one identity crisis at a time, baby

If you think the reign of generative AI is forever, I’m gonna need you to go get checked out by someone who can confirm the worms in your brain, because that’s just stupid.

Nah, I’m not going to elaborate. IYKYK, and if you don’t know… well, you’re part of the reason I’m writing this, so thanks a lot for consuming my Tuesday off. Suffice it to say that new data centers are being postponed and altogether cancelled, and public opinion is growing more negative and people are actually doing something with that.

And this is regardless of what various out-of-touch celebrities and self-important tech bros want you to think.

I mean, I thought we were done listening to celebrities. Is anybody for real taking cues from Reese Witherspoon? Look, I’ll rewatch Election, Overnight Delivery, Penelope, Pleasantville, THE formative Fear, any day of the week, but you lose me at positioning AI as a tool for women’s empowerment.

Whether or not she—or any other celebrity endorsement of AI—actually believes what they’re selling, is up for debate. But also mostly irrelevant. They’re doing this because they get paid to do this. It’s all ad revenue, baby.

And the tech bros are, as usual, just compensating for something.

(That’s not even a dick joke; they just have terrible personalities.)

I don’t care that, even as I type this, WordPress is trying to tell me how to “improve with AI,” as if generative AI has improved anything, least of all my rage tolerance. I am in fact less tolerant of dumbassery than I’ve ever been in my life, including that time some guy at the bar tapped his cheek and told me I had to “pay the toll” in order to walk past him.

Incidentally, I simply ducked under his arm and walked away, and he was never to be seen again. My approach to AI is more or less the same, I think?

More pertinent to why I’m writing this post, I don’t care what the Big Five are doing, either. Because while Hachette pulled Shy Girl, publishers across the board are including contractual permissions to use the author’s manuscript in AI-powered technologies, and they’re in talks with AI software programs, and so on—and thus they’re not actually committed to rejecting AI in support of, you know, real art.

Here’s where I encourage you to check out Mesha Maren’s Zona Motel Substack essay on this subject, because she covers it better than I currently (or probably will ever) have the will to do.

Now, of course I don’t care what any of these aforementioned champions of total bullshit are saying/doing. Mostly I think famous people are weird and they should give away more of their money, tech bros need to get real jobs, and publishers are concerned exclusively about the bottom line. Not quality, not substance, not even properly researched books, otherwise Fifty Shades of Grey would have remained on the fanfiction site from whence it came.

I wouldn’t be a hater if so much shit wasn’t stupid, but obviously my destiny’s really been callin’ lately. Maybe that’s where all the spam calls have been coming from, but anyway…

I’m a big advocate for creatives doing whatever they want. Nevermind the rules, the trends, the schmoozing, the compromises, the whatever else is gonna chip away at your art and what you’re trying to say with it.

So I just really don’t believe in givin’ a hell what anyone else says you have to do to succeed. You have to do what you want to do, that’s it. Because what’s the point in doing any of this if you don’t like the actual doing of it? Why pursue a goal if you’re not going to recognize the end result? Why sell your soul for something that doesn’t even feel like yours anymore?

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have a head for the business side of things. Maybe I’m idealistic, naive, too wannabe pure-of-heart to make it in the cutthroat world of, uh… getting people to read my books (???). Getting people to be aware of my books, even.

But—and I’ve said this before, I am nothing if not a broken record caught in a time loop—I’m not going to mold myself to the standards of anyone else’s idea of success; otherwise I’ve already fucked up.

And on that note, fellow writers, I am begging you to not fold to the pressures of AI. I don’t just mean don’t use it in writing or editing, because in that case you’re not a writer at all so this isn’t even about you, you need to step away from the computer and step into the light, for the love of all that is the common sense that should be in your brain—

In my recent depression scrolls through Instagram reels (which is solely a depressive episode activity, like, I’m fine, I’ve survived this long so I might as well keep going, but I’m only scrolling this much when I’m Mentally Unsound), I can’t tell you how prevalent “AI tells” are for writers right now. We’re being advised to ditch our em dashes, our metaphors and similes, our rule of three, our [insert other literary tool or technique here, it’s probably on the list by now], because they’re indicative of AI writing.

