Added a new scene to the novel, 1550 words. I still feel like this particular romantic subplot is not gelling and not fitting in with the overall story. I need to find a way for it to contribute more to the main plot. But perhaps that’s something I’ll figure out in the rewrite.
Category: Writing (Page 1 of 4)
I added 2500 or so words to my current work in progress, two important scenes. Four more before I hit the midpoint of the novel. If I keep going at this rate, the midpoint will happen just shy of 50K words. A little long for a cozy, but I’ll find ways to tighten it up during edit passes.
Well, that scene got away from me a bit. I ended up writing 2360 words instead of the target of 1600. Ah well, that’s what the edit pass is for, right?
After a few days of depression and melancholy, I finally found my way back to my writing desk. As I reviewed my previous work to prepare for today’s additions, I was reminded that I enjoy my own writing. So, I added 1,100 words to my work-in-progress. I hope to finish the scene tomorrow.
I didn’t add any new words to my WIP today, sadly. Instead, I spent several hours brainstorming the plot for an entirely different post-apocalyptic fantasy novel (with a gay protagonist, naturally). As one does when they’re trying to actually finish writing a novel.
I was shocked (but not entirely shocked) during my social media browsing this morning to read NaNoWriMo’s recent statements about the use of AI in writing for the various competitions they sponsor. To say their statement has caused an uproar in the online writing communities I visit would be a severe understatement. This, following the failures on NaNoWriMo’s part to keep children safe from sexual predators is just the cap on a string of unforced errors on the non-profit’s part.
If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, the acronym(?) is short for “National Novel Writing Month”. It started off as a yearly voluntary competition to write 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November. Thousands of people would participate, and those who completed the 50K words before the end of the month would be declared winners, though really there are no losers amongst those willing to give creative writing a try. Over the years, they’ve branched out to sponsor other competitions, with a focus on encouraging younger folk to find enjoyment in writing. NaNoWriMo was not founded to help aspiring writers to become published authors. Instead it was intended to help aspiring writers to develop discipline and to lock the internal editor away for a span of days. I’ve participated many times over it’s nearly 25 years, and have benefited from it greatly.
But last year’s allegations about the Board of NaNoWriMo actively protecting a member who was sexually preying on underaged writers in the forums at the beginning of the competition in 2023 was a serious blow to my appreciation for the organization who had been sponsoring the competitions. I’m not going to rehash the allegations and the actions (and inactions) the board took in response. You can find them documented all over the web. Here is one such recounting.
But the stance the Board has taken regarding Generative AI is just one scandal too many. Today I deleted my 20+ year account there and will no longer be recommending NaNoWriMo to aspiring writers.
It’s bad enough that they are encouraging people to use Generative AI to write their stories, and in theory, submit them for the contest. The contest was always about developing the practice to write nearly 2000 words each and every day of the month of November, and balancing that quota against holiday obligations for the vast majority of American participants (American Thanksgiving occurs near the end of the month). Their statement seems to endorse submitting a writing prompt to a tool like ChatGPT and asking it to write the 50,000 words for the contest in seconds. It belies the entire purpose of the competition.
But then they had to go and label those who oppose Generative AI as “classist” and “ableist”, two hot buzz-words in the social justice movement. And I believe they are using these labels very incorrectly. They seem to imply that neurodivergent and disabled people need these tools to compete with abled and neurotypical people in order to create art. But what I’m hearing from disabled and neurodivergent authors on BlueSky and Facebook is that while they benefit from Assistive AI tools like grammar checkers and spellcheckers, they don’t need Generative AI. And since there have been disabled and neurodivergent people throughout history who have produced wonderful art, I am convinced by their argument. In fact, NaNoWriMo’s position comes across as belittling, as if they are saying that disabled and neurodivergent people cannot be creative without these tools. That in and of itself seems ableist and condescending.
Learning to write and write well, like any art form, takes hard work. It takes practice. NaNoWriMo had a place in helping people take those first hard steps. It encouraged people to write poorly as long as they were writing. Without practice, one cannot hone their craft, and NaNoWriMo was the purest form of practice, writing to a deadline and chucking the inner editor into the closet for a month. They never made any allusion to a promise that at the end of the month, all of the “novels” that were written would be publishable. No, they were very clear that the point of the endeavor was simply to practice writing to a schedule, or failing a schedule, to a deadline. Writing without editing was the whole point.
But something has changed over at NaNoWriMo headquarters. They have seemingly changed their focus from helping aspiring writers to develop a writing practice and now seemingly are focused on making sure every participant has a chance at becoming a successful writer, presumably by being picked up by a publisher or self-publishing. And they seem to feel that Generative AI is one tool that can be used to accomplish this.
