I’m waiting for CT scan results and I thought it would be good to post this before I get distracted.

I’ve been writing and rewriting the work in progress which expands in size, decreases in size and expands again as I write on it. At the same time, I’ve found myself asking questions of myself as I write. For instance: I think I might have fallen into the trap of trying to write something that’s commercially in line with what’s already out there. You know: a nice hooky opening. Action and bam we are in the middle of the story. It’s not bad, but a part of me was raising an eyebrow and going: what did you want to achieve with that?

I am a bit of an over thinker and I found myself asking what I really enjoy about writing science fiction and fantasy. The answer really isn’t very deep. One of the reasons I enjoy science fiction and fantasy is how there’s this wild space where you get to imagine all kinds of strange or weird worlds that may or may not be related to this world.

Of course, I write about the things I’m passionate about and I write about matters that are on my mind and things I want to work through. But most of all, I love the freedom to create outside of the expectation that I will be writing about my culture or about my experience of displacement or as someone once said at a symposium I attended: I don’t want to tell you another story about my pain.

Perhaps the most freeing thing we can do is to unshackle ourselves from the having to be something and instead embrace what gives us joy and freedom. For example, I’m invested in the furniture of strange worlds and I enjoy the experience of wandering through it in a documentary film kind of way. Oh look, shiny curtains. What are they made of? Oh wow. They’re alive. These plants can tell stories: I’ll sit here and let the trees talk to me now. (I confess, I also do this in real life.)

But as I progressed, I realised that my first draft wasn’t really all that great. It was fun, but it was kind of meh. So, I asked myself a few more questions: Oh hey, Rochita, I know your subconscious does this for you most of the time, but let me ask you if you are aware of who the stakeholders are in your world? I had a short laugh at how I progressed from “yay, sentient furniture” to “here’s my project proposal”. But also, I find myself thinking of how it’s not just about the motions of living, it’s the why are you living there and how are you living there. There’s a part of me that thinks back to the conversations had around the table as we discussed TTRPG creation and where I asked out loud if villains or enemies or oppressors were a necessity in story. (I know I’m gonna eat my question because I’m not sure if a big world story is possible without one of those things coming up and even if the conflict comes organically from the direction of ‘player A does not recognise your innate ability to become an amazing superhero’, there is still going to be an acting opposition, right?)

In the midst of all this wrestling, I read an article penned by someone (I forgot who) where they write about this experiment they did with an AI writing machine while working on a column. They were using a particular program and they fed it with a prompt and with an instruction to check out their blog and write something in the same style and voice. The machine spit out something which the writer then proceeded to rewrite and adjust and by the end of it the only things left over from what the machine had given her were articles like a and the. It was rather fascinating to observe the writer defending the use of an LLM because they ended up writing their column in under an hour instead of more than an hour. A part of me was like: Uh…I’m not so sure why you did this exercise, but it seems to me sitting down and writing the entire thing on your own would have been better. (Also, damn girl, you are a good writer. Why would you do that to yourself?)

I think about the journey I’m taking with this work in progress and how I’m discovering the world as it unfolds on the page and how there are bits of the world that I’m writing now that will likely not make it to the final cut, because I’ve already put them in my notepad under the header: cuts. But I really really like those bits and I had so much fun writing them. (I’m having some thoughts around waste and intentionality and how using an LLM in this way makes me think of landfills and fast fashion. I know. It’s how my brain works.)

After my last posting (How thinking of language leads to thinking about other things) a friend asked me how we could possibly escape the machine if the machine also copies our imperfections. I thought about this for quite a while and then I was reminded of the various movements in the art world and how all of these movements were a fighting against and a coming up against and a wrestling with what is established. History tells a story of invention and reinvention, of how there are always ways of escaping something that becomes establishment and the norm and also I find myself thinking about impositions and how artists don’t really like impositions. So I find myself rather invested in what our answer to this question will be. (If you have any thoughts on it, I’d be interested in them.)

In the meantime, I thought I’d share the link to a weirdly wonderful story which involves playing with language from my lovely friend Weegbree. If you have time, do click to read Brood/Pain/Pan: A Breadtale in Three Movements.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and Agayamanac Unay for passing by.