*GAME SHOW BUZZER*

Fuckin’ INCORRECT. None of these are proof or even solid indicators that someone wrote their book with AI. They’re simply evidence that it was written by someone who Knows How To Write. The only reason AI knows how to do any of this is because it’s a plagiarism cretin that steals from the existing works of human beings. It’s the goddamn Walter Keane of book writing. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald and the rest of us are Zelda.

Generative AI does not create or feel or experience. It doesn’t understand its own output. It doesn’t know what any given metaphor means, what it’s meant to elicit.

AI is not capable of anything except pissing me off. I’m not giving up my egregious use of em dashes just because some of you think that’s a dead ringer for AI, end of.

Readers, that’s on you. You need to be waaaaaaay more discerning than this. Which, tall order in our current crisis of media literacy, wherein nuance is painfully misunderstood and critical thinking is out the window, I know—but if you’re gonna read, I need y’all to start Actually Reading instead of just scanning the words on the page to meet your yearly Goodreads quota.

Writers, you don’t need to water down your voice to prove it’s your voice. Anyone who’s in this community will have seen literary agents and editors telling their writers to cut the em dashes, the metaphors, the all-of-the-above, to avoid AI allegations—meanwhile publishers are embracing AI more than they want you to believe, even though it’s all out there in front of God and everybody (again, check that Zona Motel link).

So lemme make sure I’ve got this right: Publishers are utilizing AI for their own ends, and writers are being told to make sure we don’t sound like we’re using AI.

Once again, the bottom line matters and creative freedom doesn’t.

Hard pass on that mentality.

As long as you’re not using AI—which, @ the publishing industry, none of us should be—don’t worry about your preferred techniques and quirks. Let your em dashes dash, let your metaphors do what you dreamed them up to do, let your three things be the trifecta of emotion or comparison or tangible feeling you intended. Not using AI also means not letting it dictate how you sound, who you are, how you do things, what you want to convey.

The fact is, it is getting harder to determine what’s AI and what’s not. The storm always gets worse before it fucks off, right? It is the responsibility of readers to do their due diligence—to research the new authors they’re interested in, to determine whether it’s someone they want to support.

It is not a writer’s duty to strip their work of personality in order to comply with arbitrary rules about what’s “acceptable,” and what seems like it maybe could be suspicious if you squint, do a shot, and then squint some more, and then perhaps another shot to really let go of the inhibitions that keep you from saying truly wild shit.

I think it’s important to call out AI: its influence, its damage, its inevitable burnout. (Hey, what’s up, rule of three? Lookin’ sharp.) But we don’t have to submit to it. In some areas, it’s better to pretend that it doesn’t exist, that it’s not a factor—because it’s sure not a forever one.

One of those areas is in how you do your thing. Don’t sacrifice what makes your writing yours to appease someone else’s uninformed opinion.

(This goes so far beyond AI, but I gotta stop myself before I’m suddenly too far gone into the rabbit hole of digression.)

Someone else is always going to misinterpret what you’re saying, they’re going to accuse you of shit you’ve never even heard of, they’re going to entirely Miss The Point. But you don’t fuckin’ work for them. Take the loss, and keep creating what you want, the way you want—as long as it’s coming from you.

AI isn’t stable or sustainable. Other people’s opinions, their tastes, what they’re in the mood for… it fluctuates. Staying true to why you wanted to do this in the first place, the core of why you want to create and share? That’s what matters. You might switch things up, you sure as hell evolve, you’ll experiment, you’ll find new things to explore, but that drive is evergreen. And your voice doesn’t need—shouldn’t be—beholden to rules or expectations that don’t work for you.

When you find success through other people’s understanding of what that means, it’s never going to be enough. You’ll never make enough money, never have enough followers. You’ll always need more so you’re not just a one-hit wonder. Because even when you “make it,” you’ll have to prove, over and over again, that you can make it higher. You’ll have to produce more, sell more, gain more eyes on your work. You’ll burn the candle at ends you never knew existed, and then who knows what you’ll resort to to relight it.

You have to love what you do for the sake of it, or you’re not gonna do it at all. You have to cut out the noise—the trends, the algorithms, the AI bullshit—to hear your own voice. Whatever tries to take that away from you is not worth it.

Keep your em dashes, because AI is on its way back to hell—or, at least, to the recesses of insignificance where it belongs.