Rynling R&D

The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction
https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

Lepp, who writes under the pen name Leanne Leeds in the “paranormal cozy mystery” subgenre, allots herself precisely 49 days to write and self-edit a book. This pace, she said, is just on the cusp of being unsustainably slow. She once surveyed her mailing list to ask how long readers would wait between books before abandoning her for another writer. The average was four months. Writer’s block is a luxury she can’t afford, which is why as soon as she heard about an artificial intelligence tool designed to break through it, she started beseeching its developers on Twitter for access to the beta test.

I read this article when it came out and blocked it from my mind because it made me so upset. Now, having been reminded of its existence almost two years later, it still makes me unreasonably upset.

But at the same time, an evil part of me feels malicious glee toward the type of writers who brag about how many words they can produce in a day. Like, good for you. A machine can do that, and more. I feel better about my slow progress now. The fact that my words are fought for and then chosen with love and care might not mean much to "consumers," but it means something to me.

Idk man. I recently tried to read one of the popular "cozy mystery with monster romance" books on Kindle Unlimited, and I couldn't make it past the first ten chapters. All the bland and generic coziness made me want to commit acts of domestic terrorism. Like where does Amazon keep its servers. Asking for a friend.

Always, in the back of my mind, there's someone reading what I write and somehow baking it into the worst possible interpretation. Something I'm always afraid of is coming off like a victim, but I don't think this has anything to do with me as an individual.

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This isn't about being a victim, and it's not really even about late stage capitalism. The experience of feeling like an outsider due to circumstances beyond your control is universal, because of course it is. And, while I respect the fantasy of finding friends and working together to achieve success in a hostile system, I'm much more interested in exploring the reality of what it means to do your best but still fail.

FEY: A Butch Fairy Zine
https://twitter.com/Butchfairyzine

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THIS IS A VERY GOOD COLLECTION OF STORIES IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF.

I am not prepared to have my heart broken when I get rejected from this project, so I'm putting on my Adidas tracksuit jacket over my plaid shirt and going straight to the liquor store so that I have whiskey on hand when it happens.

Books Read: 125
Graphic Novels Read: 52
Japanese Manga Read: 45
Video Games Finished: 33
Zines Reviewed on Etsy: 84
Illustrations and Comics Posted: 48
Illustrations and Comics Commissioned: 27
Posts on Gingko Books: 49
Posts on Digital Fantasy Diary: 68

2023 was a difficult year bookended and punctuated by painful rejections.

Everything that I could do on my own, I did with flying colors. I’m proud of what I accomplished, from publishing my first full-length short story collection to publishing my first minicomic zine. Despite the gradual collapse of various social media platforms, I still experienced small gains in followers and engagement. I sold almost four hundred copies of my zines on Etsy this year, as well as another hundred copies at various in-person small press events. Hundreds of copies were downloaded from my new page on Itchio as well. I published a good two dozen articles and reviews on various websites, almost all of which were linked to and promoted by larger websites. I’ve enjoyed some really positive and successful collaborations with artists, and I’ve seen gradual but substantial improvements in my own writing and art.

Every time I needed support or acceptance from a gatekeeper, however, the door was slammed in my face. The social anxiety I’ve experienced as a result has been painful and debilitating. I’m not sure how to handle this moving forward, but I guess there’s nothing to do except to keep trying. Best of luck to all of us in the coming year!

Around this time last year, I had an idea for a novel that I abandoned after ten chapters. I dropped the project partially because I was dying from overwork, but mainly because the story was too cringe to exist.

Lo and behold, this year I have another idea for a novel that is very interesting to me but too cringe to exist.

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I just signed up for Get Your Words Out 2024 (and you can too)! I fucking love this community, I really do.

For 2024, I volunteered to contribute posts here on Dreamwidth. If the mods accept my pitches, this is what I'd like to write about:

(1) What makes human writing distinguishable from ChatGPT. I've been gnashing my teeth about this for the past four months, and I think I have some insights. Hopefully. This isn't "advice," exactly, but it's interesting to consider.

(2) How to handle rejection. I've gotten rejected a lot this year, and I mean a lot. It still hurts more than I'd like it to, but I've developed a number of concrete, practical strategies for not letting it destroy me.

