equallyreal

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: The new chapter of The Edge: Luca is up on WattPad! We're still making progress! Huzzah! And in entirely unrelated news, I'm going to try and start posting on letterboxd again, so if you miss my old movie and TV reviews, that's the place to go.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). I’ll be checking back in on the 19th, maybe with a posting of the epilogue, or maybe with another rambling progress update. I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: Work on chapter 12 of The Edge: Luca is in progress! I started the second round of edits today. Not sure how long that will take overall, but we'll see. Once that's done, we'll just have to do the epilogue (which won't require much work aside from the edits) and then I can move on to Helen's section!

I really am hoping to work on the website more soon, that's just been delayed by IRL circumstances (as per usual). But hopefully that will get started soon, and until then, everything is still up on Wattpad for reading. So that's good.

Stay safe out there!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: We have an update! A new chapter of The Edge: Luca is live on Wattpad! It's been a hot minute, I know, but hopefully I'll be able to start pushing out more story updates (and site updates) very soon.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). I’ll be checking back in on the 21st with hopefully more forward momentum. I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: We have progress! I've officially transcribed everything I wrote down for the 11th chapter of The Edge: Luca. I'll be starting the editing process soon, and once I get through that, I'll be set to post the chapter. No timeline on that, to be clear, but progress is progress.

Hope everyone is doing well!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: I'm still alive, I promise! It's just been an interesting few months. Got diagnosed with a few things that are messing up my frontal lobe, and I'm gonna use that to explain why I haven't made much progress in...anything, really. I did transcribe two pages today, and I am hoping to make more progress, even if it's slow. Knowing exactly what's up with my brain gives me a better idea of how to fix it, which then means that I can get more work done.

Hoping that things are going well for everyone!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: As you can probably guess, the holidays threw me off EVERYTHING. This does include working on writing. I'm getting better in the habit of transcribing from what I wrote in November, though! Once that's done, I'll do the regular chapter edits for it, then move on to editing the final chapter + epilogue of Luca.

In terms of the site...that's been put on the back burner as I try to make other things work in my life. It is something I want to work on more regularly in 2025, though. I miss having the site fully up and running.

Best of luck to everyone going forward in the new year!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: So much for checking in more often in November...and don't ask me what happened and where last month left because honestly, I'm not sure either. The vanishing time meant that my stab at Notebook November went dubiously. I wrote 15 pages out of a notebook that has much more than 15 pages. That said, progress is progress and doing so reminded me that writing longhand is actually quite nice. I'll probably keep it up for the next chunk of The Edge and maybe future projects. I have to do something with all these notebooks I have, after all. It also gives me a chance to do more editing as the story goes along.

I have made some project on the new chapter 11 of The Edge: Luca, and once that's done I'll just have to make edits to chapter 12 and the epilogue before I go back to The Edge: Helen. The Christmas season may slow things down more than general life does, but we'll see by how much. Hopefully not as much as the covid battle did!

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: Writing is still in limbo, as you've probably guessed from the way this update is eight days late. That said, I'm hoping next month will jumpstart things a little! Due to all the nonsense, I won't be participating in NaNoWriMo. As mentioned in another post, I'm going to be doing Notebook November instead. I just have to pick a notebook...which is harder than you'd think. I have a lot of notebooks. I have another one coming in, actually, but I'm going to use that for worldbuilding stuff since it's more of a minibinder. I'll keep everyone posted on how the writing goes, and if you're participating as well, let me know!

I may also start doing more frequent updates to keep myself accountable, but I don't want to make any promises about that. No sense in shooting myself in the foot over something that's mostly supposed to be fun.

Have a Happy Halloween, everyone!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: I am, alas, still learning how to people, so no real writing progress has been made. My energy levels are getting higher, and I am planning on starting back soon. I just haven't done anything since my last check-in.

Not much of an update, but it is what it is. I hope everyone had a good start to spooky season!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: Regrettably, not only has my energy not been replenished at all, it's in the red...because I came back from a family trip and promptly got ✨covid✨, something I managed to avoid for four years despite all my day jobs in that time period being public-facing. Don't worry, I am alive and on the mend. I just haven't had the energy to do much except trade potatoes for emeralds in Minecraft and lie around in bed. I'm going to have to re-learn how to person after I'm well enough to join society, and then writing will resume. Scout's honor.

