Writing this blog post hurts. Badly. It rips bandaids off wounds freshly healed. I hate writing this. But I have to.
As some may know, I recently lost my literary agent via mutual agreement over my use of generative AI in my creative work. The impetus of this very relevant and extremely important conversation came after turning in marketing proposal artifacts (see how dull and lovely these are to write in my Medium posts here and here, where I spell out how I co-created my artifacts with generative AI including edited final products delivered).
I don’t write this blog post out of spite but from a deep place of hurt and cognitive dissonance that I am sure is affecting many creatives today.
Here, I lay out my argument based on many conversations with many individuals.
The question is- what do YOU think, dearest gentle reader?
Generative AI to write my novels?
A common argument is that AI created content is not at all original- that generated content is obvious when generative tools are used to create it. Even edited generated content is apparently not considered acceptable in publishing circles.
I actually agree with this, partially. I have dealt with enough generative AI in my day to day work as a generative AI engineer, and I can somewhat spot generated content when I see it. But if prompting is clever and well thought through, the result can not only be personalized, but extremely creative. Consider the following Haiku written by Google’s Gemini, and a haiku written by Matsuo Basho, one of the most esteemed Haiku writers of all time:
The funny part of the whole situation is, in fact, that generative AI is not at all used in my novel writing whatsoever. All of my novels (many are in the works, and one being handwritten as we speak) are actually handwritten in notebooks first and foremost. They are then edited repeatedly after being transferred digitally using a typewriter as the first round of edits.
Tools like Pro Writing Aid and Grammarly were actually mandated for use by my previous publisher as part of the editing process (click on the links for an ironic surprise). I will discuss this interesting topic later in the series, but I actually hope to explore (very soon, stay tuned!) using generative AI to actually do things like reduce my glue index in my writing (apparently something I am a repeated offender of doing), editing tasks that are arduous and oftentimes difficult for a writer to work with. We will talk about writing editing tools used by all kinds of writers, and how those tools are actually already evolved to… you guessed it… use generative AI to actually recommend replacements and suggestions in your writing.
I also believe that being a writer is more than just writing. Human storytelling is not only one of the many things that differentiates us from every other living being in the globe; it is the only way we have been able to create community and history. Human storytelling is not just about the story itself or the writing itself; but much, much more than that. A good author has the ability to write on subjects of interest to modern readership (I would love to write for the dead and finally unleash my inner Jane Austen- maybe in the future!) and bring their whole selves, as writers, to their work. “How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?” laments Virginia Woolf, who points out very aptly that many creatives create as a way to relieve themselves of their burdens. Therefore, isn’t it all the more important for the identities of the writers themselves to be considered in their creative processes? As a generative AI engineer, and someone who has worked in tech for almost as long as I have been writing- it seems remiss for me to not include the whole parts of me as an engineer in my writing. What better way than to explore a groundbreaking technology that has been called the next industrial revolution due to its transformative nature. I will return the Woolf quote with one from the publishing industry: “When it comes to the modern landscape, you must also follow modern rules.” In the rest of this article I argue; those rules are changing, and they might have already changed.
The reality is, for most of the books I have planned, none had generative AI in mind for writing the whole novel (not to say that won’t happen in the future as an experiment!)
So far, I have only felt comfortable using the technology to produce additional artifacts needed for the publishing process, such as draft query letters and marketing materials. The argument here is that, as an author, if I am unable to write every word of these additional artifacts that I am in fact not a good writer at all.
However, as I had to write summaries for every single chapter in my book for one of my artifacts, I would argue this is in fact exactly where generative AI can help writers with a process that oftentimes takes years to get a book to publish. The skill to somehow comprehensively summarize a 344 page manuscript by heart from scratch when in fact, it is proven that mundane tasks such as this (which in fact exercise zero part of the creative’s brain) are better done by machines and humans TOGETHER. Yet here I am, squabbling over Amazon descriptions and book cover contents that would surely cause me immense embarrassment if even those pieces of writing (as an avid reader, I pay attention to none of those things).
My stance on using generative AI in my writing and creative process stands a chance to in fact, ruin my reputation according to some. In the next few blog posts, I will outline arguments around the ethical use of generative AI in creative works, what regulations have actually been published on the matter, the challenge of how I shall ever find another publisher, the use and validity of generative AI detection tools, and the apparent impression that the use of generative AI in creative works shows no talent at all whatsoever on the part of the creative.
Stay tuned for more. As this is hard to write, it might take longer to tell the full story as I arrive as a fully vulnerable creative and engineer seeking to bring to light topics of cognitive dissonance and discourse that surely must be discussed and debated openly, with honesty, humility, and ultimately the goal of producing the best human storytelling possible, however that may be defined.
