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Why I’m Live-streaming My Next Writing Project

When my latest book, Mastodon For Dummies, was released, several people on social media commented that it was “probably written by AI.” These comments infuriated me much more than a bad review ever has. Bad reviews often contain information that can help me to do better next time, and I’ve been lucky (or good enough) that the number of truly bad reviews I’ve gotten on my writing is fairly small. If people start to assume that any book on a currently hot topic was written by AI, it might be time for me to hang up my keyboard.

None of the people who commented that the book was “probably AI” even looked at the book. If they had, they would have found that it contains humor, subtlety, good writing, and sensitivity to emotions and frustrations that human learners frequently have. AI isn’t capable of authentically reproducing any of these characteristics of a good “For Dummies” book.

Suggesting that a book I wrote (or co-wrote in this case) wasn’t written by humans discounts the hundreds of hours of difficult and creative work that’s informed by over 20 years of experience (for each of the authors in the case of this book) and the meticulous and exhausting editing process the book receives after the first draft of the manuscript is finished.

Most book authors don’t make a living from it. We have day jobs, and writing a book is often at least 40 more hours of work per week on top of a 40 hour work week at a job we wish we didn’t have to do. I’ve calculated that my average book has earned me less than $10 per hour — and I’m a somewhat successful author.

As a response to anyone who would question whether my books are written by me, I’ve decided to live stream the entire process of writing my next book. In each exciting episode of “Watch Chris Write a Book” (working title), you’ll get to see me at my desk from 2am to 7am (at least) every day for 6 months. In each gripping episode, you’ll get to see a real person doing some or all of the following things: typing, researching, planning, outlining, coding, and drinking a lot of coffee.

I don’t have another book project lined up at this point, because I need to make some money for a couple months to get ready. But, I have a couple proposals out and I’ll post an update here and on Mastodon with the link where you can watch me when I do have a new project. Unless some better solution comes along, I expect that live-streamed book writing may even become the norm for any (human) author.

Mastodon For Dummies: the most important book I’ve written.

From time to time, I get copied on mass emails from my agent looking for an author for a book on a specific topic. In early November 2022, I got such an email. Wiley was looking for someone to write Mastodon For Dummies.

I wrote my proposal that night, in spite of being in the thick of writing a 900-page programming book that was pretty much consuming every waking minute of my life. My proposal was accepted, and I was teamed up with Mike McCallister so the book could be written as quickly as humanly possible.

I jumped at this opportunity because I desperately want Mastodon to continue to grow and be successful, and this was a way that I could contribute to its success. I wrote my part of the book in two weeks, and the book was written, edited, published, and in stores in under 3 months — a crazy fast turnaround in the world of book publishing. It’s a really good book, too — thanks to a great co-author, editor, technical editor, production editor, copyeditor, and a team of people that’s far larger than I even know.

When I wrote my proposal and outline for the book, Elon Musk was in the process of destroying Twitter, and people were looking for an exit. Mastodon became the most popular option for “Twitter refugees” who wanted a social media site where they could post and read short messages, but without the negativity and extreme manipulation of their feeds that’s come to characterize Twitter under Musk.

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is open source, completely free to use, and not controlled by a billionaire. In fact, Mastodon isn’t controlled by any single person or company. Instead, Mastodon is mostly built and operated by volunteers who feel strongly about creating a space where speech truly is free.

The problem, however, is that there’s a perception that signing up for and using Mastodon is more difficult than signing up for and using other social media sites. Mike and I and the team at Wiley were determined to do what we could to change this.

Mastodon For Dummies is the first book about Mastodon, and it gives simple-to-follow instructions for everything you’ll want to do on Mastodon. It starts with a quick overview of how Mastodon is different from other social media sites and then goes into a wide range of topics, including:

  • How to sign up for Mastodon
  • How to find your friends and make new friends on Mastodon
  • How to create posts, favorite posts, and boost other people’s posts
  • How to curate your Mastodon feed (because there’s no algorithm that’s going to do it for you!)
  • How (and whether) to conduct business on Mastodon
  • How to set up your own Mastodon server

What excites me most about Mastodon is that it feels like the World Wide Web I fell head-over-heels in love with in 1993. It’s a community of people who are having conversations and sharing their interests and ideas in an advertising-free environment without having their actions monitored and tracked. For the most part, people on Mastodon are friendly and aren’t trying too hard to sell you on themselves or something else. Every post by someone you follow shows up on your feed — in the order in which they were posted. It’s simple, but liberating, to be in complete control over what you see and don’t see.

