When I started to write, there were a few types of writers, but it all boiled down to one thing: you were published or you were not. And published could mean a lot of things; one thing was true, though: all writers wrote their stories themselves. To keep this blog simple, we’re skipping all the forms of self-publishing available to anyone for hundreds of years, and go to the age of printing on demand. The stigma surrounding this practice accounts for a blog of its own. Quality or not, worth reading or not: all stories emerged from the human brain.
I think the playing field was level: you could write, some better than others, some had the luck, the talent, or the major in marketing and got published.
Things are different now. And it made me rethink doing the thing I love doing. I knew why I self-published, and between the days full of self-doubt, I knew the place I had in the writing landscape.
I lost heart completely when I realized there are not only entire books being published using GenAI to which the prompt writer has devoted hardly any time or energy, but that even established writers, with the support of a publisher, an editor, and their own years of experience, are using GenAI. What’s left to strive for, then? To become the best prompt writer?
Recently, I read an interview with a well-known author with several traditionally published books, who started to use GenAI. Of course, this writer diminished his use of it.
He only used GenAI when he really didn’t know where to go with the plot. Or to have a fresh insight in what the main character would do in a certain situation. He said he really didn’t write the ideas of the GenAI in his story. The fact that this writer didn’t even get that the GenAI did guide him, did give him ideas, it made me perplexed. Not knowing where to go with the plot is a great thing to happen to you when you write. Easy for me to say right now, as I am not writing fiction at the moment; non-fiction doesn’t have a plot like that. When it happens, and I don’t know where to go with the plot, I don’t consider it to be a great thing; I resent it. At that moment I hate writing, I hate my life, and I wished I would never put another word on paper in my life again. Because when I’m stuck, it’s not just for 15 minutes, usually not for a few days either. It could be a week and fixed by a simple solution; it could take months because the plot wasn’t plotting because of a plot hole, or because I didn’t have the skills yet to write what I wanted to write. So hitting this brick wall meant time would go by, and it would be filled with frustration without an ending in sight. And yes, I am sure GenAI would help fix this in under a minute. But this is what writing is.
And when even established writers choose this way out of writing, the craft really gets hollowed out.
Established. What a word.
If you look at an established writer, like the one in the interview I mentioned before, with a contract for a new book, a publisher behind him, an editor, and people who believe him when he says he’s a writer. Then you don’t need generative AI.
If you don’t enjoy writing, but only do it for the kick (what kick?), that’s when you use GenAI
So now the landscape has changed. Not only are there the non-published writers that do or don’t wish to be published, the prompt engineers flooding the market with books, and the established writer, you now have the established writer with GenAI: the backing of traditional publishing and all those benefits and the laziness and lack of love for the craft of a prompt writer, still flooding the market.
It’s not that it’s only -or just- a quick fix. Maybe if it was a tool like a thesaurus or DeepL, I could understand. It is the quality of the plot, the language, the writing that is so subpar; a human brain is capable of so much more. If you like the output of the GenAI, if you genuinely think it has a great idea for your plot, that’s when you tell me that your creativity, your craft, is less than that of GenAI. And that’s when I know you shouldn’t be a traditionally published writer after all.
This just shows me that traditional publishing isn’t about skills or creativity. It’s about marketing, who you know, and what money revenue you could bring in. And it always was.