Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the
Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
The awesome co-hosts for the March 6 posting of the IWSG are
Kristina Kelly, Miffie Seideman, Jean Davis, and
Liza @ Middle Passages!March 6: Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing?
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I have not played with AI at all so far, and I don't really have any interest in it. I've got processes in place that are working for me right now.
For one thing, I've got doubts about the ethical implications and I think I'll wait for all that to settle.
For another, I'm tired--I don't feel like learning new systems just now.
Other writers I know are developing whole new skill sets surrounding prompt writing to get the system to give them something they can use…and, well, I don't want to. At least not right now.
I don't have the spoons. I have plenty of other things to deal with right now.
For a third thing, I haven't seen anything yet to convince me that the end product is up to my standards.
I suppose I could take it as a draft and revise it to my liking, but I could also do that with my own crappy first draft instead of one written by a machine.
But the most important thing is that I enjoy writing--even the parts I complain about, like synopsis writing. Passing parts of it off just wouldn't bring me the same feelings of accomplishment as doing it myself.
There are things I take on, at least in part, because they are difficult and not just anyone can do them. One could argue that was some portion of my "why" in teaching. Sure, I had a heart to help, but I also got a bit of a charge out of doing something that many people could not. (Of course, too many years of that = burnout, so there's a balance).
If I just glom off the bits I think are hard and ask a machine to do my work for me? That feels like cheating, and if the end result is successful, I get no share in the credit. I wouldn't feel like I owned it anymore.
I want to be proud of myself, to feel like I really accomplished something in my writing life. So that means I'll have to do it myself. No shade meant at those who find that using AI feeds their practice--gets them past blank page paralysis, or whatever else they need. There are ethical ways to use these tools, the same as any others. But it's not for me.
It's just a line in the sand, which means you can smooth it out with your foot and step over any time you want. But I'm okay on this side of the line for now. How about you?