a nice thought

+wip updates

First Draft Word Count: 58,426 (+1,902 since last post).

I could spend most of this post explaining why I took over a week off of writing, but that sounds boring to write, and I’m sure even more boring to read. Suffice it to say—I was busy with other things. That’s allowed, right?

What’s important is that I’m back at it, and I’m having a good time. I’m finding myself cycling between different methods of getting words onto the page. For example, I’ll type on my iPad. Then, I’ll write by hand in a spiral notebook. Then I’ll go one a walk and dictate into my phone. Sometimes I find it helpful to go to a coffee shop. Sometimes I find it helpful to sit on the floor in the closet with the door closed.

Sometimes I will do all of these things in one day.

It’s a little bit chaotic, which I’m trying to be okay with. Whatever is working at the moment, right?

I will say that I am enjoying writing by hand, which I’ve been doing more the last couple of days. I bought a cheap spiral bound notebook at the grocery store, which I’ve been using.

I’ve been seriously considering whether I want my words to exist in a medium that can be at all accessed by companies using Large Language Models. Specifically, the worst place is what I’m using at the moment—Google Docs. But I’m starting to question whether it’s worth it to write digitally at all.

Part of this feeling may come from excess paranoia. A likely unnecessary precaution against companies using my writing to train their models. But beyond that, we’re already entering a world in which it feels like anything that exists on a screen cannot be fully trusted. If my manuscript exists primarily in a document, how do I prove that I actually wrote those words. Where’s the evidence of the hours and hours and hours that I’m putting in. It’s all ephemeral. Smoke.

At the moment, I’m just dipping my toes in the water, but I’m seriously considering doing all of my drafting by hand in the future.

In addition to being immune to AI, I find writing by hand has other benefits. It keeps me from worrying about word count too much. It helps avoid distraction. I find I am able to be more thoughtful, because I write more slowly by hand.

It’s easy to worry that AI will only pull us deeper into technology. But what if it does the opposite? Forces us into the real world. Forces us back to analogue media.

Yeah, I know. Seems unlikely.

But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Until next time,

-Carver