Thursday, February 23, 2023

Hardcopy and ChatGPT

The pages and the pencil...
Sitges, Spain
Greetings from Spain.

I’m “working” –– chaperoning 14 students to Terrassa. While here, when I have a free moment, I’m finishing a manuscript.

Sitges, Spain

My process ends with a pencil and a hardcopy. I don’t make final edits on my laptop. I need the pages, my clipboard, and always a mechanical pencil. Editing on paper versus the screen has long been debated. I know many people who don’t edit the final copy on paper. They like to be able to quickly cut and move things around. For me, though, I need to cross out, draw arrows, and write henscratch in the margins. Reading on the screen feels too much like composing. The hardcopy, for whatever reason, provides a separation –– I’m a reader, not a writer when I hold the pages.

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One topic has come up repeatedly in my work as a school administrator: ChatGPT. Who is using it? How to prevent it? Should we embrace it?
Montserrat, Spain



If you haven’t heard, ChatGPT is an AI writing program. I recently told a parent group that if I was paying for a student to get a technical writing degree right now, I’d be very nervous. The program can write what you need –– and pretty well –– in a matter of seconds. I imagine some writing professions will go by the wayside. 
Joy

Which brings me to the question: How will it impact our work as fiction writers? I would love to know what my colleagues at Type M and our readers think. 

What’s the future of ChatGPT?

Will it impact fiction writing as we know it?

1 comment:

  1. John, this is making me really nervous. I'm glad you called for comments because I want to know what the other Type M'ers think of this. I can't stand the thought of this app taking over creative work, but writing all of the required social media stuff doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

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