Archive for the ‘experience’ Tag
In conversations with other writers, I often find myself in disagreement regarding a particular aspect of the writing process. Many, perhaps most, dislike the work involved with revisions and editing, seeing it as a relentless, grinding chore designed to fuel self-doubt. You see countless memes in the social media expressing, in cartoonish grotesquerie, the fear and loathing often invoked by the process of editing. For me, the very opposite is true. The hardest part of the fiction-writing process is creating the basis of the plot and the characters to start with. I don’t outline, because fiction doesn’t come to me that way. I grope my way forward, figuring things out as I go. “Pantsing,” say some, as in writing by the seat of your pants. I prefer the phrase discovery writing. Whatever you choose to call it, this phase is always hard work, and rarely easy, but it’s work that must be done to get me where I want to be.
What I most look forward to is what comes after, that process of self-editing and revision that unfolds after that rough draft has developed a beginning, a middle, and an end. There’s some discovery writing still to come, but it grows from what’s already there. Part of the joy of writing comes in those bright epiphanies that occur as I begin to realize the true potential of the tale I’ve told.
Some books take longer than others to reach this point of revision. My current work in progress took a long damn time to get there. For a while, I feared it never would.
I expected the third book of the Children of Rost’aht tetralogy (Heir to Rost’aht) to be a challenge. The story takes place at the same time as Book Two (The Best Laid Plans), and I needed to make sure certain details lined up just so. News from elsewhere (events in Book Two) needed to reach the characters in Book Three with a degree of timing that made sense. I’ve never tried such a thing before, and although the concept sounds simple enough, it didn’t prove to be as straightforward as I’d hoped. And that’s an understatement. My usual discovery writing approach to a first draft proved poorly suited to the task. It felt at times as if I were riding a bicycle over rough pavement, while always looking behind instead of ahead. Time after time I was drawn up short by the realization that something had been revealed that the current characters could not know, not at that point. Just as often, I sailed past something that they really should have been aware of, if their actions were to make any sense.
And then there were the external distractions of this past year, coming into focus while I worked on Book Three. As mentioned in the previous entry, I was puzzled by a dramatic fall-off in book sales, infuriated by the theft of several titles by trainers of chatbots, and dismayed by a stark reminder that eBook piracy is alive and well. I was riding downhill quickly, looking backward, and hitting pot holes. It’s impossible to maintain balance riding a bicycle that way. It doesn’t work any better while writing a story. Needless to say, the discovery writing phase of this book did not proceed smoothly, or without a few spectacular crashes.
It took months longer than usual, and what I finally ended up with was a mess. At some point, the usual pattern of discovery simply unraveled, and some of the “chapters” I wrote were wildly out of sequence. I did not always think of necessary plot elements until well after I passed the point where they were needed. So I just wrote what occurred, when it occurred, with the vague notion of moving bits around to correct placement, after the fact. But my first attempt to do so dissolved into chaos.
At a writer’s group meeting, a few months after the time I would normally have sent the manuscript off to the editor, I shared my tale of woe. In the conversation that followed, someone made the point that an outline at the start might have kept any of this from happening. A moot point. Any time I’ve tried to do an outline for a work of fiction, it’s automatically become discovery writing, with a fully written first draft as the result. And I did, in fact, have a draft, albeit a really bad one. But what at first seemed an entirely pointless observation turned into a true lightbulb moment. Why not turn the mess into a collection of very short chapter summaries and reorganize them into a sort of outline, after the fact? Surely it would be easier that way to see the big picture, rather than taking on the entire thing at once? This idea emerged from the group conversation, and the consensus was that it might be worth a try.
I agreed and went forward with it. Each of the so-called chapters I’d devised was given a number and a short summary. I then spent a lot of time making copy and paste maneuvers, guided by those summaries, and eventually had everything lined up properly. Heir to Rost’aht existed – sort of – its plot ordered, and missing parts glaringly obvious. And then I did the same thing for Book Two, realizing only then that an after-the-fact outline of that book would provide a useful guide to the necessary order of events. No surprise – I found mistakes in the development of Book Three’s plot through this second outline.
It all worked out in the end. I was able to take the existing material and relocate or delete anything that rendered the dual timelines contradictory. I was also able to plug some gaping plot holes. In a sense, I rewrote the rough draft into a first draft, one finally suitable for revisions. Now I can dig in to the part that makes it all worthwhile, the revisions that put life and color into the plot and characters I’ve created. For me, this truly is not the greatest chore involved with writing fiction. What I did to reach this point was the hard part, and especially so in this unusual case.
There’s a moral to this story, best expressed by nature writer Ann Haymond Zwinger, in her book The Nearsighted Naturalist: “If anybody says writing is an easy task, don’t ever buy a used car from him.”
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
The promotion was also something of an eye-opener. Of the sci-fi and fantasy titles that sold, the overwhelming majority were books two through five of the War of the Second Iteration series, with a handful of the coda Where a Demon Hides and the standalone novel All That Bedevils Us. Book One of the series, mentioned above, barely achieved double-digit sales. The only way to interpret that, really, is that a crowd of existing readers, who have over the years picked up that first book, decided to commit to the rest of the series when the price made that choice extra attractive. A good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure it can be characterized clearly as one or the other. For the record, I’m delighted that so many readers have decided to commit to reading all five books, and that does raise the hope that they’ll go on to the two follow-ups, and possibly the unrelated titles. But that realization, that this large-scale reduction in price didn’t actually bring in a lot of new readers, did trigger an assessment of where things stand.
