The AI As Writer
I had my writing group Zoom meeting Tuesday night and since the bulk of them are SF or fantasy writers we were discussing the closure of Clarkesworld to submissions because they’ve gotten absolutely hosed with AI-written subs in the last two months. Apparently other magazines are following suit until they can figure out how to handle this sudden surge of stories, or whether they should go invitation-only (which is problematic because slush, while a pain in the ass to go through, is also the best way to discover amazing new writers).
Me being me, I couldn’t understand why someone would go to these lengths because it seems obvious that swamping a magazine with AI-written stories of dubious worth would just backfire on them. J explained that a lot of these “writers” think that the only important part of a story is the idea, and the actual creation on the story was scutwork that can be turned over to an AI.
Yeah, no. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Any writer gets tons of ideas during the day. The real job is figuring out which ideas would actually support a plot, and then creating a gripping, well-written story based on that plot. And so far, that can’t be done by AIs.
J went on to say that apparently some of these “writers” are using ChatGPT and other AI language engines to create a side hustle; one even told an editor, “I’m doing this because I need money.” That hollow laughter you hear is from all the writers throughout history who know that selling your work in trad publishing, even if it’s the best damn story or novel of the year, is a crapshoot, and even if you do sell it you won’t make a lot of money off it unless you’re a big name. But there’s still this popular concept that all writers make tons of cash so they’re probably thinking, “I came up with a great idea—I’ll have ChatGPT write a bunch of different stories for me based on that idea, send all of them off, and the money will come rolling in.”
Once again, yeah, no. The only way I can see that as maybe working is if these “writers” put their AI-created works into KU with the hope that enough people will be intrigued to at least read a few pages. But that also assumes that the work has a genre-appropriate cover and attention-getting blurb, and even then it might not get them a lot of traction because KU was bursting at the seams with titles even before these yahoos thought they could game the system and build publishing empires for themselves based on AI writing.
Now, is there a place for AI in writing? Sure—my friend Jerry uses image AI to come up with inspiration for locations and characters, and he’s been very happy with using some AI text engines to do research. But he doesn’t use the AI images on his cover, and he still has to sit down and do the actual writing himself.
Another actual, award-winning writer suggested that some of these people may be the type who simply want to watch the world burn. They cant believe that any creative work is good, so they churn out this machine-assisted drivel to prove it and smile as it causes magazines to close submissions and editors to scramble for a way to handle the avalanche. And I do suspect that those people’s work are included in said avalanche, but I think the bulk of AI-written works are just someone trying to game the system and make a quick buck.
This will shake out over time and hopefully magazines and other publishers will develop a way to shunt the mechanical dross off to one side before their slush readers are driven to despair and tequila. But in the meantime it’s going to cause a lot of issues on both sides of the publishing divide so trad publisher writers had better buckle up, because this is going to be one bumpy ride.
Well, That Was Fun
The plan for today was to get To My Muse fully formatted and uploaded to Smashwords and Google Play, then work on editing Shifter Woods: Claw.
Ha. Hahahahahahahahaha.
I was in the middle of breakfast when I was reminded that T-Mobile was pinging Ramón and asking where the payment was so I sat down and paid all the bills. Then J.J. started yowling at me so I stripped out his bedding, put fresh on, put the soiled bedding in the wash and started that, gave him fresh water and treats on the table next to his bed, and cuddled him for awhile because I think he was as achy as I was with the incoming weather change.
At which point Jasmine climbed onto my table in the library and puked from a height on the rug, as she does. So I cleaned that up.
Then I remembered that I wanted to wash our bedding as well (and this has to be done during the day because it involves three comforters, a microfiber blanket, a body pillow cover, and a knee pillow cover. Ramón calls me the Greater American Nesting Female for a very good reason). So I grabbed the basket of clean laundry and washed sheets, went upstairs and stripped off all of our bedding, then remembered that I wanted to take pictures of the three quilt tops I’ve finished in the last months and a stripped mattress was the best way to photograph them.
So I spread the tops across the mattress and photographed them.
By that point it was now early afternoon and I needed something to eat so I polished off the last of the Italian wedding soup from a few nights ago. Moved the now-washed cat bedding from the washer into the dryer, loaded one comforter into the washer, started to head back upstairs … and Ramón wanted to discuss his plan of how we’re going to install a hatch in the fence behind our pool pump (because it’s caged with PVC piping and needs to be taken out and have various things cleaned/replaced). So we hashed out a plan of how to do that in two weeks when we have nice weather for the weekend.
Then J.J. started yowling again. I changed his bedding again, topped up his water and treats, stroked his head, and went upstairs only to realize that I needed to post my social media stuff, including making some TikTok videos. Worked on that and remembered that I had deal with the bedding being washed so I went back downstairs, moved the now-dry cat bedding into its storage area, moved the wet comforter into the dryer, loaded the second comforter into the washer and got that going.