(3) How to commission an artist. I was recently surprised to learn that many people are nervous about doing this, or they don't know how to find the right fit for a project. I struggle with these concerns too, but I commission a lot of artists anyway. It would be nice to help other writers feel comfortable doing the same.

And maybe?

(4) How to do numbers on AO3. I recently saw a well-meaning post on Tumblr that contained extremely misleading advice about "how to become a popular fandom writer," and... I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not actually that complicated. Honestly, I think anyone can do numbers on AO3 if they follow some simple rules and put in the work.

It's a shame that I didn't get accepted to the Final Fantasy zine, but this means that I get to write whatever I want instead of having to worry about zine specifications.

When I think about my favorite Final Fantasy story that I've written, I'm going to have to say that all of them are my favorite. Still, one that holds a special place in my heart is (this one), in which Edgar has Sabin kill Cid. I like the idea of Sabin running away from Figaro because of his father's assassination and training to gain the fortitude to become an assassin himself, and I'd like to take the past eight years of experience I've gained as a writer and do justice to the concept.

Just to be clear, no one is going to read this. No one goes to AO3 to read psychological horror about thirty-year-old video games. Which is fair.

The point is to build a stronger portfolio of Final Fantasy stories so that I have a better chance of being accepted to the next zine that comes along. It sucks to have to audition for a fandom Discord server, but what can you do. In the meantime, I get to write the stories I always wanted to read.

ChatGPT, please write a 1,000 word love story about Barret and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. Despite their differences, both Barret and Sephiroth hate Shinra and want to protect the environment. Barret and Sephiroth are aided in their mission to bring down the Shinra corporation by the courageous Tifa and her romantic partner Aerith. In this story, it's very important that Barret holds Sephiroth in his strong arms.

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There's no need to read the text under the cut. I will summarize: Barret and Sephiroth fall in love, and then Barret and Tifa fall in love, and then Sephiroth and Aerith fall in love. All in the span of a thousand words.

One thing I've noticed about ChatGPT is that it strongly favors m/f ships. Another thing I've noticed about ChatGPT is that it knows all the fanfic clichés, and it's not afraid to use them. A third thing I've noticed about ChatGPT is that the stories it generates follow all the standard narrative beats but still manage to be unbearably tedious.

Lucida Sidera hasn't opened applications yet, but I've been thinking about what stories I'd like to pitch them.

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All three of these pieces would fit nicely into 1,500 words, but they also seem like the sort of stories that wouldn't get any hits or kudos on AO3. I need to think about how to give these pitches more punch, and I also need to think about what to use as my writing samples.

And finally, I should probably set up a portfolio on Carrd. I've been putting this off, but I think it's time. For my icon, I might just use the portrait of Agnes that the zine's promo artist, Allison McKenzie, created for me. I'll probably never get An Unfound Door published; but if I do, I'm going to have to figure out a better way to describe it than to say "this is fanfic about a Final Fantasy game that I wanted to make when I was younger."

I'm usually not the sort of person who writes stories as therapy. Usually I write stories because I think they're interesting.

The story I'm writing about Calip and Tauro in Tears of the Kingdom is very healing, though. Perhaps you'd think that what goes on inside higher education shouldn't be the source of trauma, but it's not always healthy to see what actually happens on the factory floor.

I think, to explain this, it's useful to draw a distinction between primary education, secondary education, and higher education. In the first two, to a certain extent, the goal is to help children and young people meet and overcome challenges while they gradually acquire a better understanding of what it means to be a human in this world. Meanwhile, in higher education, the goal is to fund, conduct, publish, and disseminate research, with the purpose of "teaching" being to train fellow professionals. In other words, the goal of primary+secondary education is to help young people open gates, while the purpose of higher education is to be the gatekeeper. And this makes sense, right? You'd like the people designing nuclear reactors and playing with giant electromagnetic particle accelerators to have the appropriate training, for example.

(This is not to say that people who don't go to college don't have valuable specialized skills, or that everyone who completes college or a graduate program is actually well-trained and competent. The system has many problems! But you get the general idea.)

Still, I think there's often a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion in higher education that can be difficult to deal with, especially over time. And for me at least, it's good to sit down and think about why I wanted to do this in the first place, and how it could be better. Essentially, it's healing to reframe my workplace trauma as a love story, and hopefully I can bring that sense of positive energy back to my career.