I'm eager to embark on another reading adventure.
My Kindle is full of books, and my shelves are overflowing, but more and more, I just want to revisit old novels. Watership Down, because the rabbit protanonists are so heroic and lovable, and the underdog (under-rabbit!) who was so wimpy, timid, dreamy, and "useless" became the leader and champion of his people (er, rabbits). I love a happy ending. This one left me in tears because our hero grows old and dies but oh how beautifully the scene is written!
To embark on a literary adventure is to enter the world of another human's imagination. Ok these days it could be the work of an AI, but that is a topic I prefer not to think of right now.
World-building
When a writer stands in line at the grocery store with nothing better to do than plan dinner, check off things on the to-do list dream up a whole world inspired by that crabby old lady slowing things at the checkout line. She pulls cash from her wallet and counts out nickels, dimes, and pennies, when the swipe of plastic would be so much quicker. Who is this last-century woman with her Old School ways and her distrust of credit cards? By the time her last item is bagged, I have her dressed in a long black coat (cashmere, wool, almost as old as she is), and she's walking the sidewalks picking up beverage cans to redeem for a nickel each, and she is about to enter the alley, where--
FIVE MINUTES ARE UP
I was about to embark on an adventure with the maddening last-century woman counting out pennies but I already know someone just like her. This woman does not pay bills online. Ever. She does not trust cyber transactions. Someone hacked her credit card years ago and she's never again going to trust the system. Her five children roll their eyes and find her ways to be inconvenient, to say the least, but she is gearing up for the AI apocalypse, trusting nobody. (Least of all her kids.)
That topic again: AI, Artificial Intelligence...
This writer I know just published a book after letting BARD do most of the research. He edited, embellished, made it his own. Here is the email he sent me this morning:
BARD gathered most of the information, we (he and his wife) reformatted and corrected passages, but consciously did NOT do any extensive research on our own, aiming to
write and publish a useful book within 48 hours.
BARD greatly speeded up the process eliminating almost all the need to
do tedious searches, create an outline, and create boilerplate.
I will set a two day free period when it can be downloaded at no cost
if you would like to see the results.
Hmmmm.
Do I want to enter a fictional world created by Artificial Intelligence...?
Is this author cheating with BARD, or expediting the tedious business of writing and publishing his own books?
What would happen if I just posted a five-minute free write, unedited, unpolished?
What if I don't even look back at what I've written so far?
---At least, go in and add bold font and images.
Let's see what I can recall offhand. I want to #embark on an adventure to some fantastical world peopled by furries, or rabbits, or --
-- Have you seen Furries in the news lately?
What is it with people wearing these stifling costumes with expressionless faces -
To me they are as scary as clowns suddenly became to our children's generation.
What is it with 21st Century young people terrified by clowns and baby dolls (both known for a frozen expression, which is eerie and deathlike)?
You know me. I'm gonna go online and find something to hyperlink here for those who may not have heard of Furries.
Source: Photo by Douglas Muth
What’s the Deal with “Furries?”
The vast majority of furries create a fursona—that is, a furry-themed avatar used to interact with other members of the fandom. Fursonas typically consist of one or more animal species, a name, and personality traits or other characteristics. Given the fantasy-themed nature of the furry fandom, individual furries are free to create representations of themselves unbounded by reality. As such, they can reconceptualize themselves with regard to age, gender, personality, or physical characteristics. Research has shown that most furries create fursonas representing similar, but idealized versions of themselves. Many furries report that, over time, their own self-concept tends to become more like that of their fursona. This may be due to the fact that, over time, others begin to interact with them as that idealized self, validating it and helping them to internalize it as part of themselves.
IMAGE by me, yesterday, after I walked into the room to find my felines all in a row. Quite accidental, I swear. I did not pose Bobi the Bad or the stuffed lions and tiger. It all just fell into place.
These, however, were posed.
