Stephen Metcalfe

Newsflash. 

Amazon has now limited the number of books an author can self-publish on its Kindle website to three a day.  Their concern is that some authors are using Ai services to generate manuscripts and then they’re posting them on Amazon to sell. 

Well, thank goodness these “authors” and their Ai buddies are limited to three a day.  I mean, it only takes the artificial intelligence in my feeble brain about a year and a half to generate a manuscript.  How would I ever compete?  Oh, but wait, it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality, right?  

Oh, I’m the river and the moon

Oh, I’m honey in June

I’m like candy, so sweet

I’m like mulch on your feet.

Yes!  That incredible poem was written in eight seconds – 8! – by an Ai.  (Okay, by me – but you get the point.) It will take me at least a full day to figure out how to submit it to a paying poetry journal which of course I plan to do.  Unless Ai can do it for me, in which case they can take over querying agents and publishers for me about the work that’s sitting unread on my desk.  But no, even an Ai isn’t willing to be bored to death. 

I mean seriously, people, is this what writing is coming to?  We won’t talk about the money game.  I’ve been fortunate in my career but to my mind, money and writing never completely went hand in hand.  I was told more than once in my creative youth that “writers can’t make a living, but if they’re lucky, they can make a killing”.  I was also told that “no one ever asked you to be a writer”.  Rule 1 means that unless talent and fate turn you into Tom Stoppard or into J. K. Rowlings or Stephen King, you’re going to work at other things to keep going with your writing.  Rule 2 means that when you’re down on your luck and wondering why you didn’t try to go to law school, you need to remind yourself that no one ever asked you to fucking do this.

So if the odds are against you, why do it to begin with?  My answer is this.  Writing – creative writing – isn’t just throwing words onto the page to see what sticks.  Writing is losing yourself in the world and characters you create.  When you’re working well, you can take a breath, dive in and then when you finally come up for air, hours have passed.  It was like you were in a waking dream.  Let there be light your brain said – and there was light.  It ain’t always like that.  A lot of the time, it’s one step forward two steps back.  It’s research and doubt and questions and trying to see things through a perspective other than your own.  It’s leaving your desk feeling as if you’re up against a stone wall and there’s nowhere to go.  But when you’re on a roll, when your skis are blowing fine powder, well…. it’s a singular experience. You sure – okay, maybe – wouldn’t trade it for law school.

An Ai can’t experience that.  And I suspect neither do the people who are now using an Ai for creative endeavors; the people who look at art in general, at writing, at acting, at composing, at painting, as merely ways to make that Stephen King killing.  This is one of the things the WGA and SAG strike is about.  Writers and actors are telling executives, producers, agents, studios, and streaming services that the future of film and television cannot be based on computer generated words and images.  There have got to be artists – human beings – actively and predominantly involved.  

Second newsflash. Besides limiting “authors” to a mere three books a day, Amazon has also made a point of saying all who use Ai to generate or enhance their work must state up front that they have done so.  Why?  Because they suspect that people who buy books will want to know if they’re reading something written by a machine or a fellow human traveler. It will influence their purchasing preferences accordingly.

In the end it all comes down to the paying audience, doesn’t it.