AI and What It Means for Writers
Written By Guest Blogger Zoë Routh
I pull a sheet of paper from a drawer and dip my quill in the well-used ink pot. I pause and consider the blank, clean emptiness of the page before me.
The sacred moment of creation when from nothing, art is born.
And then it begins.
The clickety clack. The belligerent ring of the carriage return as my neighbor pounds away at their epistle.
Oh, the tyranny of technology!
How is an artist to feel the words?
How might one commune with the Muse and deliver the whispers of the gods with such an infernal mechanical menace?
How can the words be coaxed from the soul of the writer with such a blunt and offensive machine?
I don’t write with pen and paper now, except when I engage with my private journals.
Nor do I use a typewriter.
Like you, the computer is what I use to capture the fleeting tickles of a visiting genie.
The objections to the typewriter were the bleating heart of nostalgia. Such feelings occur when a change is so unfamiliar it frightens us back to comfortable corners.
Such are the objections to AI writing tools today. These comprise the following:
1. Lack of originality and authenticity. When everyone can plug in a prompt and write stuff, we will get a surge of the banal.
2. Threats to creativity and jobs. With AI providing such a huge shortcut, authors will simply churn out a mess of bland, formulaic drivel.
3. Ethical concerns. They might have trained AIs on copyrighted material. Who’s paying for that?
Those are the main issues.
And they have divided the writing community.
Haters against authors using AI have gone feral. Many writers feel intimidated and deflated by their critique.
Here’s what I’ve found in my use of some AI tools:
1. Flair: it has none.
If you ask an AI tool to write something (Chat GPT or Sudowrite, for instance), it can crank out words pretty quickly. But this is not a finished product. It needs polishing, reorganizing, editing, shaping.
It’s the equivalent of throwing some clay on a wheel to take the shape of a bowl. The artist is the element that makes it magical.
2. Writing jobs are safe.
The exception might be social media marketing. Chat GPT churns our pretty decent marketing slather with clickable headlines when requested. Anything more complex will require craftsmanship in order to become something compelling.
3. The creative act is “unethical,” whether by humans or machine.
Pablo Picasso allegedly said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” Ideas are built and spliced and fused by what we have experienced. Sometimes those experiences are lived, sometimes they are observed, sometimes they are absorbed through books, movies, and poems.
My Goodreads account tells me I have read over six hundred books. I am sure it is more since the app didn’t exist when I was eleven and reading Black Beauty and the Nancy Drew series obsessively.
All those books to this day swirl around my subconscious. They are compost for imagination. And from all of them, sprout seeds.
AI, like Chat GPT, may have been trained on books without explicit permission. But if you have access to a library, you have access to the books. I see this as the same thing: an AI “reading” books just like a human reads books. New works are generated based on these experiences.
Fundamental to the argument is the question, How can artists be properly remunerated for their original work?
This is a huge question. Solutions involve the redesign of the distribution system and Amazon dominance. Another solution is likely to involve the blockchain, where artists can sell unique work and receive a trailing commission for every sale of that work into the future, executed by smart contracts. That means Picasso’s estate would still get a piece of the action each time his work is up for resale at Sotheby’s, for instance.
So, now that my flag is planted firmly on the AI side, here are some practical tips on using the tools.
When I start to write each morning, I open the following:
• Scrivener for drafting. This tool makes it so easy to move scenes around and track the overall flow of the text.
• Chat GPT for research and idea generation. One of my favorite prompts was “Please give me a list of insults for an AI android robot.” It came back with twenty-five, including these gems: bug-ridden borg and half-baked hardware hulk.
• Thesaurus and Dictionary for word selection.
For editing and polishing, I use the following:
• ProWriting Aid - to check overused language, grammar, passive voice, and plagiarism possibilities (the subconscious can do weird things!)
• SudoWrite - to expand description, for idea generation, and to inspire brainstorming. With some pretty cool features, it’s like having a writing group on tap to spark ideas. Thanks to it, my original writing has become a lot stronger.
For production, the following have been helpful:
Midjourney for image generation. I use this a lot for images for my blog. I even generated one image that my designers at Damonza incorporated for an upcoming novella, Terra Blanca.
Interestingly, Damonza recently declared a two-pronged approach for AI use: a more expensive price for those who want human-only design, and a cheaper option for those who include AI-generated images. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Deep Zen: I am going to experiment with this for an independent release audiobook version of Terra Blanca, narrated by digital voice. The website states that their original human voice actors get royalties for the use of their voice.
The human-assisted production I use consists of the following:
• A developmental editor who also does the line editing.
• A professional proofreader who reads the final script before and after it goes to typesetting.
• The humans at Damonza for typesetting and final cover production.
• A handful of beta readers and proofreaders who are invaluable for their feedback and insights.
As you can see, a lot goes into the production of a novel. So far there is no single AI application that does it all, no button you press to order a fully formed piece of work.
Having said that, if you haven’t checked out Death of An Author by Aidan Marchine, then I highly recommend it. The “author” claims 95 percent of the book was written by AI. What he really means is that he, the human, prompted the text generation and production of the work. I think it’s pretty good! The writing is compelling, and the story is sound.
Where is this all heading?
Joanna Penn, writing futurist, author, and podcaster, claims there is a pathway for writers and these tools. She calls it the “AI Assisted Artisan Author,” or the “A4.” I think this is a great moniker for the modern creative. The components to pay attention to are “assisted” and “artisan.” The creative force flowing through each writer is the essence of it all. The tools can help shape a story that ignites imagination and invites our readers to think and see and feel and dream. This then, the connection between hearts and minds, is our job done, our mission fulfilled.
By quill, or pen, or keyboard, or dictaphone, or prompt, our words matter. Please, keep writing.
Zoë Routh, Author of The Olympus Project, www.zoerouth.com
Kim Catanzarite is the author of the award-winning Jovian Universe sci-fi thriller series. She is a freelance writer and editor for publishers and independent authors, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her Self-Publishing 101 blog discusses the ins and outs of indie life as well as all things writing craft. Kim lives on the east coast USA with her husband and daughter.