The result of that accounting wasn’t exactly encouraging, and came at an unfortunate time.
The writing year started out on an awkward note when the annual accounting revealed that book sales the previous year had fallen off considerably (I just broke even on expenses). The current year has shown little promise of reversing that trend. And then the current work in progress ran off the rails. It’s the third book in the Children of Rost’aht tetralogy, and its plot unfolds at the same time as the second book, The Best Laid Plans. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be a much larger challenge than I expected (thus rendering the title of Book Two somewhat ironic). As I was working my way through this unexpected problem, news came of Meta stealing a vast library of books to train its so-called AI chatbot. Nor was the Meta theft an isolated incident. All these books were scraped from a pirate site that I thought had been shut down. Three of my books turned up in the database provided by The Atlantic and I have no reason to doubt that more – if not all – of my books have been used for AI training by Meta and its competitors. It seems to be S.O.P. to use pirate sites for chatbot “training,” to avoid at least getting permission from authors. Book piracy is an unfortunate fact of life, and one that is rarely open to permanent resolution, but being reminded of it in such a blatant fashion was unpleasant, especially considering the other ongoing matters.
So, the realization that my best efforts at book promotion were not doing much to increase readership, absolutely necessary to increase book sales, on top of these other situations, opened that box in my brain labeled Self Doubt. It’s the sort of realization that leads to heavy drinking and/or a change in life goals. Well, as it happens, I’m a cheap drunk, and I’ve never known drowning my sorrows to be very effective – the bastards being such strong swimmers. And I already know that giving up writing will do me far more harm than excessive alcohol consumption.
I never expected to find myself facing a “where do I go from here?” situation on the threshold of my seventh decade of life.
And yet – here I am, still working on that troublesome Book Three, pleased to find that it has finally developed a life of its own and is developing as I’d originally hoped. The breakthrough, when it came, provided a huge boost to my morale. Also, here I am sending out a new weblog essay. In other words, I’m still writing. And you might very well wonder why. What could possibly keep someone motivated to write, under such circumstances?
In her introduction to Bird By Bird (a book absolutely all writers should read), Anne Lamott provides the answer to that question; I’ve never seen it stated more clearly. “Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”
Every time I reread that passage, the truth of it rings more clearly. I write because it’s what I do. It’s too much a part of who I am to ever really give it up. If the words of Ms. Lamott don’t ring true for you as well, are you really a writer? It’s the truth for me, and so my answer was, and remains, yes.
Much of my activity in the social media has to do with writing and reading. Networking with other writers counts as one of the better reasons I have for spending time online. It’s good for the morale to be in touch with people who understand this strange habit I have, without requiring any explanations. The same goes for reading, especially when discussing a specific genre, such as science fiction. These interactions, which include numerous reviews and recommendations, account for nearly all my fiction book-buying decisions these days. The discussions that lead to book selections on my part are often wide-ranging and diverse, and – of course – loaded with opinions. Also, sometimes, complaints.
A specific complaint I see expressed regularly has to do with trilogies or longer series. This complaint reads the same way whether the author is as popular as Frank Herbert or N.K. Jemisin, or a relative unknown such as yours truly. A reader will mention reading a Book One, and, inevitably, someone responds by allowing that they, too, like the first book, and sometimes also the second. But after that it was all downhill. The author, they believe, ran out of ideas or – worse – simply got lazy (speculations vary). Such commentary leaps out at me because, as often as not, I’ve read the series or trilogy in question, and experienced no such thing. Different people will react to books in different ways and the definition of “quality” is, of course, flexible and highly subjective. And a series really can run out of steam if the writer extends the story too far, striving for quantity at the expense of consistent quality. (It is, by the way, very difficult to know when to quit.) All of that being true, I rarely see such a comment made about books by an author whose body of work consists of stand-alone novels or short stories. Readers might find that body of writing inconsistent, one book to the next, but it isn’t normally seen in the same way as a steady decline over a series of connected novels. (“Their first book was great, the next only so-so, but that latest release deserves an award!”) Something else happens when it’s a series of books, meant to be read in order.
Curious about this difference in perception, I’ve made it a habit to ask people about reading habits when they make the observation that a series started out with great promise, but lost momentum somewhere along the way. The key questions turned out to be “How long did it take you to read that series?” and “Did you read it straight through?” I haven’t exactly made a systematic study of the matter, but the responses I’ve received have led me to the following observation: there seems to be a correlation between the perception of a series faltering and the habit of binge reading.
Binge reading simply means that you start with book one and don’t stop until you’ve read through the entire series. (People also do this with movies and TV shows.) You’re all in, fully committed. The series is treated, essentially, as one really big book.
Binge reading is a habit I never acquired. In younger days, books came to me one or two at a time. They were all stand-alones until I discovered Tolkien, and even then there was a considerable lag in reading The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The same thing happened when I read Frank Herbert’s Dune. The other books in that series were out there (it was still a trilogy at that time), but acquiring copies took some time – and I read or reread other books in the meantime. I believe this is how I developed a good memory for books I’ve read, so reading the next book months or a year later has never been a problem. And these days I’m in the habit of having a mix of reads ongoing at any one time, fiction and nonfiction. It could be said that I’m the opposite of a binge reader.