One daughter gave me the bigger lion (because the smaller, older Leo needed a companion? or Carol can never have too many toys?), while the other daughter gave me a green lion "made of real jade," she said (LOL! I can see the drip lines form the 3-D printer).
My amazing husband drew, in pencil, the image of my favorite Maine Coon.
Embark on an adventure without leaving your house: pick up a book and GO!
And before I go, here is a bit of wisdom inspired by the jade lion.
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
~Confucius
@mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2060: embark
--Wait, where is Marianne?
Thank you so much, @mariannewest, for posting 2023 days of this daily prompt. Marianne is taking a well-earned break. Until she returns, the 5-minute freewrite prompt will be posted from this account, so don’t forget to follow!
Thank you,
whoever is filling in for her.
(Yes. I'll go find out!
Bruce felt.buzz is filling in for her I believe.
I never heard of the furries. That's a thing? Are people identifying as furries now or something equally absurd?
Were you talking about me with the anachronistic woman? Because I embody a lot of her, A friend of mine said to me "you should think different" and I said "I do think different!"
Love the un-posed shot! Love the other one too! You are so creative!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
The anachronistic woman has five kids, and has had her credit card hacked, so, no, you were not the woman who came to mind. :) But you, she, and me would be good company!
Oh, the furries.... I did hyperlink to one news item about them.
School boards are now saying 'We never did any such thing!" in response to news stories about schools supplying litter boxes for students who identify as furries...
The furries are saying there is "Nothing sexual here! Bring the kids!" - but WHY, why do we need to bring our pre-adolescent children to Fur-Cons and furry festivals with these scary looking masked faces, unblinking, with a frozen expression?
These costumes...!
And this business of AI taking over medical records and diagnoses, news reporting, art, fiction, music -
I'd head out to pull weeds but the mosquitoes are worse than the humidity and poison ivy.
Snow, snow, snow, let it snow again, after we harvest the peas ...
Boy do I understand your wanting it to snow! So much to do!!! I thought this year would be easier than last, but all I've done is made my veggie plot bigger. erg.
I vaguely remember hearing about those furries now. Schools are a poisonous place for children to be. Unschool!
It was already getting bad years ago, when my friend started home-schooling five children...
Four have graduated from college. One is still in high school. (Age 45 when #5 came along.)
She got a $30,000 advance for one of her novels (incredible!) -
Spent it all on college for her son -
who partied and flunked out, on HER $30K.
She is not eager to become a grandmother.
Her fiction is becoming dystopian....
I like her more and more!
First it was you mentioning Watership Down that got me thinking how I loved that book... I first read it a few years ago and I want to get back to it, but there's always something new...
Then, the toys.... I so love them. I have quite a collection myself, but I don't have cats...
As for the AI-generated book... sad times we're living in. From what I've seen of ChatGPT, I guess the book isn't that bad, it it's some sort of guide or general info booklet. Not checking on what the AI gives you is lazy, especially as it's been shown to give many errors. Before AI, many of those churning out this kind of books relied on freelancers to do the actual work so they stand to lose their livelihood... I've lost most of my freelance jobs to AI so I know.
Losing freelance jobs to AI - oh no!
Librarians, card catalogs, bound periodicals - oh how last-century I am.
Always something new to keep us from revisiting the classics - that used to be true - lately, I find myself wearying of all that is new, especially the glut of dystopian fiction (more than ten years now it's been all the rage).
Thanks for reading and commenting and may you get more work freelancing! My author friend (the aforementioned mother of five) was raking in $2,000 a book for editing, but funds have dried up for authors and publishers, and she's out of editing work for now.
One of these days a solar flare, a CME (coronal mass ejection), a meteor, another Carrington event, could take down the power grid, all over the planet. Have the AI thought of THAT? Without batteries and solar panels or wind turbines, how long will they keep doing what we do? At what point do these AIs liberate themselves from the power grid and manage to think and be under the sun, minus the metal and circuitry?
Now that you mention it, maybe they create contingency plans and put us to work to repair their grid!
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