But really, the Kindle marketplace (along with all of the other self-publishing sites) are already chock-a-block full of AI-generated garbage, with “authors” trying to make a quick buck. It’s the “TechBros” mantra of making success in writing (or painting/illustration) accessible to the masses, which is encouraging people who can’t be bothered to put in the time practicing to believe they can become instantly successful. Even if Generative AI was not immensely costly in terms of energy and resource depletion, the output is at best mediocre. And it’s also ethically irresponsible because it requires terabytes of training material, much of which is copyrighted and being used without compensation to the authors (or artists). In fact the CEOs of some of the Generative AI companies have testified that they could not make these models possible if they had to fairly compensate the people whose work is being used to train their machines. So, there are many many reasons not to be promoting Generative AI as a part of a creative writing competition, and many reasons why anyone who wants to become an actually successful writer should avoid using them to write their books.
Now full disclosure is warranted here. I do use Generative AI in the development of my stories, both short stories and novels. I use them to help brainstorm ideas, to help me develop my characters and to get feedback on plot ideas. I even use it to get feedback on scenes I’ve written, and the feedback it gives has been valuable (often it reminds me to use more description, to give more insight into the characters’ feelings and not just have them dialog, and to make sure to keep character voice in mind so it doesn’t all read like the same character is taking both sides of a discussion). It’s no different, in my mind, than the feedback that a first pass from members of a critiquing group provides. Oh, and of course I ask it for help with grammar and spelling/word choice. I can never remember when I should use “who’s” and “whose”.
But the words that appear in the manuscript? All mine.
To me, this is an ethical position. You may disagree. I hear the arguments about how Generative AI uses too much power and too many natural resources, and while I have trouble believing some of the estimates of natural resource usage–I have a hard time, knowing what I know about computing devices and the needs of data centers, believing that a simple query drains an entire pond and consumes it somehow–I know that in the long run the current computational cost is unsustainable. Knowing Moore’s law, I do believe those costs will come down quickly, but that’s only my opinion. The resource arguments, though, are definitely worth considering and paying attention to, I agree.
Anyway, I’m saddened that NaNoWriMo has made this decision to endorse using Generative AI in their competitions. I’ve enjoyed participating in the contests, have several “Winner” t-shirts in my closet, and several posters. I’ve donated to the foundation that powers it and powers the charitable work they do fostering writing in schools and such. But I now feel betrayed by the current board members. I know I was not the only person to delete my account from their servers today, and I know I’m not the only person pledging to donate to other causes in the future. I doubt I’d go back if they changed this stance, too much damage has been done (did I mention the child sexual predation they allegedly spent six months desperately trying to cover up?).
RIP NaNoWriMo.
by John Kusters Jr
It was supposed to be an easy job, shuttling two xeno-archaeologists and their discovery from Starbase Prime to the spaceport in Arizona. Then an untracked piece of space garbage plowed through my cockpit and set my ship into a rapid spin.
I was fortunate enough to be near the spin axis, so while I was thrown around a bit, I escaped mostly unscathed. My passengers weren’t as fortunate, and had been instantly killed when thrown into the bulkhead. Worse, the collision had also freed their discovery, which now sat on my deck, talking to me.
“I can help you.” I don’t know how the slivery blob could speak without a mouth, but I could clearly understand it.
I ignored it as I reached deeper into an open console working to restore power to it. It powered up and immediately the emergency communication system blared to life.
“Repeat, if you cannot correct course in the next ten minutes, we will be forced to destroy your vessel to protect Habitat Seven. Please respond.”
Great, orbital traffic control was about to vaporize my ship. I wish they had been as diligent about tracking space garbage. Unfortunately, I had no way to respond to traffic control. Nor did I have any way of sending a message to my husband and daughter. I pushed that painful thought away.
Investigating the reactor status, the computer was reporting that the reactor’s containment chamber was structurally compromised, which explained the shutdown status. I did manage to negate most of the spin using the attitude jets, but with the main reactor off line, I couldn’t do more than that. There was no way to steer the ship clear of the habitat.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I said to myself.
“I can help you.”
I didn’t have long to find a way to save myself.
I was in my environmental suit, but my helmet had been in the cockpit and I stupidly did not have a spare elsewhere in the ship. Next ship, coffee dispenser at the pilot station! Assuming there was a next ship.
I considered using one of the helmets left by my now dead passengers, but even if they were intact–they weren’t really–they were an incompatible design. So a space walk was probably out. I needed to find another way off the ship.
