George Saunders’ interviewer led off with a semi-familiar quote: “People forget what you said, and they forget what you did, but they never forget how you made them feel.” Saunders makes you feel better about yourself, and the world in general.
Speaking to an overflow crowd in San Francisco while on tour with his new book, the renowned writer (Congratulations, by the Way; Lincoln in the Bardo and many others) and teacher (in the creative writing program of Syracuse University) stuck largely to discussion of his new novel, Vigil. Vaguely reminiscent of his Booker Prize winning reimagining of Lincoln’s struggle to accept the death of his young son, Saunders’ new novel takes place at the bedside of an oil tycoon en route from this world to the next.
But in almost throw-away comments during his recent talk were several gems worth sharing. The talented writer/teacher, whom you would imagine to be well in control of his thoughts, more than once spoke of “blurting out” something, and whether or not the writer can “trust that blurt.” What a literary comfort: the notion that the blurts we all have — sometimes rapid fire all day long — might be worth trusting.
I may steal another phrase from a passing commentary. Speaking of raising characters (and events) “to the highest level,” Saunders asserted there’s value even with unsavory characters being raised “to the highest level of jerkitude.” Jerkitude is everywhere today.
But it was the kindness factor this writer was listening for, and Saunders did not disappoint. In a recent New York Timesinterview, David Marchese mentioned Saunders’ being thrust into “a public role as something close to a guru of goodness after his convocation speech to Syracuse graduates.” That speech, “extolling the life-altering virtue of practicing kindness” evolved into his wildly popular book Congratulations, by the Way. It was interesting to find, in discussions with a few of the 1,000+ attendees before and after the San Francisco event, how many had come just wanting to be reassured of goodness in the world.
Saunders with interviewer Vendela Vida (Author photo)
I spoke with a half-dozen attendees afterwards, none of them disappointed. “Even if his satire is sharp and sometimes wicked,” said one; “somehow his characters embody basic goodness.”
After his talks, Saunders traditionally stays to personalize signed books and be snap-photographed with fans and readers. With lines snaking around blocks it has to be an exhausting time even if you know you’re selling a lot of books. (I passed on the line, but had bought a ticket that included a signed copy of Vigil. Now a few chapters in, I give it multiple thumbs-up.)
Bottom line: Reading (books!) is essential, especially if you want to write. Writing is a craft that needs constant work; drawing tips from a master, when you get the chance, is a bonus. Also:
I just received a link to a fellow Substack “writer.” It has a name which I will not repeat. It even says it speaks for a human, though the named human cannot be found with extensive searching. An actual human posts the clever “thoughts” of the artificial, unintelligent bot.
You may be picking up my distaste here.
Up front I want to acknowledge the fact that AI has immense, far-ranging benefits to humanity, primarily in health, science & technology. If our ethical controls were not light years behind the technology we could all just sit back and celebrate.
But AI in the writing business? Please. Pity the English teachers in high schools and colleges everywhere— not to mention those in just about every other academic field — currently having to spend endless extra hours just trying to separate out what the student wrote from what the bot wrote.
Chalk this up not just to the gaping lag between moral-ethical codes and AI capabilities but to an entire generation born into the digital age. They, and generations to come, are led to assume that anything one can click on one can claim. Think about that for a while.
My rage, however, is with AI takng over the adults in the literary room. Where does it get off, barging in as if it owns the world, a scary but likely scenario? AI is announcing that anything we can write it can write better. Faster, cleaner and thoroughly spell-checked.
Here’s what AI does not have: a brain. It has only a composite of a zillion human brains that pour themselves into an artificial universe where data collection and algorithms now take over in lieu of human thought.
Here’s what else AI does not have: a soul. It cannot feel compassion, act in kindness, respond with love.
Great writers since the stone age have labored to record human truth, to create stories that help us understand ourselves and our world. Their words engage our thoughts and emotions to help us make sense of this life.
AI now presumes to grab, by the billions and trillions, those words put forth by human brains. By human beings who put their human blood, sweat and tears into the work of creation. AI then professes to reorganize the words we humans created into its “perfect,” soulless algorithms .
Sorry, I will not be subscribing to a bot.
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This essay also appears on my Substack, The Optimistic Eye, which (despite today’s pessimistic note) seeks optimistic observations on all things political and otherwise. C’mon over any time, it’s free. (https://franmorelandjohns.substack.com/)
I knew exactly what the text meant. It was late at night. A friend and I needed to fix the wording on a business document. I hit the Reply key to say what corrections I was making, when we could meet, where . . .
Bot Bully beat me to it.
“Sure!” he offered. Or, “Sorry, I’m busy.”