Other readers take a different approach: they buy the whole series at once, or if necessary wait until the entire thing is complete, and then plunge in. (The latter makes a certain amount of sense, since now and then a writer gets partway into a series and just drops it.) Those for whom binge reading is the norm make a serious commitment to reading a series. For most, this complete immersion is a big part of the fun. And in truth, most of the binge readers I’ve met end up quite satisfied by their experiences. But not all of them.
In the conversations I’ve had with fellow readers, more often than now it’s the bingers who claim that the writer jumped the shark, and should have quit while they were ahead. But was it the writing or the reader who ran out of momentum? While it’s certainly possible for a writer fade in the stretch (that sort of thing can happen to anybody, in the course of any endeavor), I find myself wondering if the problem is more likely due to reader fatigue, than any failing on the part of the writer.
For many readers, bingeing through a series is part of the fun. Not everyone who binge-reads runs afoul of this phenomenon, or experiences it with every series they read. But some do, and I’ve even heard from readers who absolutely will not read a series, ever, because they all “lose it” before the end. They are often quite vocal in their dislike, and are critical of writers who write a multi-book series – as if this were some sort of personal failing.
So – some binge and some do not. To my mind, bingeing carries the risk of reader fatigue, and having examined my own habits in this light, binge reading will never, for me, become a habit. All a matter of perception on my part, a matter of calling it the way I see it. How does it work for you?
A friend and fellow writer recently worked with a writing coach, seeking to restart a writing career that had stalled out. The result was a renewed enthusiasm for the craft, and it seems my friend is on the path to regaining the motivation to write. I didn’t catch all the details of these coaching sessions, when the tale was told, but one aspect in particular caught my attention. It seems this writer has an intuitive approach to writing that runs counter to a few commonly expressed ideas regarding the writing process. Advice about how it “should” be done had been internalized regardless of the conflict it created with my friend’s approach, and the self-doubt that developed as a result created a serious case of writer’s block.
The answer for this person, brought to light by the coaching, turned out to be giving themselves permission to write in a way that came naturally, regardless of outside advice. To accept that what some writers consider a bad habit might actually be the best thing for another writer to do. And that trying to shoehorn your process into the expectations raised by others could be the worst.
It’s all too easy to fall into the expert advice trap, especially if you’re new to writing. Most of us learn, as our very first lesson, that writing isn’t as easy as just putting down words in the right order. Writing creatively takes practice, and for most of us we’re talking a lot of practice over a significant amount of time. It’s natural enough, then, to seek advice when you’re new to the craft of writing, and it makes perfect sense to try out the advice that’s been received. But one piece of advice I always give to new writers is this: these are not rules being set out for you to follow. The only things other writers can provide, however well-known or successful they may be, are guidelines based on personal experience. It pays to listen to how others approach the craft, and you may well learn something that helps you move forward. But…
Guidelines, not rules. Always remember this concept. If you’ve worked out a process that’s getting the words down, but something you do doesn’t fit the standard advice floating around out there, don’t assume you’re doing something wrong. Be willing to try new ideas out, but give yourself permission to dismiss them if they don’t help get you into the groove.
Three examples from my own experience should serve to illustrate what I mean. The first has to do with word counts. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been told that worrying about word counts as a measure of productivity or progress is a bad habit. That you shouldn’t become “hung up” on word counts, for fear of being discouraged by seemingly inadequate numbers. I can see where that fear might interfere with the creative process, should consistently low counts undermine motivation and morale. For some writers that surely is a potential problem, and a reason not to keep a count. For me, though, it works the other way around, and I’ve been using word counts for as long as I’ve been writing. Word count records, especially when putting down a first draft, keep me honest about my work ethic; keep me from lapsing into lazy habits. And on “bad” days I can look at even a modest word count and be assured that I at least made some progress. It’s a tool I know and use well. It might work this way for you. It might not.
Another thing that I’ve been told repeatedly is that it’s a bad habit is to have multiple works in progress. The advice here is that you absolutely should focus on one project, finish that one, and only then move on. For beginning writer this does make some sense. But we don’t stay beginners forever, and not all beginners work the same way. For me, with more years of experience behind me than I want to count, having more than one project moving forward greatly increases my productivity. If I just can’t get the current novel rolling today, I have a couple of things to work on that keep me writing. This gives the writing process itself momentum, regardless of which project sees its word count rise. In thirteen years I’ve released eighteen titles of various lengths. More than a few of them were written concurrently. If you have enough confidence and self-discipline, having a different project to switch to when something gets stuck can be beneficial. Unless your natural mode is one of laser focus on one thing at a time, all of the time, in which case that’s your process, and never mind what I do.
Writing nonstop without revising as you go is often highly touted (and by some big name authors) as the best way to write a book. Going back to change things before the draft is completed is seen as a risky habit that could slow down the development of the book. Or worse, keep you from ever finishing that book in the first place. Should you then plunge forward with a draft and never look back, just because they say so? Revise only when that first draft is done? For the most part, that’s what I do. But ideas sometimes come after the fact, and unless I go back and make changes – or at least insert notes regarding what the changes should be – I’ll be distracted by that stray idea for the rest of the first draft. No one I know writes well when distracted. So if going back and forth as needed gets the job done for you, feel free, no matter what someone else tells you. Subverting that natural tendency, on “expert” advice, could make you a less productive – and less happy – writer in the long run. Grant yourself a dispensation and revise whenever you feel the need.
