defeatistwriter - Tumblr blog

[defeatistwriter]

I fucking hate AI but heavens would it be useful if it wasn't such an unethical shit show

First, just to be clear, I'm talking about actually using AI as a tool to support your writing process, not to generate soulless texts made from stolen data instead of writing yourself.

Back when ChatGPT first became available it was still pretty useless so I had a lot of time to learn about how it's made, how it works and the ethics of it before ever touching the technology. I decided pretty quickly to never use it to generate text (or images) for actual writing and art but I still wanted to experiment with what else it could do (because I'm a nosy bitch that needs to know and poke everything).

And HEAVENS was it a blessing for writing with adhd

The last time I wrote more than 200 words in a day (outside of school work obviously) was 7th grade. I wrote over 8k just in notes the day Google's "Gemini" (formerly "Bard") became available to the public.

In order to not jeopardize my existing work I decided to make a completely new story with Bard's help that wasn't linked in any way to anything I had made before. So I started with a prompt along the lines of "I need help writing a story". At first, it immediately started generating a completely random story about a green tiger but after some trial and error, I got it to instead start asking questions.

What do you want the theme of your story to be?

What genre do you want to write in?

What time period do you want your story to take place in?

Is there magic?

Are there other sentient creatures besides humans?

And so on and so forth. Until the questions became extremely specific after covering all the bases. I could tell that all I was doing was essentially talking to an amalgamation of every "how to write" blog and website you've ever seen and telling it which part I wanted to work on next but it still felt great because the AI didn't actually contribute anything besides a few suggestions of common tropes and themes here and some synonyms and related words there; I was doing all the work.

And that's the point.

Nothing in that exchange was something I couldn't easily do on my own. But what happened was that I had turned what is usually a chaotic mess of a railway network of thoughts into a clear and most importantly recorded conversation. I can sit down and answer all those questions on my own but what usually happens when I do, is that every thought I have branches out into 4-7 new ones which I then attempt to record all at once (which obviously doesn't work, yay adhd) only to end up lost in thought with maybe 20 lines of notes in total after 6 hours at the table. Alternatively, either because I get bored or just because, I get distracted by something or my own thoughts about a different unrelated topic and end up with even less.

Working within the boundaries of a conversation forces you to focus on one specific question at a time and answer it to progress. And the engagement from the back and forth is just enough entertainment to not get bored. The six hours I mentioned before is the time I spent chatting with what is essentially a glorified chatbot that day, way less time than what I spent on any other project, and yet I have more notes and a clearer image of the story than I do about any of my real work. I have a recorded train of thought.

In theory, this would also work with a real human in a real conversation but realistically only very few people have someone who would be willing to do that; I certainly don't have a someone like that. Not to mention that someone doesn't always have time. Besides that, a real human conversation involves two minds with their own ideas, both of which are trying to contribute their own thoughts and opinions equally. The type of AI chat that I experimented with, on the other hand, is essentially just the conversation you have with yourself when answering those questions, only with part of it outsourced to a computer and no one else butting into your train of thought.

On that note, I also tried to get it to critique my writing but besides fixing grammatical errors all that thing did was sing praises as if I was God. That's where you'll 100000% need humans.

tl;dr writing with AI as an assistant has basically the same effect as body doubling but it’s an unethical shit show so I’m not doing it again. Also I forgot to mention I did repeat the experiment for accuracy with different amount of spoons and it makes me extra bitter that is was very consistent

[defeatistwriter]

A Not-Quite-Comic about Re-Medicating Myself

[defeatistwriter]

Thank you for the tag @laplumedemaureen!

"Will I see you again?" You ask. "Please don't tell me you're going to disappear and make me think I hallucinated all of this."

Open tag, besties!

Out of Context Line Tag

Thanks @romances-not-tragedies for the tag ! From current wip :

Her heart beat at devilish speed as she looked around and noticed all her friends leaving as well. It was time.

Tagging : @defeatistwriter @poethill @theliteraryluggage @writingamongther0ses @talesofsorrowandofruin

[defeatistwriter]

life is so much better when you have a work of fiction to obsess over

[defeatistwriter]

Do you remember the moment when you decided writing was something you wanted to do?

I was probably 15. I don't remember what exactly gave me the push to start writing, but I was in my horse-girl phase. If I wasn't writing about horses and stable drama, I was writing about vampires and fallen angels. My parents didn't allow secular books or movies in the house, so I would stay up past midnight secretly gorgimg myself with stories from Fictionpress and Wattpad via a tiny Nokia phone (with buttons!) and inspired myself that way.

My first story was titled Forever Blood and grew to almost 100k words. Unfortunately I had to delete it, otherwise it would be so funny to read and see how different my writing used to be.

I lived for writing back then. In those early days I knew nothing about plots and character arcs and wrote simply because I thought it was fun. I would brew a cup of black coffee in the morning while the weather was still crisp and sit cross-legged at the dining table and type away, unburdened with the knowledge of anything like writer's block and plot holes.

Those were the days. 😫

Writers, feel free to reblog with your own memories if you want!

[defeatistwriter]

Here's to the people who can't get the words on the page. The people who are too tired after all life throws at them to write. The people who are blocked. The people who are burnt out. The people who can't write because of physical or mental illnesses. The people who don't know why they can't write. And the people struggling with all those other things that get in the way of writing and make it seem or be impossible.

You're still a writer, you're still an artist. And you matter. This world is better since you're in it. Thank you for wanting to write, even if you can't right now. I hope you and your words find each other soon.

[defeatistwriter]

[defeatistwriter]

My favorite type of story is the kind that leaves me deeply unsettled by the end and convinces me I might be losing my mind right along with its characters. A story that makes me go along with the craziest reasoning and has me coming back to reality with a crash.

Books like this imo were This Symbiotic Fascination by Charlee Jacob, The Melting by Lize Spit, Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones and Below by Laurel Hightower.

If you have any recs like this be it book/movie/show, please let me know! I live for this stuff. 100% emotional damage.

[defeatistwriter]

I don't want to market.

I don't want to yell at people to buy my stories.

I just wanna write T^T

[defeatistwriter]

overstimulated. annoyed. angry. murderous.

[defeatistwriter]

Ursula K. Le Guin

[defeatistwriter]

[defeatistwriter]

Writing is so much fun! You can be like "I should process this" and just go nuh-huh, see, I'm going to make up a guy and have them process it for me. Not me! It's the guy I made!

[defeatistwriter]

I took this author test -> Here

Tagging mutuals if you want to do this/haven't already!

@dyrewrites @bookish-karina @authoradampowell @cssnder @sshawthorne @atlex0616 @floweryprosegarden @laplumedemaureen @rickie-the-storyteller @ivaspinoza

[defeatistwriter]

the spirit is not willing and the flesh it is not so into the idea either

[defeatistwriter]

Someone once said, if writing is so hard, then why don’t you get AI to do it for you? Because I like writing. Yes, it’s hard, but I like putting the work in because it’s something I’m passionate about. The process of creation brings me joy and fulfilment. What next? Are you going to ask me if I want AI to eat my dinner and do my hobbies for me?

[defeatistwriter]

“I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.”

— Henry James, after a request by the Times Literary Supplement to cut three lines from a 5,000 word article (via annadevries)