Looked out the window and saw that the weather was sunny and perfect, ideal for cutting down all the frozen lantana in our back yard and hopefully clearing way for some new growth. Since we’re going to have cold and rainy weather for at least a week I decided to get it done now. Grabbed some secateurs, my gardening gloves, and a couple of garden trash bags from the garage and cleared out two beds’ worth of dead lantana branches and leaves, which left my arms itchy as all hell.
I then remembered that I still needed to make up the bed so I went back upstairs (why, yes, I climb a lot of stairs every day, thank you), put fresh sheets and pillowcases on the bed, put away the clothing that I had brought up, and went back into my office to format and edit.
At 4:00 PM. Spent two hours working on all that, then realized I felt like absolute crap from allergies and the oncoming weather change and asked Ramón to go out and bring some cooked chicken in for dinner. Which he did, bless him, and I spent the rest of the evening picking at To My Muse and monitoring our bedding and bringing pieces upstairs once they were dry (which requires two dryer cycles per comforter and I have to turn the comforter over so that the inner damp side gets hit by the hot air, which is why this needs to get started early in the day), reading news about Clarkesworld closing its submissions due to AI-written slush (more on that later), and finally taking a much-needed shower.
So if you ever wonder why I don’t publish as often as other writers, well, now you know.
Back to Reality
The goals for this week include the following:
- Get To My Muse reformatted and out to Smashwords and Google Play, hopefully to earn me some money because Mama needs some new things for her business
- Finish editing Shifter Woods: Claw and publish it (whether I stick with only Amazon/Not KU or set it wide will depend on whether Shifter Woods: Growl is out of KU by the time I’m ready to launch)
- Throw my hands in the air and put together the omnibus edition for Esposito County Shifters in Vellum, then get it ready to launch as soon as Growl is out of KU
- Continue working on Crystal Blade
- Start writing the Patreon short story for March (and prep everything I would need to launch my Patreon next week)
I also have to pay bills, cancel the cable, talk to T-Mobile and get our two cell phone accounts combined into one for their 55+ discount, and do a number of things around the house, but that’s a completely different blog post. One of these days I’m gonna make enough to be able to hire a virtual PA and oh, the hosannas will ring across the land then.
Yay for Three Day Weekends
Not for me—for Ramón. Although he didn’t get a lot of relaxation in, having spent the morning struggling to get the pool pump motor apart and see if he could figure out why it was vibrating so hard (he’s an engineer, this is what he does—remember how we fixed the subsiding front walkway? Yeah, this is more of that).
His technical opinion: we have to disconnect the pump from the pool plumbing, dismantle it, clean it out, replace a bunch of seals and other motory things, then reconnect it. One eensy problem—when we had this motor put in about eight years ago the guy who did it rerouted some of the pool plumbing pipes directly over the motor, which means we can’t just unhook it and lift it out. It pretty much lives in a cage of PVC.
Which means our options are as follows:
1) Cut out the piping over the pump, pull the pump and fix it, then install new PVC piping. Quite apart from the fact that I’ve never done that before, I’m not sure if we could get everything fitted properly.
2) Cut a hatch in the fence behind the pool pump that would allow someone to reach in, unhook the pump, and pull it out through the fence. On the one hand, this would allow us to pull out the pump on a yearly basis to clean and fix anything that needed fixing. On the other hand, we have one of those offset slat fences and creating a hatch that would be both secure and aesthetically pleasing would be … a challenge. Yeah, let’s call it a challenge.
Ramón is already on the side of the fence hatch and I do agree that this would make future pump upkeep much easier, but he’s talking about taking out a section of the fence and the back gate to create it and … no. Just no. I think I may go out sometime next week when the weather is nice and just get it done myself. My honey is brilliant, talented, and a whiz with tech and motors, but I’m the one who earned the title Spackle Woman, Maid of Mortar early on in our marriage (my grandfather could design, build, and repair anything, and his skills seem to have been passed on genetically because EVERYONE on that side of the family can do what he did). If anyone will be handling power tools, it will be me.
Yeah, Still Not Seeing The Joy in Vellum
I’m sure Vellum is a great tool for people who want a one-stop-shop for great ebook formatting and don’t want to be mucking around with the book code. But one of the reasons I bought this app last year was because it came touted as, “You can export multiple publishing formats from a single file!” I took that to mean that I could store Amazon, Smashwords, and Google Play-specific pages in the same file, then select which pages I wanted to include when it was time to compile an ebook.
Yeah, no. Vellum will compile multiple ebook formats for Kindle, Apple, Nook, Kobo, Google, Generic Epub, and 5×8″ print and that’s faboo. Except that they seem to think that you’ll be using the same content for all those formats and no, I don’t—back matter links for Amazon and Smashwords/Google are completely different.
But I’ve already uploaded To My Muse to Vellum and I’ve been editing as I’ve checked pages to make sure that no weird formatting issues popped up (and they did, by the way), so I guess the wide version of Muse will be a Vellum edition. I really do need to move all of my publishing work up here to the desktop anyway so I’ll suck it up and go with the three platform editions like I did with Calibre, I guess.