The best part is that the creators of Mastodon aren’t going to sell it or suddenly start charging $8 per month or sell your personal information to make money off advertising — and they couldn’t if they wanted to.

The book is now in every store and on every website that sells computer books. If you want to support and become part of an authentic community on the Internet without being at the mercy of a mega-corporation or eccentric billionaire — please check out the book from your local library, independent bookstore, or even Amazon.com.

If you have any questions about Mastodon that aren’t covered in the book, please email me (chris at minnick dot com), or direct message me on Mastodon!

Okay, I’ll give you my thoughts on ChatGPT

It’s the topic du jour, and since I was the person who predicted the path we’re now on, I’ve been getting some requests for my thoughts about OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is currently busy cranking out thousands of poorly-written articles about itself for publication by every news outlet in the world.

I’ve ignored every request to comment on ChatGPT, including on whether it should be welcomed into schools or blocked, whether this means the end of Google, how it will change SEO, and whether ChatGPT will mean the end of human-to-human relationships as people find out they enjoy being lied to by a computer much more than by another person.

I’m not quite ready to write my thoughts on how ChatGPT will cause the end of the world or bring about a work-free future of leisure and bad novels that never end, but I have some observations about my reaction to playing around with it that I’d like to share.

Observation #1: I don’t want it

As someone who has just come off a year of writing and editing three books about computer programming, at a rate of approximately $10/hour, I hate that any reader or editor might look at what I’ve written and say, “Why did we pay Chris $10/hour to write about JavaScript when we could have had ChatGPT do it for free?” Or, even worse, I fear that the day will come when an editor or publisher says to me, “You write so fast. Are you having ChatGPT write your books now?”

To attempt to head off both things: Can AI make spelling and coding errors like I can? I don’t think so! I can type really fast (thanks 7th grade!) and I’m sort of dyslexic, so I don’t notice that I’ve reversed words or substituted “futon” for “function” (as in “JavaScript futons are objects”), and my writing not only keeps me employed, it also keeps a giant fleet of expert copyeditors, technical editors, proofreaders, and Amazon reviewers gainfully employed. Give my projects to artificial intelligence and you might as well kiss your job goodbye too.

Observation #2: I’m an old fuddy-duddy

As someone who tries to keep an open mind about things, I struggle with the following probabilities and conflicting feelings:

  1. A world in which someone can type any garbage prompt into ChatGPT and get back a grammatically correct, if not factually correct, response, or where someone can tell ChatGPT to express their half-baked ideas (or worse) in a coherent way will likely lead to a world in which learning to write is no longer valued.
  2. A world in which ChatGPT is baked into Gmail and MS Word is a world in which I won’t have to gag from seeing so much bad writing every day.
  3. Kids today are dumb and they’re just going to get dumber.

I never wanted to be the person who grows up to say that kids today have it easy, but there you have it. I’ve worked with people who think tracing a cartoon or otherwise copying someone else’s drawing is the same as making their own art. People have claimed to be “computer geniuses” in job interviews with me who list the fact that they know how to post on Instagram as proof. Arrg.

Observation #3: I could use this

If you know what you’re doing and how machine learning works, and how to distinguish truth from fiction, and how to write code, and how to write English, AI tools can actually be helpful for generating ideas or for triggering creativity.  There are plenty of possibilities that I’ve considered, and I’ve even used AI to assist me with writing the type of mindless code that counts more as typing than actually coding. It’s even saved me time. But, would I trust AI to write a computer program in a language I don’t know inside and out? Would I let AI write something I’d ever submit to a publisher? Would I ever accept that giving ChatGPT a prompt and pasting the result on your web site or into MS Word is in any way a creative act? No.

