Disclosure Day: AI, Ghostwriters, Aliens? An IWSG post

 (Reminder: this site is now ONLY my blog. If you're looking for my book links or contact options, events, or any other aspects of my writer life, please visit http://dangerouswhenbored.com )

 

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 October 7 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Liza at Middle Passages, JH Moncrieff, and Jemima Pett!

October 7 question - Many people are calling for writers who use AI to disclose it. Most who employ ghostwriters do not admit it - do you think authors who use ghostwriters should have to disclose that, too?

___________________________________

I wish people would be more honest and transparent in general. We all make our choices and we have our reasons to do so, so why not stand by your choices and say, "Here's what I did and why!" 

Yes, you may attract vitriol from those who don't like your choice. You may attract praise and validation, too, from those who do like your choice. And others will shrug their shoulders and wonder why you bothered to tell us because whatever the issue is just isn't an issue for them. 

But all this sneaking around, pretending that you created something you didn't? This is why I have trust issues. 

What are you? Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins stealing Rosalind Franklin's work and taking the credit? It's not 1962 anymore, y'all. 

If you yourself think that there is something shameful about the way you're doing things…then maybe you ought not to do it that way?  

For example, I recently read the memoir Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Amy Wallace is listed publicly as a collaborator and the text itself pulls no punches about the use of a collaborator to get this difficult story told. And given the painful nature of the story and the lasting trauma, I can see why she might need a collaborator to help her tell her story, especially since she hadn't been a writer previously. 

screenshot of Goodreads entry for Nobody's Girl.

 

I don't really believe that everyone who has lived a life worth reading about is able to write about it in an engaging, coherent way. Living an interesting life and writing about one are two different skill sets. So, collaborating with a writing partner or hiring a ghostwriter seems reasonable to me…if you just admit that's what you did. 

James Patterson is doing this, too--working with collaborators to keep up a dizzying publishing pace and capitalize on the sales-appeal of his name while sharing the work with other writers, writer whom he credits on the cover of the book. 

Goodreads screenshot of a Patterson collab

 

Ghostwriters kept secret in other scenarios have eventually come to light (like Tony Schwartz who ghost-wrote Trump's Art of the Deal: read the wikipedia article for quite a publishing ride), and there sometimes seems to be quite a bit of bluster and denial about the whole thing. And, honestly, if it's NOT a collaboration, but just a handing over of the task to someone else then publishing with your name on it, that reeks of narcissism and self-importance. Taking credit for something you didn't do. 

I feel the same about generative AI. If you just made a prompt that say, "make me a 85,000 word story about a woman coming home to find that her house blew up while she was gone and trying to figure out what happened" and you just take what the machine trained without permission on other people's work is draining our water supply to make and publish it? Then, nope. You didn't write a book. Not even if you revise what the AI gives you. 

There are all kinds of variations of course. People talk about using it for brainstorming, but claiming to write the actual book themselves. But, it's still profiting on the unethical theft of the work of others to train the machine you're talking to. And you know what? You can run a Samantha on a lot less water than ChatGPT. 

You can't think outside the box if you only ask questions from inside the box, either--EVERYTHING AI provides is by the nature of LLM (large language model), derivative pastiche. It's why there are copyright issues surrounding "work" "created" this way. 

So, yeah. However whether it's AI or using a ghostwriter, own up to what you're doing. Stand by your decisions if you believe in them, and take the praise and flack coming your way (most decisions come with both). 

If you don't believe in your decisions, then there's your problem, Bub. Your conscience was trying to tell you something. 

***** 

Sorry that got rantier than usual. Guess this one hit a nerve on a day when I only had one left. If you're interested in reading more about how I'm actually doing things, I've got a free series over on Substack about my journey into indie publishing, including why I've made the decisions I have and what everything is costing me. Check it out!