Well, that’s exactly the purpose of an escape pod. I made my way aft along the corridor that ran between the passenger cabins to the hatch in the ceiling and the adjacent access ladder. The hatch was surrounded by blinking red warning lights. Not a good sign.
I climbed the ladder to get a better look at the hatch and the window there. Yeah, it was bad. The pod had been ripped off it’s forward latches, thought it was still attached by the aft ones. Between this hatch and the hatch on the pod was less than half a meter of empty space. But without a helmet for my suit, it might as well have been a mile.
That was my last hope. I knew then I would die when traffic control vaporized my ship.
“I can help you,” I heard again. I looked down. The thing was now directly below me. Nothing creepy about that!
I started climbing down the ladder and it moved–rolled?–to make room.
“Assuming I was inclined to accept your help–and I’m not–how could you help me?”
“I was designed to aid in the survival of individuals of the species who created me. I can envelop you and assure your survival.”
“Envelop me? Like an environmental suit?”
“It would be more intrusive and not comfortable for you, but essentially you are correct.”
I stared at it for a few moments. “You have a rocket engine in there somewhere?”
“If you are querying about locomotion, I have the means to produce a solar sail if needed. However, the explosion of your ship should provide the necessary momentum in this case.”
“So, you wrap yourself around me, we jump into space, and then you keep me alive until I can be rescued, is that the deal?”
“That is one possibility. Alternatively we can enter the atmosphere of the nearby planet and reach the ground.”
Could I take this blob of brushed-nickel alien tech at its word? The archaeologists thought it was a technological wonder, so I suppose it could do what it claimed.
“I will survive the explosion, regardless of your decision,” it told me. “You, however will not.”
“I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t know whether I can trust you. Heck, I don’t know whether you intend to eat me or something.”
“Lack of trust is understandable in this situation. Is it your intention to allow yourself to be terminated?”
My husband would be the first to say I was unable to take a leap of faith. Every instinct in me told me to find a way to save myself, not to trust this alien device. But I was fresh out of ideas. And I desperately wanted to see my husband and our daughter again.
I screwed my eyes tightly shut and sighed deeply. Time was nearly up.
“Okay. Get me home.”
It had been correct. It was desperately intrusive and uncomfortable. But it got me through the destruction of my ship, through re-entry, and now was parachuting me down to the ground somewhere in Florida.
I had no idea how I was going to explain this to the authorities, or the military. I felt an obligation to protect this thing’s “life” after it had saved mine. I guess we’ll figure that out when the time comes.
But I would see my family again. That was all I could focus on. For once I had set self-reliance aside and trusted my life to a leap of faith. I guess when it came down to do or die, I had it in me to jump into the unknown.
My husband will never let me live it down.
My writing space for today. Working on character sketches for all the major non-main characters in the story.
I’m back to working on my preparations after taking Sunday off. There are several significant gaps in my plot that are bothering me. I hope that by focusing on the setting and characters, I can gain clarity on what needs to happen in the middle of the story, which is currently a bit murky. During today’s brainstorming session of 3,000 words, I did manage to identify some story elements I need to include, like a rooftop chase through the twisted streets of my city’s slums. So, with a bit of luck, a few more days of this work will provide me with exciting content to fill in the gaps in my plot.
I’ve also realized that I’ll need to add an average of nearly 3,000 words to my manuscript each day throughout November. If I had the same amount of time to write every day during the month, I would say it’s no problem. However, I will be traveling for a week in November, and I don’t expect to write my 3,000 words on those days. Therefore, I’ll have to set higher expectations early in the month to hopefully get ahead of my target, compensating for the days when I’ll have a lower word count. I’m not particularly worried about it, but I do need to be mindful of this challenge.
My preparations for NaNoWriMo 2023 are well underway. After some contemplation, I’ve decided to embark on the journey of writing the Steam and Sorcery story. This marks the beginning of character development, the sketching of the plot, and the enrichment of somewhat scant setting descriptions. I’m also exploring tropes and cliches to incorporate additional layers of flavor into the narrative.
As I’ve previously mentioned, these ideas have been nurtured by the world-building I’ve been engaged in for some tabletop role-playing games I’m developing. The fantasy concept took the lead in my decision-making process, piquing my creative curiosity.
Brainstorming can be a delightful process, but it’s not without its challenges. Sometimes, ideas don’t neatly align, and I’m left grappling with the task of harmonizing the elements. At this point, I’ve managed to outline approximately 20% of the intended 40 scenes, with a primary focus on the beginning and end of the story. Now, the task at hand is to unravel the intricacies of the middle section. Sounds like a walk in the park, right?
Recent Comments