Conclusion

A lot of articles about ChatGPT today end with conclusions similar to “Well, it’s a great tool, but you can’t rely on things it writes to be factually correct. So therefore, we’ll all still have jobs forever.” That’s not the way I see it. The “factually correct” part is the easiest part to fix, and it will be fixed as soon as someone hooks an AI like ChatGPT up to Google.

Unlike every ChatGPT-generated article I’ve seen, I’m not going to tie this up in a neat little summary. I’ll write more and talk more about my latest end-of-the-world scenario soon.

Chris Answers Questions About Writing

People often ask writers about their daily schedules, hoping to get some nugget of advice that’s going to help them finally start or finish the novel they’ve been planning. I totally understand where this question is coming from, and I ask the same question of anyone who manages to exercise on a regular basis. Writing can be difficult, and a different perspective or the right advice can sometimes make it easier.

I’m the kind of writer who really likes to tell stories (often conflicting) about the things that I do and don’t do — so I have fun with this question. I never mean to mislead anyone or give out bad advice…I think the things I say make sense…for example: “write without pants on before 6am, edit with pants on after 6pm”. But, take everything I say on this matter with a grain of salt, because I’d be some sort of crazy robot if I actually followed my own advice half the time.

There was an article I read recently where someone tried to actually follow the routines that various authors claimed they followed…but he wasn’t willing to follow through with Hunter S. Thompson’s supposed routine and so the article was sort of lame.

At any rate, I make up stories about how I write, and here’s the latest installment, with some other fun questions and answers too. This is from Nancy Christie’s series of interviews called One on One: Insights Into The Writer’s Life.

What writing death notices taught me about writing

smallnoticeI’ve been a professional writer for 22 years. The first time my writing was published was in 1993, when I was the circulation manager for a small weekly newspaper in Detroit. The full-time reporters considered the job of writing death notices to be beneath them, and shoved it off onto me.

I loved it. Each week, the death notice forms would come in from the funeral homes, along with the remembrance ads from the spouses and loved ones of the recently, or not so recently, departed. Some notices stuck to just the facts: Mr. Volchuck died March 18 at Holy Cross Hospital. He’s survived by his daughter, Anna, and his son, Leon.

Other notices would feature bible verses. Occasionally there would be a line or two of bad poetry or some clip art selected from a binder that was kept at the front desk.

Some death notices would give a bit more information about the person than just the names of their spouses, children, and grandchildren. For example, Jan Kowalski played football for University of Detroit and worked at GM for 30 years.

My job was to put each death notice into a standard format, get the facts and spelling right, and have it all ready to go to paste up (the paper was pasted up when I first started working there) in time for the Tuesday night press run.

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The structure of death notice had been the same for the entire 75+ year history of the paper: Last name, first name, middle initial, location, date of death, survived by wife (nee maiden name), children, grandchildren, location and date / time of services.

Although the policy was to stick to the standard format and keep it as dry as possible, I would routinely include as much information into each death notice as I could. A death notice is a very different thing, with a very different purpose, from an obituary. But, I treated each notice as an opportunity to try to fit an obituary into around 50 words.

The challenge of squeezing human details or touching words into whatever small amount of space was left after listing the grandchildren was one that I was particularly fond of and good at.

The readership skewed towards elderly Polish-Americans. They were notorious gossips and wanted to know everything about everyone else’s troubles, illnesses, and ultimate undoing. The paper, however, had a policy of not printing the cause of death.

I was a 22-year old on a break of indeterminate length from college. Full of unearned self-assuredness, I argued with the editor-in-chief and publisher — who had a collective 40+ years of newspaper experience between them — that the cause of death should be listed in death notices whenever it’s included on the form.

Death notices were one of the most-read parts of the paper in this community. Listing the cause of death, I argued, would make the notices even more popular. The publisher considered it tacky to mention the cause of death, and pointed out that doing so would require additional research and permissions from survivors. I eventually saw that the trouble of printing the cause of death wasn’t worth the effort, and my crusade for openness ended there.

