I’m about 80 pages into writing my book, although most of it is classified except for the first couple chapters.
But as noted before, it can be fun to see how AI interprets my writing.
Having just finished chapter 6 of my book, I decided to use Speechfy’s “podcast” feature to generate a late-night show about the chapter.
I find the results amusing. What do you think?
I’ve been working for weeks on a cover of this old @springsteen song to add to my small catalog of covers, playing and singing my own way, more shoegaze-style. 🎸 Dude must be a mad genius, because the song still barely makes sense to me. 😆 Stay “tuned”. #garageband #homerecording #springsteen #fender #guitar#music
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLxu1vQuz_J/?img_index=1
A couple of years ago, I decided to play with ChatGPT and have it write a blog post for me. The results, I wrote, were believable but super generic and cliched. They reminded me of like a blowhard who is good at showing off but not actually very smart.
Now we know that, despite all the computing power required, AI really isn’t that smart; this is why it requires way more training than a person does.
Although it can be a useful aid.
In that frame, it made me reflect in ways that AI has actually become useful while writing a novel.
And no, it’s not actually writing any of the book for me. I tried that today as a fun experiment, and it was still just… amusing. Here’s a sample, but it’s basically all like this.
Lena was gone. And with her, the version of James that believed love could be mapped, managed, or mutually agreed upon.
And so began that particular summer, where the tequila was cheap, the dreams were rented, and every good story started with a woman who left before the music stopped
Has AI gotten worse? 😆
Also note that ChatGPT somehow (by coincidence?) used the same protagonist name that I’m using in my book, although I did not give that name in the prompt. Interesting… 😤
Still, AI is actually amazing at a couple of things.
After writing a chapter of the book, I can feed the text into Speechify and instantly turn it into a really good audiobook. This is not just a basic Siri-style reading but a realistic voice with feeling. You can pick from a bunch of voices voice, including a few celebrities, although the founder “Cliff” is my favorite. It’s fun to listen to, and hearing your story interpreted in someone else’s voice is both instructive and fascinating.
I also like to use the summarize tool. Even the much maligned Apple Intelligence is helpful for simply summarizing a few paragraphs I just wrote. It’s a useful check to tell me if I’m getting the intended idea across, like, “Yeah, that’s what I meant,” or “Ohh, this needs work.” Like Speechify, it’s also just kind of fun to see what “someone” else thinks of your story.
Now that I finished up my first solo cover song, I wanted to get it out in the world. As Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship.” I’ve been working on that mindset for a while now and trying to show my work along the way.
To get my song out there where it can be streamed anywhere – via Siri, on the HomePod, in the car – I needed to pick an “artist” name to use on all the streaming services. It’s always fun to pick a band name, but I had set a rule for myself from experience messing around fruitlessly with friends in the past: first the music, then the name. You have to earn the name.
So I decided to go with The Coastal Service. 🙌 It’s sort of a play on The Postal Service, an amazing band with one of my favorite albums ever. I am not a Postal Service tribute band; their name just inspired an idea.
“The Coastal Service” is meant to invoke a sense of mystery and fog and awe and danger. It’s about meeting the ocean: like life, it’s big and dangerous and beautiful and meant to be explored.
I also like the idea that this fictional “coastal service” is there to serve humanity and is broader and more secretive and than, say, the US Coast Guard. It’s somewhat inspired by a Wes Anderson vibe, especially Moonrise Kingdom.
I also played around with some sketches on the iPad just for fun.
So there you go: The Coastal Service is born.
I still don’t know if I’m a real artist, but I did ship. 🚢
Here is a great quote by an interesting person who seemed to live by these words.
There’s no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
On the surface, Mr. Woollcott was a “drama critic”, which sounds like a horrible job to me. 😆
But he must have had something going on because he started the infamous Algonquin Round Table in 1920’s Manhattan, hosting Harpo Marx and Dorothy Parker, among others.
He grew up in poverty, served in World War I, and was a columnist in The New Yorker. You can still read his work there.
He even has a published book of letters about his life and the lives of his creative friends.” That sounds like a fun read.
Mental Break Town 