Write (duh). I mean, this is obvious, right? (why does WP have an AI function now? I blog. Why would I want NOT to blog? Or use AI to blog? I don’t get it)
Read (duh). OK, read sci-fi and fantasy. And history. Especially ancient history.
Cook (seriously — I started doing this when I had to be separated from my family in 2018 and I found that it helps me calm down, eat healthier, and actually enjoy experimenting a little bit)
Play guitar (need more time for this — I find it more enjoyable to play bass but playing my faux-Gibson is more enjoyable bc I can actually play a whole tune lol)
Go on long, long walks by myself around the hills and mountains near my house so that I don’t feel so guilty about the Irish coffee waiting for me when I get back…
Wondering now if I should write the “five things I absolutely hate to have to do but generally have no say in the matter” or if I should wait and see if there is such a prompt…
A story must be more than merely a story. It must be an examination, of the human heart, of the mind, of the spirit. Of experience and existence. A simple recapitulation of one’s personal past or the delusional suffering of a dysfunctional suburban American family have no merit. Overcoming the reality we believe we live in, debunking fiction and elevating the truth, that is worthwhile.
The short story accused of violating the national security law, “Our Time,” is set in a dystopian 2050. It tells of an authoritarian future in which vast swaths of Hong Kong history have been erased from both the city’s structures and the public consciousness, and all aspects of life are subsumed under the Chinese Communist Party.
I’m not sure this is science fiction. Seems more like reality.
Every political entity wants power. When people resist being controlled, and they use a dialect or another form of the “official” language, those in charge try to eliminate the language of resistance.
When people write about a dystopian future in which they have no right to their own language, customs, ways of thinking and behaving, and political representation — and those in charge respond by banning the fiction — it really only shows the reality. And the reality is this:
Those in charge have small, frail, male egos that need constant stroking. Poor frail eggshell minds.
Language is power, because language is identity. Those in charge are always afraid of losing control over all three. And whenever they respond this way, they always get exactly the opposite of what they want.
In that case, you should keep a diary, his advisor suggested. Write every day.
OK, he said.
And bring me a story or two to look at.
OK.
October
These aren’t stories, his advisor informed. These are more like diary entries.
How should I write a story, then? he asked.
Write what you know. Base your stories on people and things around you.
OK.
And bring me another story or two.
OK.
November
The narration isn’t believable, his advisor imparted.
Why? he asked.
It’s too difficult for the reader to identify with the characters. Nobody has a family with nine children.
What should I do?
Go read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
OK.
And bring me a couple more stories.
OK.
December
I don’t get any sense of through-story, his advisor complained.
What do you mean? he asked.
The stories aren’t connected. They’re all different.
Well, what should I do?
Try an internal perspective. Go read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
OK.
And bring me another story.
OK.
January
This is too abstract, his advisor mused.
What do you mean? he asked.
This isn’t a true plot. The symbolism is too obscure.
It’s a translation of something I wrote for a German class.
You don’t want to be Kafka.
I don’t?
You need real life stories, with real people and real problems.
What should I do?
Go read Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral.”
OK.
And…
Bring you another story?
Two.
February
I think I see the problem, his advisor intuited.
What is it? he asked.
I think you need to experience more life before you can be an effective writer.
What do you mean?
You need to go out into the world and work different jobs, meet different people, move around a bit.
My thesis is due in two months.
So it is. Make sure you give your draft to me next month.
OK.
And…
Another story?
No. Just read my comments and rewrite what you have.
OK.
March
I don’t see the point of adding poetry between the stories, his advisor grumped.
Why? he pondered.
The poems interfere with the prose.
I thought you didn’t like the prose.
I would say you need to add a poetic sense to your prose.
How do I do that?
Try writing poetry. For practice.
…
And finish the rewrite of the draft by next week.
OK.
And print three copies on a laser printer. And buy three of those thesis black cover binders.
OK.
April
Well, the three of us have examined your thesis, and we decided on a grade of B+, his advisor beamed.
…
I know it’s not as high as you wanted, but I argued that the interplay of letters, poetry, and stories woven together formed an interesting kind of metadiscourse narrative depth to the thesis structure.
…
Congratulations.
Thanks.
If you like this, you might enjoy Notes from the Nineties, a book with short stories and poems (the above is the first one, and may or may not be partially based on personal experiences my senior year in college).
I’ve kept a journal (OK, a diary) for many, many years now. It first started in September 1984 as a junior high school 1st year (7th grade) English assignment — each day, we would be given a writing prompt and at the end of the 10-week term (quarterly system back then), the English teacher would look it over and write feedback.
At least, that was the idea. In mid-October my family moved to a county and school system about 60 miles away (it’s more complicated — we couldn’t move in to the new house at first and so my siblings and I were looked after by various relatives, so we didn’t go to school for about nine to ten days). The new school didn’t use journals at all. English class was boring. Grammar and sentence diagramming.
