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A Literary Self-Assessment of my Work

July 11, 2022

I had a bit unorthodox idea: I thought to write a post featuring a literary self-assessment of my work. In particular, I wanted to self-critique all the novels I wrote in the past eight or so years.

This might sound like an incredibly arrogant thing to do, but you can also see it as a teaching point. As you might recall, authors are the sole authority of their work, so you might want to do something similar for your own novels, taking this post as an example.

A literary self-assessment of my work can show you how to do the same for yours, highlighting your evolution as a writer.

literary self-assessment
A literary self-assessment of the seven novels I’ve written in the past eight or so years
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“Is my Vocabulary Good?” Is a Pointless Question

July 4, 2022

OK, I’m being harsh – and imprecise. Wondering whether your vocabulary is good is a valid concern (at least for beginner or intermediate authors). The “pointless” part of the title is there to offer a quick response: Whether your vocabulary is good or not is not as crucial as you might think.

If you remember my post about writing vivid descriptions, when I was a young and stupid author I thought I needed to write whole pages describing a wall; or a table; or a cup of coffee.

What I didn’t mention in that post – though it’s perhaps implied – is that having a vocabulary that is good plays an integral part in such… strategies.

Whether that’s important or not is something we’ll explore in this post.

vocabulary good
Whether your vocabulary is good or not can affect whether you can offer a three-page description of the sea. The point is, why should you?
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No, AI Can’t Produce Art (but It Can Write)

June 6, 2022

Based on discussions and what I read, a lot of people are afraid AI, artificial intelligence, will “steal” their jobs – what the hell happened to the “one day we’ll have robots and we won’t need to work” dream of early sci-fi? But I digress… Writers don’t seem to be an exception. A great number of them seem to be worried about AI replacing them. So, can AI produce art?

In this post I argue that no, AI can’t produce art – for reasons we’ll explore. But AI can certainly write. It can already now, and I’m certain it will become even better.

Where’s the difference, then, you might ask.

The difference, to a large extent, revolves around matters central to the writer-or-artist distinction. More insidiously, perhaps, it’s about conditioning us into patterns that can have far-reaching (and unpleasant) consequences.

AI can't produce art
“The algorithm” (Google Photos) keeps suggesting that I should “fix [the] lighting” of this and many other photos. It doesn’t understand art
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