You Don't Need An MFA When You Have Chat GPT

Part 1

Dear Desperate Writers,

We live in interesting times for book publishing. Publishing houses are already contending with massive numbers of AI generated books that have flooded Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. These books generally range from laughable to tolerable. They often read like someone who is not a native English speaker and has consumed a high dose of edibles and then has cranked out a manuscript on a dare. But content is likely to improve. What that means for creatives is still not clear, but your Art Auntie, usually a posy of blooming optimism, is feeling a wee bit pessimistic.

Friends I know who teach creative writing in university programs know that their students are using Chat GPT or Claude or some of the other AI out there to cheat. Some have taken to running their assignments through AI and comparing them with what is turned in, a crude method that certainly doesn't uncover all of the cheating and also leads to false accusations of plagiarism. Other professors take a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" approach. It's impossible to regulate, so many universities are just leaving it up to professors to make a fuss or take the path of least resistance, and just let it go.

The use of AI to write papers or stories is cheating. It degrades both the university and the degrees it offers. It is also bizarre to me that there are so many people who pursue a degree that they can't monetize, and then cheat their way through it. Why bother? There are, I suppose, other reasons to have an arts degree: as a requirement for residency in a country, as a requirement for parents to keep sending money, or because one is still deludedly optimistic about career options post-graduation.

There are plenty of people on the internet who will tell you that using AI isn't actually cheating! It's simply a fun, helpful tool! All your Art Auntie can say is, two things can be true. In the comments section of many of these videos on how to write and publish books using AI, writers complain that their friends won't read their AI-written novels. I laughed. It can be burdensome enough to have friends sending you their novels and asking hopefully when you'll have a chance to read them (even if you want to read them and are simply overwhelmed by the quantity of pages)--but to be expected to read novels generated by bots? Hard no on that, thanks.

AI generated nonsense books have infected Kindle and taken over the bestseller lists, not because they are actual bestsellers, but because their creators have figured out how to game the system. So far, it's not too difficult to guess what has been written by non-humans. As this Vice article helpfully explains, the titles themselves are often dead giveaways: When the three attacks, Apricot bar code architecture, The journey to becoming enlightened is arduous, Department of Vinh Du Stands in Front of His Parents’ Tombstone...etc.

Art Auntie's messed around with Chat GPT a little herself. She asked it to write something especially for Desperate Writer:

You

Write a ballad about desperate writers who can't find readers or get published or pay rent that is a mash-up of the song Desperado and the song House of the Rising Sun, but replaces "Desperado" with Desperate Writer" and "poor girl" with "poor writer."

Here’s Linda Ronstadt singing the real thing to remind you of the tune:

Art Auntie won't give you the whole ballad, but she did think Chat GPT did rather well with verses 2-3, so here they are. Art Auntie would prefer that you sing the next few stanzas. (If you want to send her a little recording of you singing, she promises to listen to it with deep appreciation.)

(Verse 2) On the road of rejection, with manuscripts in hand,

They wander through the chapters of a barren, lonely land.

No agent to guide them, no publisher's embrace,

They're haunted by the echoes of an unforgiving chase.

(Chorus) Oh, Desperate Writer, why don't you come to your senses?

You've been out there creating, now you're building fences.

There's a house in the rising sun, where the stories are told,

But the pages stay empty, and the dreams grow old.

(Verse 3) In the city's cold alleys, where inspiration fades,

They seek solace in coffee shops, as deadlines cascade.

The rent is due tomorrow, and the muse remains unseen,

Yet they keep on writing, in a world that's so obscene.

(Outro) So here's to the poets, the scribes, and the bards,

Whose tales remain unheard, in a deck of shuffled cards.

May they find their haven in the rising sun's warm embrace,

And break free from the shackles of this desperate writer's chase.

It has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, don't you think? I hate to admit it, but playing with Chat GPT is kind of fun. It's satisfying to watch it effortlessly unspool from the page as if in a state of manic flow. Once I asked Chat GPT to write this for me, it spun the verses out quickly enough that I had to read briskly to keep up. No writer can do that.

A Canadian writer, Tim Boucher, managed to refine the whole AI writing process so he could write and publish a book in only six hours. He's written 97 books so far in a year, and has earned close to $2000, which sounds terrible until you compare it with what most traditionally published writers are earning, after which it sounds...slightly less terrible. Honestly, I don't know who is buying these books, or all the other weird books that pop up online. But the self-publishing bar, already democratically low, has just gotten much, much lower. Anyone can be a writer today. You don't even have to write a book; a machine will do it for you. Makes me nostalgic for those days of gatekeeping editors, but that horse has definitely left the barn. What is at risk is the whole ecosystem of human-created culture: the ability for an individual to craft a piece of creative work that is as unique to them as a fingerprint.

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In May we will discuss our first DESPERATE WRITER read-along book, Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer and assign our next one, to discuss in July. Tune in for our podcast!