I’ve been working a lot these days and this idea came to me while I was volunteering, wrapped up in layers during the rain. Please enjoy: The UnderArk.

While I’m sure this has been done to death, I wanted to talk a little about the applications of AI in the creative space. We’ve all seen those posts online about “I made a bot watch 5,000 of Hell’s Kitchen and had it write an episode” and allowed a sigh of relief. “At least computers won’t take away jobs from novelists and TV writers,” we laugh and move on with our day.

However, Artificial Intelligence has been created to generate any text. Students can get computer software to write complete essays, songs can be written to mimic certain artists and their genre styles, and people have even submitted full AI-written short stories to major fiction magazines like Asimov. It feels a little bit backward that we’re using something that has the ability to do so much of our work to give us more leisure and creative time as something to create so we have more work time. It makes me feel a bit odd about our trajectory as a creative in society.

This is not to say “Technology is Evil and Edison is a witch.” I’m writing this on my computer and I use technology in a million ways throughout my day. I think the question isn’t “should we have AI working in classically ‘human’ arenas?” but “How can we work with AI?”

With the rise of all the AI-generated art out there, I do worry about what it will mean for our future as a society. It’s easy to set up a program that will scan the internet for various features of paintings, analyze songs for musical patterns, and–yes–even write whole books based on a single sentence prompt. But what is the value of that? Without going into the ethics of copyright and ownership (which is a whole different subject I’m not qualified to speak on), are these pieces of ‘art’ worth our time? Beyond the novelty of ‘AI-Generated Profile Pics’ or something similar, how long will these endure the test of time? Will we be looking at these the same way we look at the Mona Lisa or The Birth of Venus? They’re cool tricks, but I don’t think they’ll ever properly replace human talent and creativity. In the future, it could exist, but I really hope humans don’t lose the passion to create ourselves when a computer can do it the same way. Will we be advertising ‘No Machine Novels’ or ‘Code-Free Art’ as an alternative? I can’t say for sure.

I certainly hope that we don’t lose sight of how writing binds us together as humans. We always talk about how humans are more ‘advanced’ than animals. Some people say it’s empathy, some people say it’s tool use, and some people claim it’s the moment we walked upright that sets us apart. Truthfully, I believe it is our ability to create and tell stories. From oral traditions around the fire and cave paintings to digital art and blogs, we have always been a species that thrives on the idea of stories and creation.

The truth is, we already use AI as writers a lot. A basic spelling and grammar check requires some amount of AI and there are all kinds of writing prompt generators out there that use formulas to derive everything from character names to ideas for novels. We have AI to help us edit our work into something more concise and comprehensive, we have software that can proofread our work. All of these things are crucial to any writer with a pulse. In my mind, we should use AI as a companion to our creative endeavors, not as authors.

This one came from an idea I had for a D&D character’s backstory. Enjoy this snippet of history from “The Bessrin Wood Company”!

For this month, I went for a prompt that was ‘hitchhiker’. I thought about putting the context into something a bit more fantasy driven. Not quite full on fantasy, but an older version of a hitchhiker. I also wanted to try playing with some context-based worldbuilding. Enjoy!

I’m a big fan of podcasts. I listen to them when I drive, filling my commute with entertainment rather than the usual ads and making the morning walk a little more tolerable. I listen to a lot of comedy and news podcasts, but I also offset that with a little extra writing talk. I don’t know many writers in real-life that I can talk shop with, so listening to other people talk about writing lets me learn in the precious moments when I can listen.

There are many, many, many writing podcasts out there. Here are a few of my favorite writing and storytelling podcasts as well as a few that I’m looking forward to trying in the future!

First up, Writing Excuses. In my opinion, this should be on every writer’s podcast library. Writers like Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, and a plethora of other guests talk about various writing subjects including plot development, story structure, the business of writing, and more! One thing that I really love about this podcast is the ‘Homework’ section at the very end. It’s a good jumping off point to get the writing juices flowing. There’s also a book of the week with a never ending list of good suggestions for a wide net to cast for your reading list.

Next, Lore. This was one of the first podcasts that really got me hooked on the medium. I love a good, spooky legend. Lore has always been an endless font of inspiration. Pretty much every time I listen to this podcast I’ll come up with a new story idea. The show is well-researched and equally educating and entertaining. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to try their hand at something a little spooky and wants a good jumping off point.

LeVar Burton Reads is another really good show, specifically from a learn by reading standpoint. I always love the stories that LeVar chooses. They’re always entertaining, often funny, and (as someone who grew up with Reading Rainbow) LeVar’s reading voice is top notch. Whenever I work on writing short fiction, I try to imagine how LeVar would read it on the show. The stories are always enjoyable and the podcast is just long enough for me to enjoy on my way to work.

My Brother, My Brother and Me is far from what I’d call a writing podcast, but hear me out. I write first thing in the morning and like having some background noise to try and keep me a bit more focused. I love this particular podcast because I call it ‘The Bit Show’. Three brothers talk in the framework of an “Advice Show”. I love listening to this while writing because I can tune in and out and not feel like I’ve missed anything.

Start with This is a show I’m eager to start listening to one of these days. It’s another one of those shows that presents the listener with some media to consume and a writing prompt to walk away with.

The Mycreant Podcast is a place for dissecting speculative fiction, both pre-existing and the technical aspects of storytelling. Looking at their blog, it seems like it’s something right up my alley as a combination of nerdy talk and writing talk. I’m gonna start listening to this one on my morning walks to see if it satisfies that itch for nerdy talk in my life.

I’ve spent a lot of time hiking this summer (it feels like one of the few things people can really do these days). I started thinking on one hike about how it would be so easy to get lost if I stopped paying attention and then thought about how wild it would be if the trees tried to trap me there. Eventually, that thought blossomed into a character and this is an attempt at putting that character on paper. Enjoy!

I saw a post going around suggesting that, with the existence of Tooth Fairies, there would logically be Bone Fairies. So I decided to see what makes the bone fairy so different from their more docile cousins. Please enjoy The Bone Fairy!

We all had the monster that lived under our bed or in our closet when we were growing, but they were imagined by the mind of a child…right?