Also, it's been a few weeks since I wrote that NaNo post, I wonder how that's - sixty-two notes?! [Edit to Add: It's actually 108 notes? I just got 62 since last I checked the notifications? omg??]

Thanks! I guess! I'm glad we all agree NaNo was dumb for that one. What NaNo alternative are you guys going for? @astorythatwritesitself proposed "Notebook November" and I might try that one. I have way too many notebooks. I actually bought two more while on the abovementioned family trip. It's a serious problem.

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: The Call Is Coming From Inside The House And I'm Mad About It

Or, a response to National Novel Writing Month's stance on Artificial Intelligence.

But before we get into that, a quick story update: I actually haven't been working on much of anything lately due to some IRL issues going on (nothing too serious, don't worry, I am still alive and healthy). The Edge is going to be on a soft break until I get my energy levels back up to serious writing levels, but I will continue to make update posts to keep people in the loop about how well I'm recharging.

Unfortunately for the people behind National Novel Writing Month, while my energy levels might be low, my spite levels are always at an all-time high, and they are fully fueling me to take down their official position on AI. But first, a timeline.

I wake up to a message in a group discord I'm in with a screenshot of National Novel Writing Month making some...interesting comments about their position on AI.

While going to tumblr to see if anyone else is talking about this, I find this post my @the-pen-pot featuring the screenshot I saw. In the responses, I see @darkjediqueen saying that the article had been updated @besodemieterd giving some information that I'm going to keep secret for now because it creates a truly amazing punchline.

I get off tumblr and read the updated article.

I feel a deep rage in my soul that cannot be tamed by group chat participation, and I click the "write a post" button.

So, with that out of the way, let's break this down, shall we?

The original post, as seen in the screenshot of the above post, contained the following two paragraphs:

NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page." We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer's resources, and personal choice.  We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and abelist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

This was all I saw when I first heard about this, and this on its own was enough to tap into my spite as an energy source. The second paragraph, in particular, was infuriating. "People who argue against AI are classist or abelist" is a terrible take I've seen floating around AI Bro Twitter, and to see it regurgitated by an organization that is supposed to be all about writing was, to put it simply, a lot.

But, as noted in the timeline, I did see that they had updated the article (about two hours ago as of me working on writing this), so I went to the updated post to see what was said. Somehow, it had gotten worse. I'll be addressing the updated post on a point by point basis, so if you want to read the whole thing without my commentary, here you go.

The first paragraph is the same was it was in the screenshot. The first major different is an added paragraph that begins like this:

Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values.

First off, I find it a big troubling that while they discuss bad actors in the AI space, they won't acknowledge that these same bad actors are often the ones pushing the whole "being anti-AI makes you morally bad, actually" accusations with the most fervor.

Second, why are you not more strongly discussing and pushing back against the "situational" abuse of AI? Why is the focus on how using AI can be good, actually, rather than acknowledging the fears and angers of your userbase around how generative AI is ruining an art form that you claim to want to help foster? I have a theory about this, but we're saving that for a bit further down.

The paragraph concludes:

We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse. 

The funny thing is, in a vacuum, I don't have a problem with this statement. They're not wrong: AI is an umbrella term with a lot of complexity to it, and I can see how people would be hesitant to condemn the technology as a whole when there are uses of it that aren't awful. If their whole statement had been this, I would have less of a problem with it (still some of a problem, sure, but I wouldn't be writing a lengthy blog post about it) But they had to delve into how Being Against AI is Morally Bad, Actually, which is where the post continues from here.

The last big change between the screenshot and the updated article is in this paragraph:

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 

This is much less strongly-worded than the original paragraph. If I had to guess, they got a lot of criticism regarding the original sentiment (namely, assuming that disabled and poor people can only make art if a machine does it for them is actually way more abelist and classist than saying generative AI is bad), and dialed it back through this rewording. They could've just worded it this way from the beginning instead of saying the dumbest possible thing they could've, but whatever.