Who the heck does he think he is? He knows my mind?
Apparently. In the olden days, we used to think for ourselves. Actually, I still enjoy thinking for myself — but it’s getting tough.
“Awesome!” says Bot Bully before I get a chance to respond to somebody who sent a text containing the word ‘win.’
Someone else mentions ‘sick?’ I might have had a human-intelligent response, but here’s the Bot, butting in with “Get well soon!” or “So sorry!”
I worry that auto-think may eliminate brain cells altogether. If Bot Bully already has the answer, does human messaging have any role in our future? Artificial Intelligence v Human Brain? Bot Bully is winning.
For instance, atop my email list as I open my Inbox, suddenly here are red-emblemed Priority! messages. When they start appearing in all caps I will know our president and his co-chief Elon have taken over Apple Mail.
I miss the days when I could figure out my own priorities.
As I was typing the above, a pop-up bot announced that Genmoji and Image Playground are now available on this machine. There go my creative-illustration brain cells.
So okay, I get that AI is here, and wonderful, and all that.
A recent New York Times story tells of two voice actors, Linnea Sage and Paul Skye Lehrman, who were stunned to hear his A.I.-stolen voice coming from a podcast. They’re suing. The case is being reported elsewhere, amid theories of potential satisfaction for the couple — or not.
Nobody wants to clone my voice. Whew. Although I still do public talks and presentations, mainly on end of life issues for a nonprofit I support, my voice is old and raspy and revered primarily by my children, who advise me to think of it as sexy. (Good luck with that, Fran.)
But my words? Trillions of them are out there in cyberspace. A.I.’s for the taking. And the world population’s for the using.
Granted, probably not many people want to clone my words either. But I have worked extremely hard, over many decades as a reporter, essayist, author, speech-writer, blogger, you name it, to put them together in a fashion that hopefully provides information, entertainment and — most importantly — Truth.
A.I. does not recognize truth. Nor does it recognize empathy, persuasion or compassion, among other valuable emotional traits.
If you’re a writer, you probably seek to build a reputation (or not) for writing truth. It doesn’t come easy. It comes by slogging through data and proven facts to create sentences and paragraphs that express truth. While you’re at it you very likely watch facial expressions in interviews, or take notice of things like the scent of flowers and forests, the mysterious elegance of a foggy morning, the mood of a crowd, the brilliance of a summer sky. Then you put it all together in words that ring true.
A.I. just takes words and puts them all together. How do you think ChatGPT writes those fine job applications or school essays? By grabbing the words someone else has sweated blood to put together.
I like to think that occasionally, over the decades, I have put together a sentence or phrase that is singularly expressive. It’s surely not going to hurt my feelings for ChatGPT to grab it for an application essay. But how about you writers just starting out, or mid-career? Once you’re paid (or not) to create effective, even borderline unique (if such a classification exists) phrases, should you not care that you’re sucked into the content provider abyss and ChatGPT gets the glory?
As much as it fails to distinguish between truth and falsehood, A.I.’s inability to know empathy or compassion gives me pause.
Voice actors Sage and Lehrman presumably built their careers on the ability to show traits like these through their vocal expressions. That ability is partly a gift, but largely a learning process. I don’t know Sage or Lehrman, but I’d guess they have invested a great deal of time and effort into perfecting ways of expressing emotions like these. A.I. just grabs and spits out.
I have a book of short stories on Audible, recorded by a professional actress who was aging out of stage work and into book readings. Though it’s still a little jarring to hear my words in accents and inflections I might not have intended, I appreciate the long, hard work that the gifted Katherine Conklin devoted to this project.
Introduced through a mutual friend, Katherine won my own friendship, and admiration, by the time the book was done. Early on, when I explained that the Central Virginia accent of the characters in these stories was not as ‘deep south’ as the accent she was using to read them, she found an interview by a radio personality in Henrico County, VA, next door to the Hanover County of my childhood, and sent it to me for reference. Another time, when struggling to communicate exactly what I’d meant by one phrase, she sent a voice recording repeating it six times with different inflections.
I’ve no idea how hard other readers work to produce the audiobooks I enjoy on daily walks, and I know they’re paid. But their voices are now floating around in the ethersphere and are A.I.’s for the taking; no hard working voice actor gets a penny.
It’s not just about the money. What creators slave over to express are the emotions and values with which they embue their words.
I don’t want just to tell truth. I want to amuse or lift spirits, to comfort or console, to persuade. These are things words can do, but only when the wordsmith writes, rewrites and rewrites some more until, hopefully, the words fit together to evoke a desired result.
