Where Are We? - October 2024

Writing

Next month, I’ll be challenging myself to write 50k words of a new story. Naturally with a full-time job, that’s a bit of an ask so I’ve taken some time off to get a 10-day head start. The outline has been strengthened and should make the task less difficult. We hope. With a bit of planning, focus, and stubborn determination, the task should be completed. I’ve even joined a local writing group for this one because there’s nothing quite like shared trauma!

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Life

After a divergence from writing after the release of Blood Reign, my energies will be leaning harder into writing for the foreseeable future (as far as lifetime pursuits are concerned).

In the reading space, I gave Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto a go. An initially intriguing world and magic system centred around death, ghosts, and bones was unfortunately strangled by over-explaining and heavy doses of introspection. I might shy away from young adult reads for a while after that one.

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Question of the Month

Do you use Artificial Intelligence to help write your novels?

No.

To me, AI should be used to do menial, time-consuming tasks. It shouldn’t be used in creative sectors at all without stapling glaring flags on whatever content it generates.

The process of writing (or drawing) is there for people to express themselves, to flex their imagination, to exercise their creative side, and strengthen their skills to help them grow in their chosen hobby.

Feeding that task to a machine that harvests the creative works of others (we used to call that plagiarism) and converts it into content specific to a prompters specifications not only insults the work of those that came before, but also makes society as a whole lazier, less intelligent, and removes yet another pursuit that could be used to give your life joy from personal achievement. Someone else said it better when they said that they don’t want to be washing dishes while AI paints a picture. It should be the other way around.