I know the climate crisis is kicking our collective ass, with heat domes in the south and biblical flooding in the northeast, but my lawn has never been greener during July and August. Twenty years ago, the lawn would be burned to a crisp and I could leave the mower in the shed until late September. Now I’m mowing twice a week. But we also took a hit of weather damage.
Two weeks ago, shortly after sending the previous Picayune, a short-lived but severe storm rolled through our suburb and wreaked havoc. Trees were felled in a ten-minute span. Four trees in our backyard snapped and crushed our fence in one place. The wind knocked another part of the fence flat. No one was hurt (as far as I know) but I have several thousands of dollars of damage in cleanup and repair.
Yes, I have insurance, but tree damage carries a large deductible and is capped shortly thereafter. I’m struggling, as you might imagine, with cleanup efforts.
Our damage is nothing compared to the recent tornadoes ravaging entire towns, and the floods destroying regions of the northeast. So this will not be a pity-party newsletter, despite this pitying beginning.
This Picayune will be about tools
I attempted to replace one of the snapped 4×4 posts in our fence and quickly realized I don’t have the right tool. I need to dig out the buried cement bulb which held the post in place. For the record, it’s easier to dig a hole and pour wet cement in the hole than it is to dig out the resulting cement bulb. I need a machine, or a magical tool, or something, to get that thing out of there.
Same with the limbs torn from the trees. Luckily, I got a tree guy, and he’s been out to the house twice to chainsaw the limbs and chip them up in his chipper. Massive, powerful tools that help you do the job.
Writers need tools too
About forty years ago was when I really, really wanted to become a writer. Over the course of a few months, I wrote a long story—which I thought was a novel—using my Commodore64 and a word processor called EasyScript. This was a case of the tool begetting the result; i.e., I had this machine which could help me write a story, so I wrote a story.
(The story was awful so please never ask me about it unless you saw me writing it, in which case I’ll entertain questions.)
For the next ten years, I read books about writing fiction, took classes, attended workshops, and kept writing. I graduated from that Commodore64 to a Tandy laptop with a slightly more sophisticated word processor.
A Better Tool
In 1994, I heard about a tool that was billed as an “idea processing machine.“ I forget its name, but they reviewed it in PC Magazine and the description sounded like it would solve all my problems as a writer. I promptly sent a check for $200 to the software company and they sent me a 3.5” disk.
The program worked, I guess, but it didn’t do shit for helping me process story ideas. I probably wasn’t alone, as the company went out of business a few weeks later despite the rave review in PC Magazine.
But it did not deter me from trying other tools.
Over the course of the next thirty years, I tried: Idea Fisher, Dramatica, Plot Master, and Evernote. If it promised to make me a better writer, I’d plunk down my cash and get busy installing. There’s probably half a dozen more I bought, used for a week, and discarded.
Currently, I use Scrivener and Obsidian. (They’re actually pretty good.)
The thing about tools is you have to know how to use them. Buying a nail gun and a power saw doesn’t mean you can build a house by yourself. You have to know how to build a house to build a house; tools merely speed things up.
Artificial Intelligence is the tool of tools
Recently, a slew of artificial intelligence-based tools has garnered a huge amount of attention. You may have heard of ChatGPT, which is still “free” as of this writing (requiring only that you sacrifice your identity and writing to the god of AI to use it). But there are dozens of products that help you formulate the magical prompt for the AI engine so that it spews forth words, images, sounds and video to your liking.
For instance, if you asked the AI:
“Oh great Artificial Intelligence, create a novel like it was written by a horny college student who is naïve, ignorant, and has the emotional intelligence of a bowling ball.”
…it would respond with the story I wrote back in 1983 on my Commodore64.
Will artificial intelligence take my job or what I love first?
I don’t worry that AI will take my job, at least not before I retire, but I will probably learn how to use it pretty soon. AI produces mediocre results, but a lot of damage can be done with mediocre anything.
I grew up watching lousy television in the 60s and 70s, but I watched as much as I could. I thought it was fucking great.
I’m certain that the next generation coming up from college will use it freely and often. It’s being built into products faster than you can say “Pandora’s Box,” so, really, the next generation won’t have a choice.
It comes down to the age-old question: Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or a horse-sized duck?
For a glimpse of what we face, here is some of the weird shit people are using ChatGPT for.
Good Enough for Prime Time
Eventually, the various AI tools will become “good enough” for prime time. That’s what the writers’ and actors’ strike is about. The studios would be fine flooding our world with mediocre, machine-generated stories. First, it would be dirt cheap to produce. A single prompt will soon create the novel, movie and soundtrack within days, if not hours or minutes.
Not long after that, a stupid idea by a studio executive fed into a story machine will generate all the writing, production, and marketing campaigns for “franchise” movies. Eventually, the CEO will realize he doesn’t need studio executives. He’ll have a nerd set up a website that allows “fans” to suggest the stories, and the next day the entire thing will be available to stream for a fee. Once that’s in place, the CEO will just need an army to drive the money trucks to the bank.
Those stories will be lousy, but they’ll just keep coming like thousands of duck-sized horses, stampeding across our streaming services.
If schlock is all that’s available, most of the public will watch because nothing better will be on. It will be like growing up in the 60s and 70s, except dumber. The production values will be off the charts with massive explosions, titillating sex and exotic locations. But forget the stories.
The stories generated by AI and shoved down our throats by the streaming plutocracies will be like the Thanksgiving pageant in Addams Family Values: puerile and under-dramatized, they will lack any sense of structure, character, or Aristotelian unities.
But there will be a sufficient mass of people watching, so no one will be able to resist. That’s when writing and storytelling will be at risk, and when writers and actors will wonder why they ever bothered.
Bringing it home
It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll manage. People elsewhere have bigger problems.
I’ll stretch the insurance dollars to take care of my yard. I’ll keep donating to those less fortunate, and I’ll keep working with Climate Changemakers (google them) to help bring about policy changes to save the world.
And I’ll keep writing my stories to share with my audience, no matter the size.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’m fully back in the swing of revising the novel and enjoying it. I know it’s taking a while, but my grandmother would spend hours baking a torte cake, using 24 eggs, and beating and whipping everything by hand. It was the best damn cake in the world.
That’s what I’m going for with this novel: it’ll be the torte cake of crime suspense.
Meanwhile, Little Old Lady Comedy has published a humor piece by me:
Please Don’t Feed the Bear at the Checkout Counter. He’s Angry.
Upcoming Books and Stuff
It’s about two young men who discover an all-powerful blue djin and battle for control of his powers in a Detroit Suburb in 1985. Kind of like I Dream of Jeannie meets The Office. It’ll be a quick read (like an hour, max).
I have it up for pre-sale at Amazon, and it’ll be free when it launches on September 12. Click here to check it out.
If you want to read it now, click here.
Maybe You’d Like
I’m joining with authors this week for a giveaway of Mysteries, Thrillers & Suspense:
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/bceUTyR
Recommended Reading
Because you’ve stuck it out this long, I’d like to share the accordion recital I mentioned in the last Picayune. The recital was 16 years ago. I can feel the tension in my chest still. Check it out here.
Next Picayune
Next time I’ll have another humor piece to share with you and I’ll start recruiting for Advanced Readers of the novel. Oh, and I’ll tell you to check out my novelette again.
Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune. All the best,
Mickey
P.S. Don’t be afraid to share The Mickey Picayune with the world.