I am quick to admit the limitless potential of A.I. in fields like technology, medicine, ecology and many others. But it is artificial. Human intelligence, one would hope, will always incorporate the basic elements of humanity like those above. Empathy. Compassion. Truth.
And that, my right-brained friends, is why I worry.
Storytellers come and go, but Alice Munro is forever.
The immensely gifted Canadian writer, whose death at 92 leaves us bereft, could put you into a time and place faster than a speeding sentence. Simultaneously introducing you to characters you might love or hate or question — but you knew them.
By the time I did an MFA in short fiction (USF Class of ‘00,) teachers had begun to favor other great writers with styles all over the place. Munro kept right on creating stories with beginnings, middles and ends and no one ever displaced her in my heart.
She was also gracious to a fault. Once, finishing a book of stories, I sent her a note just saying what an inspiration she was. And got a note in return.
Retreats, workshops, conferences and literary gatherings are everywhere today, blissfully in-person after the dark days of all-online (which doesn’t really cut it.) What’s the reason?
It’s all about inspiration.
Inspiration is to writers what thermals are to seagulls: you perch on the rock forever, or you soar into the unknown.
I learned this after being a writer (newspapers, magazines, & loving every minute) for about four decades.
It happened after my then new husband, Bud the Great Encourager, strolled into the kitchen with a scrap of paper advertising a 6-week workshop with a then little known writer named Anne Lamott.
“You should try writing stories for the grandchildren,” Bud said. “This would be a great place to start — and you’ll love the teacher.”
He did not lie.
By the end of those six weeks I had become convinced I could write anything in the world I chose, something readers of Lamott’s subsequent, wildly popular books will understand.
In those weeks I had been edited for craft, scene, dialog, you name it. I had met fellow writers who remain my friends and literary partners to this day.
And who doesn’t love Anne Lamott?
At the time (early 1990s) Lamott had published several novels and the nonfiction Operating Instructions (which I gave to every new mother I encountered for the next decade) and was at work on the widely acclaimed Bird by Bird.
Operating Instructions had to do with the birth of Lamott’s son Sam (in 1987.) After Bird byBirdcame Tender Mercies, and the books that have inspired generations of writers since.
Soon after that workshop came a two-week Napa Valley Writers’ Conference directed by the late great Jack Leggett in the mid-1990s. Leggett had retired to Napa after founding and directing the famed Iowa Writers Workshop that nurtured many of the best writers of the 20th century. I had met him briefly, soon after marrying his old friend Bud. (The two were equal encouragers.)
“You need to come to the Napa Valley Conference,” Leggett said, within moments of our being introduced. “Bud says you’re a really fine writer.”
Having never written anything much beyond newspaper and magazine articles and a few really bad books on commission when I needed the money, I said something clever like, “Uhhhh.” I had also never heard of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. But wisely I withheld that information and said, instead, “It sounds wonderful.”
It was. That literary gathering was all about craft: character development, dialog, scene, structure, language . . . Write, edit, critique, repeat.
By the end of that great adventure I had finished drafts of several short stories (Thanks, Annie workshop!) and begun work on what would be my first not-bad book, Dying Unafraid.
It was inspiration on steroids.
Well, it was also excellent teaching, a lot of advice and support from fellow conference attendees and hard work — all on the wings of inspiration.
Thirty years later I sneaked off, one recent weekend, to A Writing Room retreat to absorb a little inspiration and miscellaneous good stuff — and okay, it was an excuse to visit some old friends in Albuquerque & Santa Fe.
Writers’ gatherings have changed little over the years, if the few I’ve attended are any indication: good opportunities to meet and mingle with potential writing partners and kindred souls, limited opportunities to hobnob with the big name speakers, plenty of mutual support and food for thought.
And all for what? Some of us want to get published, or make money (good luck with that) or be on TV; most of us just want to be better writers. Workshops and retreats (in person and ubiquitously online) inspire us to try.
The Writing Room event presented all of the above, created anew for the 21st century. Inspiration with a distinctly 21st-century flair.
Full disclosure: I paid the fee but mostly audited the course; this is only a butterfly’s-eye view.
Writerly inspiration today is low on craft, high on introspection and self-discovery. Early sessions invited attendees — there were some 350 from across the U.S. and elsewhere, plus uncounted others participating online — to dig within for what’s most important and what it will cost to achieve.
We still want to be better writers, but today’s gatherings focus on mindfulness and the creative core, vulnerability and persistence — as tools for the journey.
My arms-length participation in the recent event had a lot to do with personal push-back against the weekend rules: No outside news, no politics, no communication with problematic friends and family members, and quit with the social media. Excellent advice for a few days of serious writing; problematic for my scattershot self.