No Writing Over the Weekend
Instead, I tweaked my Amazon ads and got rid of the non-performers, then pulled on my big girl panties to start learning how to use Vellum because I’d like to use it in compiling the wide versions of To My Muse and the Esposito County Shifters omnibus.
I can see why a lot of people like Vellum so much—it’s definitely easy and puts together great-looking ebooks. But I’m a little annoyed that I’m going to have to do the same thing I did with Calibre and create three different book files for Amazon (because I need Amazon-specific links in the back matter), Smashwords (because I need a Smashword-specific language on the copyright page along with the Smashwords ISBN, as well as back matter links that go to my website), and Google Play (with the Amazon copyright page and the Smashwords back matter links).
If there’s a way to keep all of those in Vellum and generate book types with selected pages can someone please tell me how to do that because I have combed through the Help pages and there doesn’t seem to be a way to select which pages should be included in a compile (that part I did like about Scrivener).
How Did It Get to Friday Already?
I swear to God, it feels like it was just Monday yesterday. And yes, I know this comes as wonderful news for a lot of people with weekday jobs and I’m happy for you, but damn.
And man, I have a busy weekend ahead—I need to:
- Set up my closet, pick up some Flonase and Vicks to dry up my constantly running nose and dental wax to fill in the little gap in my front teeth and take care of my faint lisp, and check that I have the right software so that I can start recording Shadow of the Swan for the audiobook
- Go over the AMS ads and prune out the non-successful ads
- Finish editing Shifter Woods: Claw and get that out to the editor and betas, as well as start putting together the omnibus edition
- Start work on the Patreon short story
That’s in addition to the usual housecleaning and food shopping tasks. Plus Ramón said there’s something causing the pool motor to vibrate badly and we may need to take down a fence panel to get to it (don’t ask). I also need to get out there and prune back all the dead lantana and hope like hell that the bulk of it recovers.
Mrrgh. I’m starting to see the appeal of having teenagers.
Well, That Was Fast
Much to my surprise I got a text from the accountant this morning saying that the tax return was ready and I could go back out there to sign it and pay for the service.
Unsurprisingly our return was minimal (mainly due to the money we took out of the IRA for my knee surgery) but at least it was a return and pretty much covers the CPA fee so I’m grateful for small favors. Another writer I know said that she owes big time this year, so not going to complain.
However, it also means that certain plans I’d been holding in reserve for a goodish tax refund will have to stay in reserve until I can find the money for them. Which isn’t necessarily bad—it’s certainly a good prompt for me to get my ass in gear and publish more books, set up the Patreon, record audiobooks, and start selling signed print books directly.
The more I get into the small business owner headspace, the better. I know I can make a decent income from being an indie author, but I have to stop thinking like I’m only the Talent and start thinking like I’m the Producer as well.
Taxes Are At the Accountant’s, Whee
I have just completed one of the two yearly scheduled road trips. Our accountant’s office is just a touch west of Arlington (the accountant was recommended to me by a friend when I used to work in Irving. They’re so good at what they do that we don’t want to switch to someone in Plano), which means I have an hour and a half round trip to go out there, drop off our files, and come home.
And yes, they have a secure online server where I could upload scanned files (and I have a printer that is also a scanner and will work such arcane magic), but I like the drive. For one thing, the hillsides of the various highways are usually carpeted in bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and other wildflowers, which is always pretty, and even a short road trip is kind of fun for me.
This year, however, I got the taxes finished in record time (I usually get everything done in March) and the hillsides showed nary a bluebonnet as I drove down 181. Bit of a bummer, but there’s a nice field nearby that usually gets carpeted with bluebonnets and I can always get my fix when that blooms.
While in previous years we usually got some pretty tasty returns due to me having a small business and a home office, I’m hearing that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 is going to adversely affect a lot of people for fiscal year 2022 so I’m not holding out hope for a big return. If we don’t owe anything, I’ll be happy with that.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
To be honest, there were no grand romantic gestures here in Casa Cameron, which I know may be unexpected for a romance writer. But neither of us were in the mood for such gestures, nor do we need them. Ramón and I are ridiculously affectionate all year round so we don’t need an official day for those kind of activities. Also, flowers need to be put out of range of the J Crew which is problematic, and we already had chocolates. *shrug*
So today pretty much consisted of working, changing out J.J.’s peed-upon bedding, fetching Thai for dinner, and generally relaxing. I did wind up churning out 1,210 words on Crystal Blade, which felt really good, and I now have a solid plotline of what should happen in the second half of the book.
In other writing news I’m picking at the outlines for High Tide (Olympic Cove Five) and To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire Three). Mage of Fire (Two Thrones Five) is still simmering in my subconscious and with everything else going on I don’t want to poke at that quite yet. Once I have Crystal Blade done, however, I’m going to try an experiment and work on Crystal Reflection (Paladins of Crystal Three), Tide, and Swan in rotation. Since the stories are all so very different I’m hoping that I can stay fresh by shifting from book to book depending on my mood of the day.
And if it turns out that I’m just muddling along without getting ANYTHING done I’ll switch back to doing one book at a time. We’ll see.
Nicola Cameron Writes 