Always be willing to try other ways to write. Some of what you learn might prove useful – you just never know. Or that well-intended advice could be the worst thing in the world for you, as a writer. On the chance that the latter scenario arises, always reserve for yourself the permission to say no, and do what really works for you.
All good things must come to an end, a truism that surely applies to every story ever written.
I want to discuss an aspect of writing that some – okay, far too many – writers seem not to take seriously enough. I’m not sure the legion of internet know-it-alls has even considered it. I’m referring to the end of the story. A good ending is just as important as having that hook at the beginning, but advice dispensed by “experts” often goes on at great length regarding matters such as the hook and keeping the middle of the tale from sagging, with little or nothing said at all about the ending.
Proof that story endings can fall short of the mark can be seen in a complaint I see all too often in reviews and book discussions. The gist of this complaint is that the story just stopped. Sometimes it’s abrupt, as if the writer simply had enough, and wanted to be done with this story. In other cases, the story just seems to fade into a few loose ends and assumptions, as if the writer wasn’t at all sure how to say “The End.” The perception of an ending being rushed is also a common complaint, a sign that the writer perhaps has some sense of how important endings can be, and tried to create that memorable last impression with a loud bang and a flourish. Some writers actually get away with this – but many do not.
Now, some of these complaints can be dismissed as a reader’s misperception of the author’s style and intentions. The most carefully crafted story ending won’t please every reader, and there are those who are never entirely satisfied by any end result. But I’ve read too many stories over the years – and the problem is especially common in short fiction – that left me with my own complaints regarding the end of the tale, to dismiss all such comments as personal fussiness.
From my own experience as a reader, what I most often see beneath a lame story ending – whether the end comes quickly with a bang or trails off quietly – is a lack of emotional content. The resolution of the tale seems to have little or no effect on the characters who have just been put through whatever the writer contrived. Everyone just seems to walk away from what has happened, and even if they’re riding off into the metaphorical sunset it’s just because they happened to be headed that way anyway. It’s a sure sign that the writer ran out of story, and arbitrarily wrapped things up. Instead of an emotionally satisfying ending, the story seems somehow incomplete. This is especially disappointing when the characters were otherwise engaging and relatable. You’ve invested in them emotionally, and then they just sort of say, “Okay, that’s done. Nothing more to see here.” Whether this is done abruptly or in a sort of slow fade makes little difference.
That hook at the beginning is indispensable. Without it, why would the reader read on? But if the ending leaves the reader flat, why would they want to read your next book? The hook won’t help you, if they don’t come back for more.
So, as a writer just starting out, how do you avoid inflicting a lame ending on your readers? There’s no set of rules to guide you, step-by-step, to a fine and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a story. Instead, think about the stories you’ve read. Did you close the book with the feeling that the time spent was worth it? Or did you just set the book aside without a second thought? Pay attention to the books that linger in your thoughts when the reading is done, especially if it was the final scene or bit of dialog that lingers. Think about those stories. Reread those endings. What did the author do? How did the author get across to you, the reader, how the end of the story’s events felt to the characters? This isn’t to say you should copy things you see in the work of others, or even imitate them. Be aware of endings, in their many manifestations, when you read. Then sit down with that awareness of how it’s done when you write your own story. Read your ending aloud and ask yourself how it felt. And then just keep it up, reading and writing; both experiences can give you what you need to succeed at this (and any other) aspect of writing – if you persist. Along the way, pay careful attention to comments from your editor or beta readers.
It’s often said that to be an effective writer, you absolutely must be a reader. I think Stephen King got it exactly right when he said, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time – or the tools – to write. Simple as that.” The repeated experience of how a good ending feels for you, as a reader, is the surest route to being able to write such an ending yourself.
Like most writers, I read a lot. I’ve been a compulsive reader ever since I learned to read as a small boy. Fiction of a fantastical nature has always been a primary source of reading pleasure, although I’ve cast my net wider than the genres of science fiction and fantasy. An even wider cast characterizes my nonfiction reading habits. In that realm, I am quite omnivorous: history, in its many facets; the sciences, especially astronomy and things biological; natural history; the arts; philosophy. So, it should come as no surprise that I sometimes read books about writing.
This past year (2024) I read three works by fellow practitioners of the art of wordsmithing. Each of them caught my fancy for a different reason, and all of them are worthy of the attention of writers, both new and experienced. They are Righting Writing by Michael Bailey, Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. LeGuin, and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.
Righting Writing by Michael Bailey was the first I picked up, on the recommendation of a friend. Michael Bailey writes fiction in a genre – horror – that I’m not very familiar with. But the friend who recommended the book, who is best known for her poetry in that very same genre, is someone whose feelings about writing resonate strongly with my own. Hearing her heap glowing praise on this book regarding the nuts and bolts of storytelling was enough. I downloaded a copy and pretty much started reading it right away. The result of this read is my tendency to recommend the book to anyone starting out in “the madness of writing, editing, and publishing,” as the copy on the book cover spells it out. To steal another bit from the cover (and the word lined out is not an error): “A book for those who want need to write.” If there is a topic regarding the writing process that Michael Bailey does not cover in this book, safe to say it isn’t relevant to the goal. The author’s thoroughness is truly impressive. All the topics covered are delivered with a clean, concise prose style that is at the same time alive and anything but dull and technical. I’m not a beginner, but I found it very useful to be reminded of some of the basics. If you’re just getting started, get this book. Right now.
Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. LeGuin could serve as a good follow-up to the book briefly reviewed above. The author herself says this slim volume is not aimed at beginning writers, and an argument could be made. That said, I don’t think you’d need to be writing with serious intent for very long before this book would be of benefit. Covering some of the same topics as Michael Bailey’s book, LeGuin takes a closer – and often opinionated – look at such matters as complex syntax, points of view, narrative style, as well as when and how to use adjectives and adverbs. I especially liked the way she treats some of the Do and Don’t advice that clutters the social media, such as matters to do with sentence length and structure, show vs. tell, and passive voice, to name three bugaboos self-styled writing coaches often harp on. (And I was amused mightily when she made the point that many of those crying foul over passive voice clearly don’t know what it is.) And all of this done in LeGuin’s marvelous prose.
Righting Writing and Steering the Craft were good reads for this old hand at wordsmithing because they reminded me of aspects of writing that, these days, I do pretty much by instinct. For some of these, this book served as a source of validation; nice to know I’m doing it right. For others – well, let’s just say I sat up and took notice.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott stands apart from the previous books discussed above. Written in an informal, conversational style, I had the feeling as I read that I was just hanging out with a fellow member of my tribe. Sharing a cup of coffee and talking about this thing I do and can’t live without. Reading it I was reminded, clearly and beautifully, why I persisted as a writer for so many years, when the traditional publishing industry could find no use for me. (Okay, I’ll be fair and honest and admit that for a while, there was absolutely no reason traditional publishing should have spent money producing what I wrote.) Bird by Bird not only instructs, it motivates and inspires. That makes it worth reading, no matter how advanced or successful you happen to be.
So, is there one of these three I would consider a must read, apart from the others?
No.
Each of these books is worth reading for its own reasons. All of them can help you, each in its own way. So, give them all a try. Find them at a local bookstore, or track them down at the library. I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.
Imagine for a moment that you’ve recently climbed a long, steep mountain trail. At the top of that mountain you gazed out over the world below, filled with a deep sense of satisfaction that made your physical weariness worth all the trouble you experienced on the way up. You set yourself the goal to make this difficult climb, and it proved even more of a challenge than you ever imagined it could be. But you kept climbing until you were at the top. You’ve accomplished a thing not everyone can do. You climbed that mountain.
The next day, at a party, you meet a person proudly showing off pictures of that same lofty view. This person impresses the crowd by reciting numbers regarding the steepness of the slopes, the altitude of the summit, and what the view from the top revealed of the world. But this person didn’t hike the trail, much less scramble up and over the steeper, rockier portions. They bought a ticket from a helicopter tour company that flew them to the summit, and then back down. You’re prepared to shrug it off – to each their own, right? But then that person claims to be a mountaineer, just like you. When you point out the obvious difference between a mountain climber and a tourist buying a helicopter ticket, the reaction is filled with lame rationalizations as this person tries to make their accomplishment somehow equal to yours. What difference does it make, they eventually insist, how you reach the summit? You got there; that’s all that matters, right? The work and effort you put into your experience of the actual climb means nothing to this pretender.
As if this isn’t bad enough, there are people at the party who actually agree with this point of view. To them, you aren’t a successful mountain climber. You’re a braggart.
Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? Welcome to the world of the honest storyteller in the age of so-called “AI.”
The last time I wrote on this subject, I was asked what exactly I had against the idea of artificial intelligence. The truth is, I have nothing against artificial intelligence at all. I think meeting and interacting with such a being would be a fascinating experience. But so far as I know, the event called the “singularity” by researchers in that field has not yet occurred. Or if it has, the entity that evolved from it is quite wisely maintaining a low profile. Consider the popular assumptions regarding the likely results of such an emergence. Would you be in a hurry to announce your existence to a world that assumes you mean to destroy it? What we have, instead, are sophisticated machine-learning systems capable of manipulating and connecting data in extraordinary ways, and presenting the results (in certain applications) in a manner that effectively mimics human communication. These systems have enormous potential to aid such endeavors as science and medicine, and I surely have no qualms about their application in such fields.
But some of the systems popularly termed “AI,” and being marketed for public consumption, are quite another matter. My anger (let’s call it what it is) is directed at the misapplication of these tools. Generative AI systems are being used by writer-wannabes to avoid the considerable work and time involved with learning to write readable fiction.
I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve met, in the twelve years since I first self-published, who decided to give writing a try – and then expressed utter dismay at how hard it is. Reading a book gives the false impression that it’s all just a matter of laying out the words, and spelling them correctly. That the book was the result of a year or more (often much more) of dedicated effort, during which it existed as a rough draft that would be no fun at all to read, is invisible to the average reader. It isn’t until you decide to start following such a path yourself that you realize, and perhaps appreciate, how steep the mountain before you really is. You soon doubt both your ability to stay on that trail, and your sanity for even trying in the first place.
Many people, in this age of direct-to-readers self-publishing, seem to find the need to climb that mountain offensive. Publishing a book is so automated it takes very little effort to do so. It just seems wrong that the writing part should be such a painful and frustrating slog. This is especially true of those who have been misled into thinking of writing as a sort of side-hustle that can yield easy money. Surely we’re entitled to an easier way to get this thing done?