After the event, though, I spoke with a number of attendees who had paid attention to the rules (except for the social media thing) and been far more serious about attendance and participation. They were, by and large, excited, uplifted, enthusiastic — and inspired.
Said one: “I was apprehensive about coming, but I’m going home feeling like I can achieve my goals. Yes, it’s been a memorable weekend.”
Several spoke of having gained confidence — in themselves and their future as writers. More than a few attendees were struggling with adversity, emotional distress or recent illness. (The stuff of great stories.) They’d been met with ovations.
One told me, “I have several hundred pages of a memoir, but had all but given up on ever finishing. When I shared about it this weekend, though, the response was really encouraging. It gave me the confidence I need.” She was “excited about sitting down and really getting to work on it.”
Co-hosted with author/creative guide Jacob Nordby, A Writing Room Retreat was led by artist/podcaster Sam Lamott.
For this writer, the inspiring words of the keynote speaker — Sam’s indomitable mom Anne Lamott — still rang true.
I was confronted with an ad on a busy urban thoroughfare, promoting the newest thing in my chosen profession.
That is, writing. I have been a writer forever. You could say Journalist, or occasional Essayist. Columnist. Author. Proud MFA in Short Fiction graduate. Periodic ghostwriter when I needed the money.
But over a bunch of decades I have just said, when someone asked what I do for a living, “I’m a writer.”
Alas, I have been replaced. By a bot.
Author photo
Needing to understand the competition, I looked this up. Here’s what I learned:
You — company manager, CEO, whoever — don’t really need to hire a person who knows how to write stuff, because a friendly bot can “accelerate content” while remaining “on brand.” Jeez Louise.
I already knew my once-beloved profession was in trouble the first time I heard the phrase “content provider.”
Well, anyway. Who am I to stand in the way of your unlocking the power of generative AI?
In the olden days, every press club worth its salt had a touch football team.
Maybe you missed a deadline, or somebody else scooped you on a great story, or you were just brain-weary from too many words. You could always find a pick-up game with a bunch of writers needing to work out their literary frustrations. (Then you went for drinks.) I’m satisfied that similar collegial opportunities to blow off steam still exist, even if my football days — as you can tell from the attitude here — are over.
All that generative AI can replicate your voice, and stay on-brand for optimum marketing potential, and you can refine its integrated content to align with your pre-approved messaging . . .
I learned this from my favorite San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Kevin Fisher-Paulson, who opines and entertains every Wednesday (print edition for me). Fisher-Paulson was arguing (gently, but well within his rights) with a reader who complained about his overuse of So’s and Ands.
If you’re as fine a writer as Fisher-Paulson — who doubles as a cop, gay dad and all-around Good Person — you have grammatical-leeway rights.
Grammatical rights — “Conforming to the rules of grammar,” thanks, Merriam-Webster — were around centuries before Grammarly. I should get this off my chest right away: A pox on Grammarly. Whatever happened to old-fashioned dictionaries? Strunk and White? I may be showing my age here.
Mrs. Vaughan would have a hissy fit.
Mrs. Vaughan, may she rest in correctly spelled and properly punctuated peace, was my fourth-grade teacher, back before your grandmother was born. She taught Old School in the olden days, with a little help from the ruler she was wont to crack your knuckles with if you went astray. (Corporal punishment was allowed in the olden days, in the form of a sturdy wooden ruler for cracking over small knuckles.)
Certain useful words and phrases — such as having a hissy fit — may not even exist in my Strunk & White; I don’t have time to look them all up, so you’ll have to trust me. In my Virginia upbringing, however, we only hoped never to cross Mrs. Vaughan, whatever it was we were fixin’ to do. Such as knock each other upside the head.
My Michigander husband, a writer and editor who could quote Strunk & White by the page, once told me our romance was almost over before it began the first time he heard me fixin’ to do something. But pretty soon he was fixin’ to ask me to marry him.
So. We write what the Ghost of Fourth Grade Past allows.
It is the grammar of today, however, that creates pain. I mean, like, could we, like, get through a sentence without, like, interrupting ourselves every four seconds?
And. I have pretty much given up on the lay/lie thing. “Hens lay, people lie,” Mrs. Vaughan would declare, long before people began to lie so blatantly; but I have lain that issue to rest, grammatically at least.
The forces of evil declared themselves victorious the day I had a bunch of teenagers in the back of the car when one of them said she was going to lay out in the sun. Another immediately said, “Lie,” in an aside to me, the driver, adding, “I know it’s right, Mom, but it sounds funny.”
Irregardless. If somebody wants their grammar allright they better watch with bated breath what their doing. I could care less. Mrs. Vaughan’s husband cared, but he died of prostrate cancer.