I don't know if the rest of this was in the article from the beginning or if it was added later, as the original screenshot I saw only showed the first two paragraphs. Regardless of whether this is them trying to cover their asses by explaining logic they should've explained from the start or if this was always here, I still have major issues with these points, so we're going to address them next.

(As a quick full disclosure note: I had to transcribe the rest of the article instead of copy-pasting it because I lost the ability to do so at about this point in the blog writing process. I don't know what happened or why, I just wanted to let you know that almost all typos are my fault, but beyond that I recorded the text as-written at the time that I had the article up in another tab. I promise.)

Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.

You may note that they are discussing the use of AI at what seems to be the editing process. As someone in my group chat pointed out, National Novel Writing Month has nothing to do with editing, and everything to do with writing. The only way you can currently use AI for the act of writing is if you use generative AI to do it for you, which is, I think we can all agree, not actually writing and is actually bad. This emphasis on editing ties into the punchline, which we'll be getting to shortly.

On a final note before we proceed though, I would like to carry over an argument about this matter that is used in the small business/handcrafts sector: If you can't afford it now, save up for it. Don't devalue the work of other people (in this case, editors and things like sensitivity readers or beta readers) by saying it's too expensive and I can get it cheaper on Shein by using AI. Save up and support your fellow workers if it really means something to you, or just do the editing yourself and hope for the best. (Disclosure: I don't have an editor. Or a beta reader. I can't say my writing is the most polished all the time, but I get by just fine.)

Abelism. Not all brains have the same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers "should" be able to perform certain functions independently or [sic] is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help.

First of all...just say "disabled." I promise your hands will not fall off if you type that word.

Second, level of education should really fall under the class bullet point, but that's just me nitpicking.

Third, I would argue that the real goal here shouldn't be to say "no using AI is fine, actually", but rather to a) dismantle the idea of what writing "should" look like in order to make it more inclusive, and b) fight back against people who bully imperfect writers. Those are actually more noble goals than propping up a corrupt industry by using the disabled as your scapegoat.

Fourth, the dangling "or" is not a typo I take credit for. It was in the article as of me transcribing it. If I had to guess, there was more to this sentence at some point, and they just didn't fully delete the thought.

Fifth, funny how this is once again more about the editing process of writing and not the writing part. Even more funny when we view the final point.

General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.

This one really pissed me off, because the indie author sphere is actively under attack by the use of AI. AI-created scam books on Amazon's kindle publishing platform are increasing and actively stealing attention and money away from human authors (see this article). Sci-Fi magazine Clarkesworld had to shut down new author submissions due to the influx of AI generated stories, and while the head of Bards and Sages cited physical and mental health problems as a reason for shutting down the company entirely, having to weed through AI generated submissions and the way such bad actors are impacting the industry were listed as the final straw. There are probably even more examples of this, but I only did a cursory google search to avoid being here all day.

Simply put: AI is not helping authors who have to go to the indie space in order to escape systemic problems. It is actively killing the space instead. I don't want to sound doom and gloom, but if this keeps up, these authors aren't going to have anywhere to run to. A refusal to condemn the ways in which AI is impacting these spaces does, in my opinion, make you complicit.

On a final note, you might notice that this point is seemingly once again focusing on editing, not writing. Which means it's time to unveil the punchline pointed out by besodemieterd, the response that made me lose my mind:

They made this bullshit up to justify them getting into cahoots with an AI company called ProWritingAid, it's all over their instagram.

I immediately ran to factcheck this...and it's true. ProWritingAid is, in fact, a more in-depth Grammarly that uses AI for its functionality. They are a sponsor for National Novel Writing Month, and the first three posts on their instagram are dedicated to this partnership.

I completely back up besodemieterd's belief that they wrote this article to justify their taking this sponsorship. If I had to guess, they started taking a lot of flack for taking ProWritingAid as a sponsor and wrote this article in order to defend their decision to do so without actually saying so directly.

I don't want to shame NaNoWriMo for taking sponsors on the whole, as they do need money to stay afloat. However, taking an AI company as a sponsor and then defending their stance by essentially calling people with concerns about this morally wrong and bad is, as the kids say, clown behavior. This is clown shit. It's laughable, it's cringe, it's incredibly disheartening. It's so, so bad.

