I joined a writing meetup here in Amsterdam which gathers every week in a bar to write, to talk about their writing, to bounce ideas, etc. I kinda got tired of going because there were a worrying number of people using chatgpt to generate ideas. I was the only one trying to write non-fiction, and most of what I was writing would be crit of tech (sometimes genAI) so talking about my writing was always fun. But nonetheless, their use of chatgpt seemed extra weird because we were there, together, to write and support each other, for free.
It’s strange to use solidarity, support, and just general helpfulness from others as an explanation for how AI opens writing up to classes or abilities when that’s probably one of the top things that social media (and pre-social media social media) gave us on the internet.
anyway…
Also I’d hate to see Scrivener touch AI - esp because they sponsor nanowrimo and still seem connected https://web.archive.org/web/20240902130810/https://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo
Scrivener is a hero product in my research/writing as an example of a software product that is designed for concrete purpose
A while back one of their reps did say somewhere on Reddit that they have no intention of adding any LLM features to Scrivener. Granted, they said that in the context of moving towards a subscription model and talking about features that don’t work with their current business model, but still. Unless something has changed recently, they seem to want to stick to being a one-time purchase without any cloud-based services whatsoever, including AI, for their next major version too.
I use NovelAI myself. But you gotta provide good context since it mimics your own writing and isn’t an instruct model. It’s more of a “yeah, and—” for brief passages.
Statement clearly written by AI
That’s it. the world needs a different name for writing a novel in november without all the trademarks and baggage of NaNoWriMo.
I propose “November”. It is a portmanteau of “Novel” and “November”.
November
Not clunky enough.
My understanding is that this whole thing is an exercise in done > perfect. I think this should extend to the conditions in which you write as well, i.e. you shouldn’t have to wait until November to do this exercise. I propose a new phrase: “Nah, there’s No special Writing Moment”, or NaNoWriMo for short
NaNoWriMo did not say that ‘not writing your novel with AI is classist and ableist’.
What they did say however is almost worse:
We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.
So you’re classist and ableist and probably privileged if you’re against the use of AI.
fyi they updated their blog post with this catch-all disclaimer in the last couple of hours
“it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse”
“so we’re gonna play it safe and endorse it”
it turns out the only staff member, or one of very few, is the interim ED. Everyone else quit a couple of months ago because she was fucking terrible. I suspect she’s counting sugar lumps.