From this first experience with being published and having my writing distributed I learned to be concise, to always be thinking about the audience, and to do quality work while balancing the effort and rewards. These are vital skills for any writer to have, and I would encourage anyone who is just getting started as a writer to spend some time practicing the art of writing death notices.

My Writing Cave Quest

A couple months ago, I started a writing group. My vision for the group was that once a week, my writer friends and I would get together to write, talk about writing, act stupid, and share stories. I named the group the Hemingway and Gump School of Writing.

I chose a location that served beer and coffee and that was fairly centrally located in midtown Sacramento. I scheduled the first meeting and invited all of my friends who are writers or who aspire to be writers.

No one showed.

I had a great time and got more fiction writing done than I had in a long time. So, I scheduled it again for the same time and same place the next week.

Again, no one showed up and I was really productive and stumbled home after a few hours of writing and drinking beers by myself.

The next week, one other person showed up and I was much less productive. But, it was fun!

After a while, though, I started to feel like the location and the place I had selected for writing wasn’t the best. The mix of people drinking coffee (probably 85%) and people drinking beer (me) felt strange and I wanted a more mellow scene.

I planned a writing crawl with my trusted friend and counsel, Jeff, to seek out a new location for the writing group. The idea was that we would walk around Sacramento with our laptops, and have a drink and write something in as wide a variety of places as possible.

On the planned day of the crawl, I headed to my local coffee shop (Naked Lounge) to warm up and await Jeff. Unfortunately, Jeff wasn’t able to make it out on the morning of the crawl. So, I decided to embark upon the crawl alone.

What follows is the journal of my quest to find the perfect writing location in midtown Sacramento.

My first stop was Naked Lounge, at 15th and Q.

Naked serves coffee of all sorts, plus some pastries. I had an iced coffee and sat at a small table and worked on a sidebar to Chapter 1 of Coding JavaScript for Kids. Naked has free and open wi-fi (no need to ask for a password), there are plenty of places to plug a laptop in, no one minds if you hang out for hours, the coffee is excellent, and the atmosphere is good for morning or early afternoon. The tables are a bit small and it’s often pretty crowded, however.

After I finished my sidebar and coffee, I moved on. My next stop was University of Beer, on 16th Street. University of Beer has 100 beers on tap and some nice picnic tables outside where you can sit quietly and type. There was nowhere to plug in, and the wi-fi was password protected (and I didn’t feel like asking for the password). This places gets pretty crowded at night, so I don’t imagine it would be a good regular night-time writing spot. However, I wrote my company’s weekly newsletter and had a delicious New Glory Brewery American Country Saison.

At this point, I was getting hungry, so I headed across the street to Uncle Vito’s Pizza. Uncle Vito serves pizza by the slice and has a good selection of beers on tap at great prices. I ordered two slices of pepperoni and a Lagunitas Lil’ Sumpin. Everything was delicious. They don’t have wifi that I could detect, but the University of Beer wifi signal was strong from where I was sitting.

I started writing this blog post while waiting for my pizza, then ate my pizza and enjoyed the atmosphere and beer without writing. Vito’s might not be the best place to get writing done (it’s small, and I didn’t feel like I could sit for a long time and type), but so far it’s tops on my list for places to get together with other writers and not write.

My next stop was to be the Sheraton Grand. I like hotel lobby bars, and the one at the Sheraton Grand in downtown Sacramento is a particularly nice one. Unfortunately, there was some sort of fitness convention going on and the place was mobbed. So, I walked through and continued on.

My next stop, the Hyatt Regency on L Street did not disappoint. The bar was empty and has plenty of comfortable seating. The beer list is severely limited, but they also have food, free wi-fi, places to plug a laptop in, and high ceilings to look at while pondering what the hell to write next. I wrote the rest of this blog post up to this point at the Hyatt while drinking two Rubicon Monkey Knife Fights.

Could this be the place? No, probably not…although I have enjoyed my time here. Time to move on to the next spot. Stay tuned.