Crunchy leaves, Cocoa, and Cardigans, an open book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What do you look forward to as fall comes up?

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First and foremost, I look forward to not being hot. I live in North Carolina, one of the southeastern states of the United States. Summer here is humid and hot--often over 100 degrees F. Add to that my own personal summer (I'm over 50), and you understand why I only go outside very early in the morning during summer. Spring can get nearly as hot, so I'm not a big fan of Spring either. 

 

 

So, yes, once the weather dips below 70 or so and stays there? I'm happy as a clam. The ideal weather, so far as I'm concerned, requires a sweater, but not a coat and builds your appreciation for cute hats and hot drinks. 

The trees celebrate by turning their leaves vibrant colors before they let go and rest for the winter and my eyes are wide with delight every day. 

 How about you? Are you a fall fan? What do you like (or not like) about it? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

No AI for me, thanks: IWSG September

 

 

      

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 September 3 posting of the IWSG are Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon, and Diedre Knight!

September 3 question - What are your thoughts on using AI, such as ChatGPT, Raptor, and others with your writing? Would you use it for research, storybible, or creating outlines/beats?

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No thanks. 

I've written about this on my blog before, and I'm honestly pretty tired of talking about it. It's a choice people make, and I choose not to. 

Here are my issues: 

1. Ethics. It's all over the news how AIs were trained on the backs of creators with no permission asked or granted, no payments made, etc. There are class action lawsuits in progress for breach of copyright and other types of theft or piracy committed to train these systems. 

Until they get this figured out and learn how to proceed ethically, I'm out. 

So far, the main use case seems to be exploitation or lazy seeking of shortcuts, at least with generative AI (assistive AI like Grammarly and ProWritingAid is another kettle of fish that doesn't stink nearly as badly). 

 2. Environment: The energy and water usage for AI processing is ridiculous. My brain works with way less fuel and does less damage to the planet. You can run a Samantha on coffee and curiosity for days. AI is much more expensive. 

 3. I don't see the appeal: I write because I enjoy writing. I even enjoy the parts that don't feel fun in the moment and get a real feeling of accomplishment from working my way through problems and figuring them out. 

I'm also enough of a control-freak and see enough stories about AI getting it wrong (how about those completely inaccurate search results, like citing books that don't exist? and the doubling down when called on it?) that I don't trust AI even in support roles because it hallucinates and then I'd have to redo the work anyway to make it useful. 

 So yeah, I'll stick to enjoying AI as a fictional concept. 

Some AI themed books I've recently enjoyed. 

How about you? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!