There is no easier way. All truly creative endeavors are the result of melding human knowledge, experience, and imagination into a form that can be shared with others through a combination of hard-won talent and willingness to work toward the desired result. Writing is no exception to this truth. But this is not what you get when you tell a so-called AI that you want a plot or story start that involves certain elements of your preferred genre of fiction. The machine will consider all the fiction it has scanned (sometimes illegally) that meets the user’s parameters, and cobble together something that fits the general formula for that genre. It really doesn’t matter how you use what it gives you. There was no creative effort from you to get this started, no exercise of the imagination that draws on a lifetime of experience, or a skilled effort applied after years of practice. What you’ve been given, with little or no effort on your part, are words and patterns absorbed by an algorithm, from stories someone else actually wrote once upon a time.
By the way, I am well aware of the ironic roll self-publishing plays here. Would we be having this discussion if publishing your own book could only be done the old-school way, requiring a publishing company and a contract? I don’t believe so. Irony, indeed, that the very thing that opened the door for my own work – and is still considered by many publishers to be cheating – has made so-called AI a viable product for those who want to have been a writer.
I write these words with a certain sense of resignation. I’m not so naïve as to believe my expressions of ire will stop people from cheating with AI, whether in the arts or in other fields. I doubt there’s ever been, in all of history, an innovation that wasn’t misapplied in some way. This one just happens to hit close to home. But I am what I am, a storyteller and a writer, things I can’t live without. Like our imaginary mountain climber, planning his next conquest in spite of what he experienced at that party, all I can do is to go on writing the tales I have to tell. I will always do so to the best of my ability, without input from machine-learning algorithms. That’s a promise. Every project I’ve taken on has challenged me, and never in the same way twice, but having climbed that mountain a dozen times now, I know I don’t need to cheat.
No, this writing thing isn’t easy, not at all. But it’s always worth it.
There is a meme commonly posted in the social media, on Facebook in particular, meant to offer support or comfort to those facing life’s slings and arrows. The messages range from heartfelt to sickly saccharine, but the intentions are always good. The nature of the message varies with the problem being addressed, but they always start with the phrase, “I don’t know who needs to hear this…”
It’s easy to flip past such posts and scroll on. To be honest, I usually do – they are so frequently repeated that they become part of the landscape, in a manner of speaking. And I can see how some people might be tempted to give these harmless messages of general support a cynical roll of the eyes. But if you’re dealing with one of the topics discussed in this sort of post, you might have a different reaction. Those posts dealing with depression usually get a nod from me. It does sometimes help to know you aren’t the only one in the world with one foot on that slippery slope.
Which is why I’m writing this entry for my weblog. A form of depression has been a fact of my life for as long as I can remember, although I was in my early thirties before I knew for certain the nature of the beast. That’s when I became acquainted with a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. (An apt acronym if ever there was one.)
Every year, as the Autumnal Equinox approaches, I unpack a bright light – technically called a “light box” – and rearrange my morning schedule to accommodate Bright Light Therapy (BLT, and yes, that one’s been done to death, believe me.) I do this to counteract, to some degree at least, the effect of ever shorter days on my mood and motivation levels. The BLT sessions last three quarters of an hour, and I pass the time reading and sipping the day’s first cup of coffee. As treatments for mental health problems go, it’s not bad. It certainly beats the Valium they stuffed into my late father when he hit rock bottom, many years ago. And it’s quite effective. Most years, I am largely untroubled by serious symptoms, which in my case manifest as anxiety and depression.
Most years. But not this year. Autumn of 2023 bushwhacked me.
SAD varies in severity from year to year, and I can’t always correlate severity with an external trigger. Oh, when I was working the day job (whichever one you want to point to over the last forty years or so), stress could certainly reduce the effectiveness of BLT. But I live the writing life these days, something long desired. While life has its ups and downs, this form of semi-retirement hasn’t actually challenged me in a big way. And yet a few weeks after the days began to shorten noticeably this year, and I’d settled into the seasonal serving of BLT (couldn’t resist after all), an all-too-familiar sense of anxiety struck me. It came on strong, taking me by surprise, and derailing mood and motivation. There was nothing really to be anxious about, but there it was, that deeply unsettling sense of something being wrong, and threatening to get worse. It was especially noticeable as the afternoons wore on and the shadows stretched across the world. (Cloudy weather can seriously aggravate my condition, especially when light levels fluctuate.) That anxiety becomes a sense of impending doom that has no rational justification, and yet cannot be denied. At its worst, it’s nothing less than debilitating. Motivation dies as I find myself just hunkering down and hanging on, waiting for the awkward episode to pass. The length of time it persists varies from day to day. In the morning, with BLT, hot coffee, and a world gradually brightening outside, I can catch my breath. I can do things. But then the afternoon comes, as it always does. Sunset can be an awkward time of day, and has been for a few weeks.
The current episode of deep anxiety seems to be settling down (not lowering my guard just yet), but cloudy days and sunsets are still not my favorite things right now. I’ll probably never really know what upset the balance this year.
