Do Chatbots Dream of Electric Music?
On revision, deep work, and our inner beings
Hello friend, 👋🏾
In this week’s episode of the My Imaginary Friends podcast, I review my recent experience revising the outline for the novel I’m working on after getting feedback on it from my agent. This particular story has gone through many changes over the past ten years, and even more over the past few weeks!
One of the key takeaways from this process was the importance of evaluating feedback and being open to change. By analyzing what resonated with me and what didn't from my agent’s notes, as well as being really clear on the core elements of the story that I wanted to preserve, I was able to take the story apart and put it back together again stronger. I had to refine my characters, their motivations, and the overall plot, and ended up with a more cohesive narrative that I’m nearly ready to start writing.
Brainstorming and being willing to change everything but those core elements allowed me the freedom to explore different ideas. By recording my thoughts and talking through the story with my brother—who is always my first reader—I found a new spark.
One thing I didn’t mention in the podcast is that my brother, who is an actor, always approaches story from the perspective of how he’d play the characters. I radically re-adjusted my main character, and he was there with the pointed questions that he asks when approaching his work—as a writer, they’re no less important. He questions each major action the character takes in this way, and looking through his eyes helped me spot some trouble spots.
So I’m happy to report positive progress! I’ve found that the tough writing problems are either solved by keeping at it or taking a break from it, or both in succession, LOL.
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📝 Deep Work Days
This productivity tip has been a game-changer for me recently: scheduling my deep work days. Between my work as a website developer and running my author business, I have to schedule a ton of meetings, interviews, podcast recordings, coaching sessions, workshops, etc. These activities, while often valuable, can interrupt the flow of the other work I need to be doing, making it take longer than necessary and be more draining than it should be.
The term “deep work” was coined by author and computer science professor Cal Newport in his book of the same name. He defines it as:
“Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
You cannot multitask and do deep work. You can’t break for a quick call or meeting and then dive back in. You have to settle down and focus.
As a writer, I’ve found it’s the best way to get into a flow state where the words just come. Some people can write in tiny chunks at a time in line at the grocery store or while waiting in the school drop-off line. I need an uninterrupted chunk of time, at least 1 hour, preferably 2-4, in which to write or tackle a big design or coding project.
By designating specific days for uninterrupted focus and other days for meetings, recordings, and other collaborations, I've been able to maximize my productivity and protect my creative time.
There’s no better feeling than to look at my schedule for the day and see an uninterrupted block of time between my daily writing session and dinner. I know that I can get some real, meaty work done. I’ve even begun scheduling my gym days on these meeting days so my deep work can continue.
While Newport advises no more than 2-3 deep work sessions per day, or about 4 hours, I like to go until I’m at a good stopping point, which might be due to sheer exhaustion. Perhaps not the healthiest, but it actually feels good to work until either I finish, or I know I need to step away for mental clarity.
If it's feasible for you, I highly recommend giving it a try and see how it impacts your writing process.
📝 AI and Creativity
This Friday, I’m hoping to post a video about one way I’m using ChatGPT to assist in my pre-writing activities. As AI tools become unavoidable, baked into every piece of software in existence, I think we’ll all be reevaluating our relationship to them.
While I’m happy to use AI to brainstorm or draft marketing copy, I have deep concerns about using it to actually create works of fiction. However, many writers have no such qualms and chances are you will, one day in the future, read a book entirely written by a machine and have no idea.
I’ve quoted musician Nick Cave before, who, when confronted with a fan’s use of ChatGPT to write a song in his style, was deeply offended.
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being…
The essay “What If We’re All Self-Playing Harps?” by Oscar Schwartz in The Paris Review opens with Cave’s famous opinion, but considers that position banal. Schwartz connects that philosophy to the eighteenth century Romantic poets who:
…began to redraw ontological boundaries, placing humans, nature, and art on one side, and machines, industry, and rationalism on the other. Poets became paragons of the human, and their poems examples of that which could never be replicated by the machine.
However, Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to a different conclusion after observing the workings of an aeolian harp. These were extremely popular instruments that “functioned somewhat like a wind chime, but with strings: if the wind hit the strings with just the right amount of pressure, they would sing out all on their own.”
Coleridge then began to wonder whether he was also just an instrument, like the harp, and that his verses were not composed through free will or human drive but just the product of sensory inputs interacting in some way with his brain.
Other Romantics took the idea that instead of the poet being the inviolate creator, perhaps we’re just conduits for vibrations that become ideas that then become poetic language. As the title of the essay suggests, “what if we’re all just self-playing harps?”
The concept of human as machine has long been explored in the realm of science fiction, but as our world becomes more science fictional, real life may be converging even faster with our cyborg future. Which begs the question, if ChatGPT has no inner being, will it ultimately matter?
🎙️ My Imaginary Friends: Episode 234
The My Imaginary Friends podcast is a behind the scenes look at the journey of a working author navigating traditional and self-publishing, where I share insights on the writing life, creativity, inspiration, and this week’s best thing.
Watch on YouTube | Listen to the podcast
Mentioned:
Washington Post mention! https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/02/11/romantasy-explainer-maas-yarros/ – Gift article link: https://wapo.st/3uJ2YkN
Grammar refresher workshop – 03/02/2024
Punctuation refresher workshop – 03/03/2024
My Awesome Con schedule – https://lpenelope.com/calendar
March Madness Writing Sprints – Schedule | YouTube Playlist
Origin by Ava DuVernay
✨ Ink & Magic podcast: Episode 14
“Endings & Cliffhangers with Sarra Cannon”
In this week’s episode, Leslye and Ines have a chat with bestselling author Sarra Cannon, who is famous for her twists and turns between chapters and at the ends of her paranormal books. Explore the craft of endings through music composition, TV breaks, and cliffhangers.
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