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I could have titled this blog “A Case Study in Hubris by a Hack Writer”, but I will stick to my convictions, even though it means taking on a literary great. Here goes.
I recently inherited a full set of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers, and I’ve enjoyed working my way through them. Until the most recent, which I kept wanting to throw across the room out of irritation.
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As so often, Orwell got there first.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith’s girlfriend Julia has “some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines”. The Party churns out a whole slew of literature, music, drama and entertainment designed to keep the masses happy, including “sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.” (Full text is available at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt.)
The idea of machines creating art is not new, but it took Orwell to give it the wonderfully sneering label, ‘prolefeed’. The topic has been back in the news recently. AI technology is being used to put dead actors in modern movies, or finish symphonies by dead composers. There are AI services like Midjourney, which can create any art you like, and – of particular interest to me, as a writer – ChatGPT. Read more “Coming over here, taking our jobs …”
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Last month I was in the unenviable position of having to make a written statement about a safeguarding concern. I was at a charity event surrounded by a lot of vulnerable adults, and I saw behaviour that could only be described as inappropriate. One person was essentially imposing their will on another, who was plainly uncomfortable with it but did not have the capacity to respond. Nothing illegal, but nonetheless – in my layman’s opinion – abusive.
I reported this, and was asked to write a statement. No problem, I thought; I can write! So I set to …
… and then I had to pause and think.
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As modern Doctor Who fans will know, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly … timey-wimey … stuff”. (From “Blink”, by Steven Moffat, first broadcast 9th June 2007.) (If you’ve got five minutes you can watch the whole scene here; it’s a masterclass in combining humour, explanation and tension.)
He could also have been describing the plotting of a novel.
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You have your project firmly in mind, you’ve decided you might need a ghostwriter, and Google has led you as far as the United Ghostwriters page. Ulp – there’s thirteen of them! How will you know which one to pick?
Well …