fiction writing
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Post-OU Annual Report
I left the OU a year ago, so have been reflecting on how that year has gone. Because I’ve been missing writing all those monthly, annual, random, reports, here is my Annual Report to be submitted to the funding council (ie me). With tongue a bit in cheek, I’ve adapted the format from an annual report that I used to prepare for a research funder for Post-OU Martin Inc. Key Metrics Outcome Indicator Target Progress to Target Comments Novel Words writtenNovels published 70,000 words1 novel published 70K writtenPublished by end Sept Instagram account FollowersPosts 1000 followers200 posts 1491 followers238 posts Developed aesthetic and style Running RacesDistance 1 half marathon 3…
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AI in creative writing
I’m generally against using AI to creative ends, as I’ve mentioned several times, for me it kind of defeats the point. The creativity you are engaging in is the thing. However, I’ve been writing a psychological horror novel over the past few months though, and I though I’d experiment with it. I was at around 60,000 words, so there was a big chunk of content to play with. I like writing so the intention here was more to understand uses of AI than to ease any writing. My conclusions are therefore more about general lessons we can learn about AI than writing. I tried Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini with various…
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Monthly round-up March 25
(Teilo was my writing buddy this month) I’ll say this for Trump and Musk – when they make things go to shit, they make things go to shit fast. It seems strange to think of the world order back in January, that seems like the 1970s now. Like many people I’ve been divesting myself of support for American billionaires. On a regular basis we already have a network of independent local providers for a lot of products and services. But I’m a lazy consumer often, I admit, and Amazon had become the default for miscellaneous products. Now that I’m eschewing it, I’m reminded of when the web was still relatively…
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Writing and reinvention
(Image shows a Scare Devil from the Nicobar Islands – courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/maggiejones/7142224553) As you might guess from my last post, I’m going through something of an introspective phase at the moment. This was to be expected after leaving my place of employment for 30 years, but I think is also exacerbated by a) my field of ed tech becoming essentially only about AI, which doesn’t excite me much and b) the whole Trumpian dismantling of existing global norms within which I thought I would be operating. This means I’ve been going through something of a reinvention dialogue with myself (and Maren, and the poor dogs). I expect I am…