The next paragraph is just about how they "see value in sharing resources about AI and any emerging technology, issue, or discussion that is relevant to the writing community as a whole." Since my stance on this can be summed up as "AI bad and platforming it is bad", I'm going to skip over this paragraph. I will, however, address their last paragraph:

For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.

So, basically, you're incapable of saying "no" to money and decided to lean into the talking points of bad faith actors and refuse to address the destruction that generative AI is wrecking on the writing world in order to justify why you took a certain sponsor. In taking this middle of the road, individual choice-ass response, you also threw human editors and beta readers under the bus by justifying the use of technology that actively removes them from the space. You are making the writing world a worse place, which is absolutely crazy when writing is supposed to be the thing you're all about.

Truly amazing. And they're doing this on Labor Day, too.

In conclusion, I will be dead in the dirt before you spot me participating in National Novel Writing Month again. Which is probably for the best. My life can only handle so many self-imposed deadlines. I guess I should be grateful to them for removing one from my plate.

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: A new chapter of The Edge: Luca is live on WattPad! How will Luca manage the crystal caves now that he's figured out how they interact with his powers? Read on to find out!

Edit Update: I realized while posting this chapter that I had misnumbered the chapters in the original document, and am therefore short a chapter. I can definitely figure things out, but this might cause delays in the future. Fingers crossed it won't cause too many!

Writing Update: Due to the above editing snafu, I have to go back into writing Luca before I go back to working on Helen. But we have still made some progress on Helen's section, so I won't call this a total loss.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). I'll be checking back in on the 24th. I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!

[equallyreal]

The Edge: Luca Check-In

Transmission Received: There's no new chapter of The Edge: Luca this week, but here's an update on how things are going!

Writing: I just finished up the first draft of the fifth chapter of The Edge: Helen. This one is going to have some shorter chapters, and a lot of introspection so far. To be fair, it is from the perspective of Cassandra's twin. Introspection is to be expected. I'm not sure how far along I'll be by the time I finish up The Edge: Luca, but hopefully I'll be far along enough that we won't have as many posting delays.

Editing: I'm in the second stage of edits for The Edge: Luca AKA the part where I re-transcribe the story as written so far and make any changes or additions as I think they're needed. I don't know how much longer it will take until I'm done, but I'm hoping I'll be done with part ten and started on part eleven by the next check-in date.

That's where we're at so far! Thanks for waiting, and I'll check in again on August 10th.

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: I'm finally back with a new chapter of The Edge: Luca!

I've decided that I'm going to be switching up how I do updates on here. Instead of aiming for two story updates a month, I'll be posting writing updates twice monthly and story updates as the chapters are finished. This will keep me consistent about things while also giving me time to finish chapters without stressing too much. I'll also probably take a break once The Edge is done to focus on finally getting the site updated, but we'll see how that goes.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). I'll be checking back in on the 27th. I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: As I'm sure you've noticed by now, we're having a bit of a delay in the release schedule for The Edge: Luca. Right now, the plan is to release the chapters on April 13th and April 27th, which should give me time to catch up on re-writes and edits. I'll let you guys know if there's any further delays (hopefully more punctually than I did this time).

Thanks for waiting!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: A new chapter of The Edge: Luca is live on WattPad! Things take a turn for poor Luca, because he hasn't been through enough already. Full disclosure, the next part might be a bit delayed since I have to do some re-writes on it, but I will do my best to have a second update this month.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). Next chapter will be out on either March 23rd or 30th, depending on how the re-writes go. I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!

[equallyreal]

Transmission Received: After some scheduling issues and a random illness (I'm better now, don't worry!), we are back with TWO (2) new chapters of The Edge: Luca! Both are live on WattPad for your enjoyment.

If you like what you need and want to toss me a tip, you can leave one on ko-fi (links in the “about” and on the site). I'm aiming for a March 9th release date for the next chapter (though full honesty, my ability to write is going to be fighting against the release of FF7: Rebirth, so...I'll keep everyone posted). I’m signing off until then; thank you for reading!