I woke up this morning with a great idea on how to revise a chapter I’m working on. By the end of today, it’s going to be much better. This doesn’t happen by accident. Here’s how to prepare properly so lightning can strike. What must be in place for an inspiring rewrite Before an inspiring…
Newsletter 41: When you subtract AI from writing, what’s left is creativity; ending garbage books; remembering Daniel Dennett; surprising truths about book sales; plus three people to follow and three books to read. Soon, only creative writers will remain. Huzzah! There are things AI excels at. Summarizing long documents. Finding patterns. Turning formulaic content into…
Great writers, thinkers, and researchers see patterns that others cannot. They then tell you about what they see and what you can do about it. Of course, of the things AI is best at is recognizing patterns. Does this mean writers, thinkers, and researchers are going to become obsolete? Not quite. First off, people see…
People believe there are two ways to accomplish something creative. The first is to beaver away for hours, weeks, months, making steady progress until you reach your goal. The other, of course, is to have the bolt-from-the-blue inspiration. A-ha! One moment you’re stuck, the next you have an incredible idea. But that’s wrong. How inspiration…
One of the most creative things I do is to help authors select titles and subtitles for their books. While doing a book titling brainstorm yesterday, I asked the AI writing tool ChatGPT to come up with suggestions; it did a creditable job and generated some subtitle text we may end up using. But is…
John Logan, the scriptwriter behind two of the latest James Bond movies, is worried that when Amazon buys MGM, it will ruin 007. But data and corporate control doesn’t necessarily ruin creativity. It all depends on who’s making the creative decisions. John Logan’s lament for 007 Here’s some of what John Logan, co-writer of “Skyfall”…
Whether you’re doing a blog, a podcast, a video series, or a book, it had better include new information. Otherwise, don’t bother. This is, after all, the era of social media. If you like what somebody else wrote or posted, you can easily share it on Twitter or Facebook. Posting stuff that isn’t new is…
Creativity emerges from the interplay of wonder and rigor. That is the central message of The Creativity Leap, a fantastic little book by Natalie Nixon. She taps into a background in cultural anthropology and fashion to create a book that struck me as somehow fundamental, connected to the core of what it means to be…
The intersection of human evil and Facebook algorithms has created the evil-amplifying social networks we now share. Facebook says AI can solve the problem. So far, it can’t. If it ever does, heaven help us. The New York Times published a revealing profile of Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s CTO. He’s the man whom Mark Zuckerberg has…