Confidence

For all the writing I do and have done over the last 40 or so years, I've never had confidence in my abilities.

The same goes for my photography. More than 95 percent of my photos, to me, seem okay, but only just okay. It actually surprises me when someone tells me that my photos are good (and I'm not talking about family and friends, who are always there to cheer me on).

When I submitted my first novel, JT, to publishers, I didn't expect to get so much as an acknowledgement. Of course, I did, from three publishing houses, who all sent me the standard thank you for your submission but we're not interested.

Essentially, you suck. Piss off.

I was genuinely surprised when one of those standard rejection letters was filled with a handwritten message around the margins of the letter, from the person who actually read my novel. I still have that letter, stored somewhere in a box, among other old manuscripts, but I'm too lazy to dig it up to quote directly from it.

Essentially, the person who read my book wrote, "Even though we don't publish this genre of fiction, I enjoyed reading JT. You're a good writer. Don't give up."

Those words kept me going enough to write Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary. And whilst I was working on that novel, I published the rough chapters on a dedicated blog, which now only shares the first chapter. I encouraged readers to comment, providing a now-abandoned e-mail address, and I was touched by how many people reached out to me.

One person, who lived in Brazil, told me how she loved the character of Roland Axam, even suggesting how she'd like to see the story end. I'm sorry to say that my plans for the end would probably disappoint her (I never heard from her after her first message).

Another reader told me that she couldn't understand why I was putting up the novel for free, that she'd happily buy the book. I responded, thanking her, and reminding her that I was only sharing the rough draft and that as soon as the first manuscript was completed, I would be taking everything down but the first chapter. If she wanted to read the polished version, she'd have to buy the book.

She did.

Despite the positive feedback that I've received over the years, despite the fact I was able to make a career out of technical writing, I've always lacked self confidence. I've feared rejection. I've questioned my self worth.

Since I've left my job—or rather, was forced into retirement—I've actually felt some confidence. I'm much happier—I actually feel that my job was sucking the life out of me. I feel free to finally be doing something I've wanted to do without my 8-to-4 job getting in the way.

The idea for my new novel came to me much more quickly than anything I've contemplated writing before. I've always wanted to write a crime novel but in the past, I've felt that I wasn't smart enough to write one. Yet, in the space of one weekend—the weekend after learning that my writing department was being eliminated—I worked out the whole synopsis for my book. In just over a week (and at the time of writing this blog post), I've completed almost 50 pages, filled a spreadsheet with more than 20 characters, and have dozens of pages of random notes.

I told DW that I was going to take four or five months off to complete this story and look for a publisher. At the rate I'm going, I could be finished in half that time.

While I'm confident in the story, I still need to build up the confidence to think that someone would want to publish it. But finishing the book is the number-one priority. I'm not going to let any lack in confidence for what comes after the writing to get in the way.

Unlike Songsaengnim, and unlike parts of Gyeosunim, I'm not going to share rough drafts of Dark Water (that's the working title). It's a murder mystery, after all, and I don't want to spill the beans of who dunnit.

I am, however, working on a synopsis that I can share, and I'll do that in the next day or so. I'll also share my thoughts on the writing process, as this is a new genre of writing for me, and I'm approaching it in a completely different way.

Stay tuned.

Red-Winged Blackbird

It was behaving very strangely.

A couple of weekends ago, DW and I went to Mud Lake, along the Ottawa River. We hadn't been to this small trail and trove of many different types of bird in a long time, and I also felt that I needed to get out of the house, to get some fresh air, so it was a great way to start the day. And even though we were heading out too late for the peak time that birds are fluttering around, there's always something new to spot, whether it be an owl, a new species of heron, or a new duck to be found.

On this visit, we spied a northern pintail duck, which I shared in last week's Wordless Wednesday.

As we walked back to our car, I noticed a red-wing blackbird perched on someone's side-view mirror. And it would also flutter over the mirror or in front of it, chirping in a seeming state of irritation.

