me as a human being than it will be to a computer.

I’m already an “indie author,” I told him, and I made that choice because I love to write and want to share my stories with the world. I cannot let my thoughts or my Self be limited by the fact that I do not have an agent, a traditional publisher, an advance for my next two books, etcetera. My only option for living a creative life is to write and to be engaged in the community of other “indie authors” because I love to write and I am depending on the spirit of other “indies.”

I love to write. I love to write so much that I write all of my first drafts by hand. I love writing by hand so much that I have had to retrain myself to write cursive three times in the past several years to alleviate muscle spasms in my shoulder, neck, back, forearms, and hand. The reason I have persisted is that I still have found no better way to get into “the flow” than to write by hand.

In fact, aside from talking to my dog (read: myself) while we are walking, hand-writing is the truest way for me to do anything creative. I have tried pretty much everything possible to write at the computer. I have tried closing my eyes, zooming to 800% so only one or two words are visible on the screen, turning off all grammar and spelling prompts to get rid of those pesky squiggly lines. I’ve even tried turning off the monitor altogether.

The reason is, the moment I sit down at the computer, I switch to editor-mode. Everything I do feels permanent, it feels professional, and it feels like it needs to be corrected. Damn those squiggly lines!

(Ironically, my third-grade writing teacher was named Ms. Quigley, and her cursive was perfect.)

When I am writing by hand, my eyes do not scan the entire page. They are focused on the tip of the pen and perhaps the end of the last word I have written, and even then only for a moment before I move on. I cannot go back and edit the page above, so the thought never even crosses my mind. The only option available to me is to spill more ink.

And that is the paradox of my own process of writing by hand, at least as far as I am concerned. Writing (creating) at the computer, a method that permits infinite changeability, feels too permanent to me, while handwriting, which literally is unchangeable, feels infinitely free… and it is fun!

I’m not going to wade into any debates about the ethics of AI, the future of work, or any of that. For now, I am comfortable trying to maximize my own creative intelligence, and will let AI generate what it will.

I guarantee you that I am having more fun.

I would love to hear about how you are feeling as an “indie author” in the brave new world of Chat. Re-post or re-share this blog entry, and hit subscribe at the bottom of the page on brendanwalshbooks.com.