In a conversation with an online acquaintance, I was reminded that I’m not alone in coping with this disorder. As I said before, for some reason knowing this does help. Which is why I don’t roll my eyes at certain memes when they pop up in the newsfeed. Many of us dealing with SAD have sympathetic family and friends. I’m blessed with a wife who understands what’s happening, and why, and knows better than to take at face value some of the things I say when I’m down. She was there when I figured out what was wrong with me – it was a joint discovery. But not everyone is so fortunate; not everyone has the support they need. And so I’m writing for whoever needs to hear this.
If winter gets you down it might not be, as some would say, mere holiday stress or – worse – giving in to a personal failing. You may be dealing with a very real condition, one amenable to treatment. While I’ve managed without seeking much professional help, I know people who have needed a therapist’s assistance to cope. Either way, you can control this condition and keep your head above the high water mark until spring. Ignore anyone who tells you this is pop psychology. It’s a legitimate diagnosis, as you’ll learn officially if you do need to seek professional help.
How can you tell if you need help? Only you can decide, but if there’s even a tiny bit of doubt, talk to a doctor. There are very few physicians out there, these days, who think this is some sort of popular self-diagnosis. A timely referral to a mental health care professional might make all the difference.
In the meantime, if you suspect you have this seasonal problem – and many people do to one degree or another – consider the following up-to-date resource before making any decisions.
Defeating SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder): A Guide to Health and Happiness Through All Seasons by Norman E. Rosenthal M.D.
You should be able to obtain a copy from just about any local bookstore. You can also get it by following the links below, if you prefer.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
This book covers symptoms and treatments, discusses the latest research on the condition and its variable nature, and provides guidance on coping with SAD, including the selection of lamps for the application of BLT.
The anxiety and depression caused by short days in autumn and winter are not figments of your imagination. The condition is real, and can cause all manner of problems as it interferes with day-to-day living. But you aren’t alone in this, and SAD can be treated, and treated effectively. Just thought I’d throw this out there, for anyone who needs to hear.
Who am I?
It’s one of the oldest of all philosophical questions, one that has prompted countless hours of self-examination by every generation of human beings. A question that can only be answered from within, and sometimes only with considerable difficulty.
It can’t be answered by someone else, looking in from the outside. Such an attempt often results in baseless assumptions being made, or if they seem to be otherwise, are based on false impressions. Misunderstandings arise as a result. Some are addressed and clarified in a rational, adult fashion. Some are not.
I’ve read many accounts of authors running afoul of unintended false impressions raised by the fiction they publish. People read the work, it affects them emotionally, and they decide they’ve learned something about that author through the feelings the story evoked. While for some authors this may be an accurate perception, I believe that far more often than not the opposite is true. After almost twelve years published, I find that I can now offer myself as a case in point.
Some of you may have read my short novel Toby, the story of a man for whom life has taken a serious turn for the worse, leaving him questioning the value of just about everything and everyone. Taking to the road to clear his head and reorient himself, he encounters a lost dog in a campground, and resolves to return this poor beast to its family. The catch: he finds the pooch in New Mexico, after the heartbroken family was forced to return to their home in Illinois without their lost dog. But he accepts the challenge, hits the road, and adventures ensue.
The eponymous dog is a major character; he is, after all, a turning point in this man’s life. I did my best to make Toby the dog and Paul the man equally believable characters, and from the responses I’ve seen, I did a pretty good job. Not being a dog owner, or in any sense a dog person, I did plenty of research on dogs and their behavior, then ran this story by a friend who has dogs that he and his wife train for agility competitions. This research added up to the dog not only becoming a believable character, but an eminently lovable fictional canine. So lovable and relatable, that some people think the book is about the dog, not the man.
I can easily see where a dog person would come to that conclusion, and don’t really mind at all that this happens. Toby is supposed to capture the heart of the reader as he helps Paul rediscover that the best approach to life is to say “yes” to it – whatever it may bring. The story is actually a sort of hero’s journey, in the Campbellian sense. That was my intention, along with wanting to write something with an unashamedly happy ending.
I have been amazed and delighted by the way the book has touched the lives of those who’ve read it. Very few have reacted in a negative way, all but one of them reacting to an unfortunate and unfair prejudice against Toby’s breed. That exception is the case in point noted earlier. One reader made an assumption about me, based on reading a copy of Toby. While not an unreasonable assumption, it was unfortunately incorrect. This reader contacted me about a behavioral problem that developed in their dog, a fairly serious matter as I understood it. While I sympathized, I had to respond, in all honesty, that I was entirely unqualified to provide such advice. What I know about dogs is second-hand, based largely on research, with some feedback from friends who are dog-owners.
Toby is an idealized representation of the canine species, created for a specific fictional purpose. He is not based on a real dog, nor is he derived from a lifetime of dog-raising experience on my part. I like dogs well enough, and have enjoyed the company of well-behaved dogs owned by friends on any number of occasions. But I’ve never raised one of my own – and really have no desire to do so. I explained this to the reader, pointing out that merely writing a book that includes a canine character didn’t qualify me to offer the advice being sought. I suggested seeking the help of a veterinarian or a specialist in dog behavior.
This was not the expected answer, and the reader was most displeased. For this reader the book created the unfortunate and false impression that I had significant expertise in dog care and behavior. How could I have created such a realistic canine character otherwise? The disconnect created by my reply prompted a harsh (putting it mildly) reaction. I’d misled this reader, and the concept that I might have done so without intending any such thing never entered the argument.
