In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Update 1
* And re the Willful Use of AI
* Update 2
Quote of the Day
“I voted by not voting.” (a popular saying)
Um, yeah. By not voting you voted for the people who didn’t want you to vote.
Update 1
Okay, I received an email. Sigh.
Re my note on politics, I guess I should’ve also said ‘aloud’ that if you choose NOT to vote for whatever reason, that’s fine with me too.
I have a strong personal reason for urging citizens to vote, but it isn’t my place to even tell you that reason. Besides, if you were awake during History class, you already know. And if you’re a veteran or a member of a KIA or POW veteran’s family, you know personally and maybe more thoroughly.
So what you do or don’t do is strictly up to you. You do you. Again, it’s none of my business and I don’t want to know whether, why, or how you voted (or didn’t).
And re the Willful Use of AI
The guy who sent that email apparently also took offense at the post I linked to in “Of Interest” yesterday: Of the author RJ Redden, he wrote “She is an apostle of using AI in writing. She revels in it.”
Okay, first, that’s a pretty sweeping statement. And I just mentioned painting people with a wide brush in yesterday’s post. Sigh.
Anyway, as I wrote in my response to his email,
While I’m on the topic, my recommendation of RJ Redden’s post was NOT an endorsement of AI. In several previous posts over the past couple of years, I’ve amply covered my thoughts on fiction writers and cover designers using AI.
But just in case you skipped those posts or forgot, here are those thoughts in a nutshell:
- AI (and using AI to “create” anything) is thievery.
- Plus, and from a more practical standpoint, you can’t “own” (copyright) anything for which you use AI. So (shrug)
- Just don’t do it.
I recommended Redden’s post (and still do) only for the “hanging mirrors” concept she talked about in the post.
As I also told the guy who sent me the email,
Her post contained some great advice, but you don’t have to use AI to take advantage of her advice. Sheesh. And of course you don’t have to take her advice at all, with or without AI.
Now back to the much more important stuff: writing. Some folks hoped I would update them with regard to my ongoing current cycling and WITD project. So here’s….
Update 2
The Wes Crowley Saga: Author’s Cut is coming along well. About as I expected it to, and maybe better.
I’ve cycled through the first ‘old’ book (chronologically) in the saga, and I expect to finish cycling through the second one today. Then on to the third book and so on. But I don’t mind at all. I am loving the story in a “Wow! Did I actually write this?” kind of way.
A Throw-Away Phrase
While cycling through the first two books of the original saga, I realized I used “for a moment” in a lot of places. For example, “He looked at Mark for a moment” followed by a line of dialogue. Of course, that phrase never mattered, so I did a global search and deleted every instance. That phrase occurred 91 times in the first two novels. You might check your work too.
Of course I’m also bringing my current skill level to bear as I cycle through the saga. Doing that should really be fun when I eventually hit books 14, 15, and 16, which are also the first three novels I ever wrote.
Also amazing is how many smaller (and larger) glitches I’m catching and correcting (all while in the creative subconscious) as I read through the story. For just one example (and my first reader pointed this out back in the day, but I didn’t go back and change it): The Canadian River in Texas flows to the east, not to the west.
Doesn’t really matter, right?
Well, it wouldn’t, except that a bad guy launched off his horse’s saddle and plummeted 100 feet into that river and eventually fought through the current of the rain-swollen river to make his way out downstream, which was EAST of the crossing, not WEST of the crossing.
Great fun! The characters were a little embarrassed at that factual glitch (and a few others so far), though I’m not sure whether they were embarrassed for me or for themselves.
Anyway, re that “great fun” thing, I’m also adding thousands more words to the story as the characters invite me deeper into the overall story in various places. I’m more of what King calls a ‘putter-inner’ so I’m having a blast.
But it isn’t all about catching and fixing glitches and adding more words.
I even found one ‘loop’: a side story that loops around and closes back on itself without making any difference at all in the overall saga.
I pulled that side story (something over 2000 words) out of the saga and will publish it as a stand-alone short story next Saturday on Stanbrough Writes. It’s both tragic, sort of, and funny. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Of course, I initially included that loop because it occurred naturally as part of the overall story. I removed it this time around because I now know that it makes no difference to the overall saga.
If you’re wondering why I left the loop in the original version, you’ve never written a multi-book saga. I couldn’t have found and removed the loop earlier because I wrote the saga over a period of 22 books in 7 years.
Even a critical-mind-driven New York publishing house acquisitions editor wouldn’t have recognized it as a loop under those circumstances.
Plus I write into the dark, so how was I to know that little side jaunt wouldn’t matter somewhere later in the saga? As I’ve often said, if a character gives it to me, I write it down.
Anyway, onward and upward and back to more fun.