"Do you think he's seen himself in the mirror and thought it was another male?" I asked DW.

"I don't know," she said, "it's possible."

I didn't have the greatest vantage as we approached the car. But the bird wouldn't leave it, hopping on the mirror and the roof of the vehicle. Even when we reached the car, the red-wing blackbird was determined to stick around. So, I snapped a few photos (one of which I also shared, last week).

Red-wing blackbirds are territorial, so there was definitely something that made him stay at the car. And whatever it was, he was not pleased.

Happy Wednesday!

AI-Assisted

At my old job, we were supposed to embrace AI. When I was composing an e-mail message, AI would make its presence known—not like Microsoft's Clippy, but a subtle icon would suggest that AI could improve my message.

I'm sorry, I would respond, in my head, to that prompt, but I'm a professional writer. I don't need to have an algorithm create my message or convey it in a different tone. I know what I'm doing.

For our customer documentation authoring tool, we incorporated a plugin tool that used AI to analyse our writing to ensure that we were following our company's style guidelines. I never used the tool. I was my team's editor and I knew the style guidelines cold.

So, the thought of using AI at work seemed preposterous. Maybe, that made me a bit of a dinosaur but I still produced high-quality documentation. Year after year, my peers and bosses praised my work, so I was doing something right.

The idea of using AI for my fiction just didn't make any sense. How could an algorithm be as creative as a human? I imagine that any work of fiction that was generated by AI would be dry, boring. I mean, I had tried describing a scene in order for Chat GPT to create the cover art for the novel I'm now working on and it couldn't get anything right.

It didn't seem to understand what lying face-down in a body of water looked like: how would it know how to craft a well-conceived story?

I'm more than 30 pages into my murder mystery and I'm more organized than I've ever been for a novel. I have a spreadsheet that contains the names of the characters and their roles, and how they fit into the story. Some of the people, such as the killer and some of the witnesses and suspects, are on the spreadsheet but haven't even appeared in the story.

I have a clear idea for the motive and the circumstances that lead up to the murder, and I came up with them on my own. I used no artificial intelligence to produce my plot.

But there are aspects of this story for which I have no knowledge beyond what I've seen in televised crime dramas or have read in murder mysteries I've read over the decades. I'm taking wild-ass guesses or I'm just glossing over some sections, such as the coroner's autopsy findings.

There are a lot of moving parts around the discovery of the body and identifying the victim, and while I've made some decent notes around certain things, I'm not a detective. I don't know proper procedures.

So, for the first time, yesterday, I turned to ChatGPT for help. For other stories, I've relied on Google searches to give me some answers, so I decided I'd let ChatGPT be my search engine.

I described how the victim's body was found. I provided the identity and career of the dead person, with people who know her (I've previously stated that the victim is a woman, so there's no surprise there). I did not state that the person found floating in the water was a murder victim: I simply said it was a dead body. When I typed in this information, I asked the AI tool for the first order of operations on the side of the police.

The tool churned for a few seconds before listing all sorts of tasks that the police and pathologists would perform. It gave details of what clues would be followed to determine if the death was an accident or homicide. It suggested who would be interviewed, and how the body would be identified.

AI gave me a framework in which I could fill in details.

As soon as I had this information, I started thinking: was this story mine? Was I letting an algorithm be a part of the creative process?

The answer is a resounding no. AI isn't telling me what to write. It isn't giving me insight into the characters or suggesting any twists to the plot. (I've had enough people do that when I've indicated that I'm writing a crime novel.) AI has simply listed a number of tasks that an investigating team wound undertake to help determine the identity of the victim and how she would have ended up in the river.

I'm not cheating.

AI isn't writing my book but I think I'll use it like an assistant, as it should be. AI should never do the heavy lifting when it comes to being creative.

For me, ChatGPT will be the new Google search, without me having to wade through what is useful and what is just taking up my time.

Time I can be using, writing.