So I kept writing at home, almost on a daily basis in the beginning.
But I’ve been fairly inconsistent over the years. I filled several notebooks, all different sizes and shapes. I stopped writing in one notebook at some point in 1999 when I moved to Japan and started another one. Then some time in 2004 I decided it was a waste of paper not to finish the 1999 one. Then I filled it up and started typing in a Word file. Then I went to Montreal four years ago and started writing in paper notebooks again.
It’s, quite frankly, a great big mess.
But there are some good ideas in these notebooks, and lots and lots of bizarre poems that I swear I do not remember writing. (Also at least half a dozen attempts at “automatic writing.” If you don’t know what that is, look it up.)
So from time to time, I’ll post some bits and pieces here. Just for safe-keeping.
Who knows? I may wind up publishing some of it at some point. Or at least drop some of it into the mouths of future SciFi characters.
In other words, without “fresh real data” — translation: original human work, as opposed to stuff spit out by AI — to feed the beast, we can expect its outputs to suffer drastically. When trained repeatedly on synthetic content, say the researchers, outlying, less-represented information at the outskirts of a model’s training data will start to disappear. The model will then start pulling from increasingly converging and less-varied data, and as a result, it’ll soon start to crumble into itself.
So, as more and more lazy people ask AI to “write” for them, the programs get less and less accurate…
Or, as the authors of the study conclude, “…without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease.”
I.e., the use of AI-generated content to train AI doesn’t work, and since there is already way too much AI-generated garbage all over the internet, it’s almost impossible to sort out which is which when the AI-creators “scrape” data from the web.
So…
See, machines can’t replace us entirely — their brains will melt!
But then again, that might not be so hopeful after all. When AI takes over the world, maybe it won’t kill humans; perhaps it’ll just corral us into content farms…
At least we won’t wind up as batteries.
Yet.
PS. I find it both hysterically amusing and disturbing that my blog program offers an “experimental AI assistant.” Granted, the program does let you know that AI-generated content accuracy is not guaranteed, but wth would I want to use AI for a personal blog? The whole purpose of a blog is to WRITE. AI-generated text is not writing. It is intellectual property theft.
1. I know it to be certain that the wording of this prompt is a bit odd. Is this meant to mean “know to be true”?
2. I know it to be absolutely certain that there are many things about which I am far from certain.
3. I also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things I know to be certain will annoy at least one person who reads this.
4. I also also know it to be absolutely certain that at least one of the things to know to be certain will amuse at least one person.
5. One of these things I know to be absolutely certain may even irritate and amuse the same person (👈 maybe even this one right here).
6. I even know it to be absolutely certain that writing a list of ten things that are absolutely certain takes a considerably longer time than I had initially anticipated.
7. Just to be sure I irritate someone, it is absolutely certain that the world is a warmer place than it was when I was a kid 40 years ago.
8. The fact that June 2023 was the hottest month on record is absolutely certain.
Right. So I quit Facebrat a couple years ago after I got fed up with the self-righteous, arrogant attitude of its founder Mark Zuckerberg and its blatant stealing and selling of personal information of its users.
And also because I was wasting hours and hours each week reading meaningless Facebark posts on my smartphone (so I deleted the app, which I strongly recommend you all do to prevent the company from tracking your location, then selling that info to the spam industry…although you’re probably going to be tracked via BlueTooth anyway if you keep it on).
But after my mother passed away, and while I was still away from family, friends, and colleagues and living in Montréal, I couldn’t take the isolation.
And also a teacher’s group based at the McGill University (William Shatner’s alma mater!) named BILD asked me to join a FB Group.
So I rejoined and vowed to avoid posting anything about religion and politics, and to focus on the things that matter – food, family, and occasional humorous events.
Until I foolishly wrote a casual comment on my brother’s post:
I’ve never really experienced the so-called “writer’s block.” Not that I’m bragging…but I often just don’t find I have enough time to write.
By which I mean, writing seriously. It’s easy, however, to find time here and there just to jot down some random thoughts.
(Aside note: if you type really quickly on the WordPress smartphone app, it autocorrect “random” to “radon,” which would put you in an entirely different frame of mind.)
I started writing stories when I was in 5th grade. Our teacher gave us a list of vocabulary each week — about 10 to 12 words, I think — and said we had two choices: 1) write down all their definitions along with a sample sentence, or 2) work them into a short story to show that we understood the meaning of the words.
I chose the 2nd option. In fact, I was the only one who did out of a class of about 25.
The thing is, the teacher wanted us to read them at the front of the room.
Man, that was not something I was looking forward to. But somehow I managed.
I wrote nothing but detective stories, all in the first person. At some point, I borrowed my mother’s old manual typewriter (originally my grandfather’s, from the 1950s) and typed them all out. I still have most of them.
But my peak as an elementary school age creative writer came part-way 6th grade, when I attempted to write my first horror story.
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