TechTakes

I joined a writing meetup here in Amsterdam which gathers every week in a bar to write, to talk about their writing, to bounce ideas, etc. I kinda got tired of going because there were a worrying number of people using chatgpt to generate ideas. I was the only one trying to write non-fiction, and most of what I was writing would be crit of tech (sometimes genAI) so talking about my writing was always fun. But nonetheless, their use of chatgpt seemed extra weird because we were there, together, to write and support each other, for free.

It's strange to use solidarity, support, and just general helpfulness from others as an explanation for how AI opens writing up to classes or abilities when that's probably one of the top things that social media (and pre-social media social media) gave us on the internet.

anyway..

Statement clearly written by AI

That's it. the world needs a different name for writing a novel in november without all the trademarks and baggage of NaNoWriMo.

I propose "November". It is a portmanteau of "Novel" and "November".

NaNoWriMo did not say that 'not writing your novel with AI is classist and ableist'.

What they did say however is almost worse:

We also want to be clear in our belief that the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.

So you're classist and ableist and probably privileged if you're against the use of AI.

fyi they updated their blog post with this catch-all disclaimer in the last couple of hours

"it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse"

"so we're gonna play it safe and endorse it"

From the second reddit post

But when I say that being told that everything I’d set up didn’t count, that broke me. I had worked so hard, literally from the fucking hospital, to be told that it didn’t count. That the thing that I had set up as an accommodation for disabled or immunocompromised didn’t count

The current Executive Director is the board member that works under a pen name and an AI picture. ... had signed tax documents under said pen name.

Moderator Y starts parroting on the forums that they have it on "good authority" that Letitia (who is Black) is a diversity hire

All very ironic

so I clicked through to the barely veiled advertisement on NaNoWriMo’s blog:

Rephrase by ProWritingAid is a brand-new feature meant for writers like you. You can highlight any sentence, click Rephrase, and generate a new sentence. Shorten or lengthen a sentence, change the tone to formal or informal, or add sensory detail.

Here’s a boring sentence I wrote: “Quinn entered the dark and cold forest.”

And here’s a sentence Rephrase gave me: “Quinn shivered as he stepped into the cold, dark forest, the air thick with the scent of damp earth.”

I can build off that! Now I’m more excited to write this scene that was feeling bland.

like fuck me that’s somehow even more bland, but it’s longer so you’re closer to that 50,000 words you need to write ~~so you can nut~~

I’m not a particularly good writer, but here’s some advice my human brain hallucinated without burning down a rainforest:

• nobody fucking “steps into” a forest, what the fuck is that? if it’s an important place, describe it geographically. describe how the atmosphere and scenery change as Quinn approaches the forest. and since this is NaNoWriMo and you’re in a hurry, you can go with a placeholder like // TODO: sober up and do some basic research on what forests and their surrounding areas are usually like for authenticity, lorem ipsum Deloris shrdlu
• this fucker started shivering? is he naked? is the forest frozen in a way the surrounding area isn’t? if so maybe write that cause it sounds more interesting than this bland shit.
• maybe I live in a particularly dry place, but my brain isn’t rendering “the scent of damp earth” or why it’d sit thick in the air. I don’t think that’s what the forests I’ve been in smell like though — they smell like trees looking to fuck. but is Quinn the type of character who’d even give a fuck about any of this? maybe he lives in the forest and none of these smells are new. maybe he’s currently half a foot tall so the smell of the damp earth’s very relevant to him. the LLM doesn’t know so it filled in the blandest shit possible instead!

The audacity to tout classism and ableism as reasons as to why people should "get to" use LLMs for their "write a novel in a month" challenge...

Even when someone's inability to write a novel in a month is because of their class or disability, I somehow doubt they want to let a machine write their novel for them. I mean, it's not like NaNoWriMo is a way to put food on the table or something, right?!!

This feels like the arguments Mid journey ~~fellators~~ fanboys were spouting a year ago (or has it been two?) on how not everyone can afford a school of fine arts 🙄

A statement by one of the authors who has resigned from the NaNoWriMo board: No More NaNoWriMo, by Cass Morris.

Novel Novel November (or, NovNovNov)

Novel (as in new) Novel (as in book)

The term I've been using.

This term is hereby gifted to the Fediverse in full libre with copyleft methodologies, and is proposed as a replacement for the term NaNoWriMo for the November novel writing movement.

So it's called the National Novel Writing Month, but like what nation? Should non-US writers have their own ones?

Also I just saw they have a logo and it's an insult to heraldry.

If I were unable to write a novel in a month^1^ but really wanted to and some smug little shit came up to me and offered to ghost write it for me, I would not be happy. How is SALAMI generated text any different?

1: I definitely can't.

You’re basically stealing from other people when you use LLMs without constraints, that’s more classist and ableist