Okay, it does happen that someone reads a book I’ve published and decides that my work just doesn’t satisfy. But this is the first time anyone ever read a book of mine, expressed great affection for it, but ended up deciding I’m some sort of lying bastard unfit to walk on the same planet. How dare I write a book “about a dog” without being an expert in the care and feeding of the canine tribe?
Probably the same way I dare to write about people traveling between the stars, flying on gryphons, or meeting a harpy moonlighting as a Muse – just a few of things I’ve written about but never experienced. All in a day’s work, as a teller of tales.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by this reader’s assumptions, and the false impression of me engendered by the story in Toby. After all, I went to great lengths to make Toby a thoroughly believable dog. But that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s part of my job. If I fail at it, I fail as a storyteller, so I always go all out when creating a character of any species. And yet here I sit, surprised by the realization that, this time, I may have succeeded just a little too well.
Let’s get something clear right from the start. This thing they call Artificial Intelligence, currently being discussed and promoted in a big way? It’s a misapplication of the term. These systems are not conscious entities, certainly not in the HAL 9000 or SkyNet science fictional sense. To the best of my understanding these are machine learning algorithms, designed to respond to requests in ways that mimic human interactions. They search the vast online resources out there, do so in an astonishingly short amount of time, and come up with a response that meets the criteria set by the user. That response is given in a way that reads (or sounds) like something almost human. AI systems get better at this the more often they’re used, and in that sense, at least, they do learn.
They respond according to their programming which, to be honest, is almost mind-boggling in its sophistication and ability. But Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that has been appropriated by those who see “gold in them thar hills.” It serves them well as a marketing buzzword. These systems are not intelligent in the sense of being capable of independent thought, which would make it possible for them to be creative. (Not yet, anyway.) They don’t think. They don’t create. They harvest, organize, and present information in what seems a personable manner. They are computer tools to be used – or misused.
And misused they will be. Nothing special about AI as far as this goes. It’s a short list that contains only technologies that have never lent themselves to abuse. It always comes around to whether or not the risks inherent in deliberate misuse of technology outweigh the benefits. With AI this remains to be seen, although there certainly are signs of trouble ahead. One example, relevant to what I do, is the application of so-called AI to the world of writing.
While I believe that a time will come when true AI “wakes up” and develops its own sort of awareness and creativity, I don’t see it happening in the immediate future. The idea that a machine of any sort will be able to do what I do, and do it well enough to compete effectively with flesh-and-blood writers, while not entirely far-fetched, doesn’t worry me. These systems, when asked to start a story or write an essay, sift the virtual world and cobble together things found out there to fit the request. They create nothing new in the process. I don’t see the novelist or short story writer being replaced any time soon by such systems.
What I do see happening, with ever increasing frequency, is the use of so-called AI to “aid” the writing process. I’ve heard of writers who, for various reasons, have turned to these augmented search engines for story ideas, opening paragraphs (and even chapters), and for evaluation of stylistic elements in their writing. All of this is done to make the process easier or more efficient, or to save money by eliminating editorial expenses. Such use is frequently described as being on par with the employment of grammar programs. Some of those experimenting with AI seem to be looking for a way to jump-start a writing career that has faltered, for whom motivation has been undermined by a lack of success as defined by book sales. Such a measure of success is an expectation too many aspiring writers carry into their effort right from the beginning. Lack of fulfillment of this expectation is understandably frustrating, and that frustration can suppress the motivation to write.
For some, this use of AI might turn out to be just what they need to regain their motivation and start writing again. Having your personal well of inspiration cease to generate story ideas must be a horrible feeling. If AI helps someone to bounce back from such a dry spell, it could be considered an example of proper use of the technology, and it would be hard to hold that use against them. But to my mind, the current application of AI to get the actual work of writing done amounts to a steep and slippery slope. For no matter what “tools” you employ to make writing seem easier, the problem of finding and cultivating readers will not change. And it is this problem, more than anything else, that interferes with commercial success. Finding an “easier” way to write fiction will surely create a temptation in some to let the machine do ever more of the writer’s work, possibly increasing their productivity, but with a decline in quality. This is already happening; as a result, a few short fiction and poetry periodicals are now closed to unsolicited work because they are being inundated by lackluster, machine-generated material. If this trend continues, the independent book-publishing world risks being swamped as well, as increasing numbers of frustrated writers release books they have “written” using AI. Books that are, to an ever-increasing degree, the work of machine learning systems that become more adept at imitating human expression with each iteration – books with stories lacking the spark of true creativity that gives good fiction its emotional power.
Even if human readers of fiction recognize the soullessness of such material, there’s nothing to stop it from being published and promoted. The market is already seriously over-saturated as it is, and piling more – possibly substandard – books into the mix will help no one, writers or readers. This, more than the possibility that a machine might replace me, gives me nightmares.
For my own part, I won’t be using these so-called AI tools in my writing. This isn’t a purely ethical decision on my part. I won’t be tempted to try the AI writing tricks I see ever more people embracing because I don’t find them useful. Coming up with ideas or story starts? Seriously, I’ll die of old age before I run out of story ideas. As for reducing the “grunt work” involved with writing (whatever it is people really mean by the phrase), I enjoy the actual process of writing too much for that to have any appeal. And I don’t believe for a moment that AI can edit a book for me as effectively as a human being. So, when you read a story or a book by me (or even a weblog essay), you can be assured it was produced by 100% organic methods.
Sorry about that, HAL.
Under Desert Stars 