About Writing and Authors

 I finished the first draft of my latest book last week. It is 109,000 words, so VERY long.

Editing is going to be so (not) fun.

Whine whine whine.

I don't like editing.

ANYWAY, along with being a writer, I am a big reader. I love to read good books. I am so thankful for all the authors out there who work hard and produce great content.

This week, I came across a little excitement in the literary world. A woman named Mia Ballard self published a horror book. Based on my understanding of the plot, it is a hideous book, but then I don't like horror. I am definitely not the target audience.

The only Steven King book I like is "On Writing" which is about... writing.

Anyway, Ballard's book was picked up by a major publisher, Hachette. All was barreling on toward a major release until various people, including someone at the New York Times, claimed that the book was mostly written by AI.

A lady who has a youtube channel called Frankie's Shelf did a 2 plus hour video on why she thinks the book (called Shy Girl) is AI slop.

I watched probably half of the video, because even hearing someone critiquing a very badly written horror novel is too intense for me. So I watched the first part until it started getting gory and then jumped to the end.

It is actually not trivial to figure out whether someone is writing using AI. AI analysis tools are notoriously uncertain.

BUT this book, Shy Girl, is so crazy that either the author is a truly dreadful writer, or she used AI for most of it.

Among other things, the book, which is like 210 pages long, uses the word "sharp" more than 150 times, often as part of a strange simile or metaphor which sounds sort of exotic until you think about the metaphor or simile, whereupon you conclude that it makes no sense.

I was convinced by Frankie's Shelf. This book is AI. Not that I would ever read it, of course, but it is fascinating, especially from the perspective of an author who has never used AI for anything in my writing.

(I think there might be appropriate uses for Chat GPT though telling it to write sucks. But I am kind of a Luddite where such things are concerned.)

Anyway, Hachette withdrew the publication. The author is saying things like, you are all mean to me, and maybe my editor used AI?

I am guessing the author had an idea for a horror novel and just plugged and chugged it into AI in the hopes of making a quick buck. And she did, and then it was picked up by a major publisher. 

Hachette should be ashamed of itself. When a book uses "sharp" 159 times in 210 pages, something is wrong.

I am confident that AI cannot write a good book. It takes human creativity and intelligence to generate a good plot, and keep track of details, and not use the same word way too often.

It is interesting because somehow Hachette was hoping to make money presumably and just took this book without really noticing the myriad problems. Like, did anyone, ANYONE, actually read it? LIke an editor? Because the writing sucks. (Again, based on parts read out on Frankie's Shelf.)

Speaking of bad writing...

I love cozy mysteries and I am always looking for new authors who write good cozy mysteries.

Yesterday I read part of one and skipped to the end after I found myself thoroughly annoyed by writing errors.

First error: The author shifted from first person to third person back to first person during one page. It read so oddly. I am doing this, I am doing that...

And then suddenly SHE is doing this or that.

Major error.

Then later the protagonist, (who is first person again) is sitting in a room eavesdroppping on a conversation in an adjacent room. She is listening through a door which is cracked open. The book proceeds to describe the movements of the people in the room beyond the door. That...doesn't work. With first person, the author needs to stick to the main character's thoughts and senses. She wouldn't be able to know what is happening visually in the next room.

It was so annoying I jumped to the end of the book to find out the villain.

And was annoyed further when the main character decided to confront the person she thought was the murderer (and she was right) and accepted a cup of tea from said murderer, who had killed someone else using poison...

Not surprisingly, main character was drugged and dying when the heroic police officer burst through the door to save her.

I cannot handle a heroine who is so STUPID as to confront a poisoner and accept tea from said poisoner. Wow.

Today I read a book where there was another major error in the plot.

I don't think I am getting more fussy with age. I don't think. I hate it when there are plot points that don't make sense.

Though to be fair, the great Dorothy Sayers once forgot a kid in her book "Clouds of Witness". There was a child who was introduced and then the parents were rampaging around doing things, and the kid was never mentioned again.

So every author makes mistakes. The ones these last two days were particularly egregious, or I am just cranky.

Of course, as an author, I make mistakes too, but I don't think I often screw up major plot points.

Also, I never ever use Chat GPT.