Tag: writing

Misadventures With AI

I hate to admit I’ve used AI to do anything when there are authors who are using AI to write entire books. I can guarantee you I have way too much ego to do that. By that, I mean that I value my own writing voice too much to sanitize it with a whitewashed tone. I will also continue hiring a real artist to create my book covers, my friend Clorinda Fresquez-Tria. I also will continue to hire an editor who has a human brain and can make sense or not make sense of writing that comes from a real human mind. In the future, I plan to hire real voice actors to narrate my books for audio. Right now, I can’t afford it. Someday, I will be able to and until that time, I refuse to cut corners and create AI audiobooks. I hate AI vocal timbers. The closer they come to real human voices, the worse they are. You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure, because companies are using AI voices for their ads on YouTube videos and they are as annoying as heck.

However, AI is really great at scanning my own human-written 120,000 work novel and summarizing it. You can read the blurb it came up with here. Last week, I was equally inspired to use AI to create my characters. This is where my misadventures with AI came in.

As I created images, the AI program learned to develop blocks that wouldn’t allow me to ask for certain parameters. For example, I was allowed initially to specify ethnicities such as “Polish priest” or “Mexican delivery driver.” I even got away with asking AI to make my Mexican character look more indigenous Mexican rather than Spanish. Oh, boy. Then, it gave me a speech about not using ethnic stereotypes in images when I asked it to create the Irish secretary. It was the word “Irish” it didn’t like. Okay. It suggested, instead, that I use descriptors like “red hair and freckles.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that an Irish stereotype? Once that block appeared, I couldn’t get away with using any ethnic descriptors and had to get really cagey with how I was asking it to create people: “maintenance man from the Southwest” or “electrical engineer at a norteño party in the Southwest.”

When I wanted my electrical engineer to be in his backyard holding his child to denote that he works from home and has children, it eventually developed a block that wouldn’t allow me to request an adult and a child in an image together, even though I was asking only for innocent images. It told me I could have a picture of a child alone in a yard or an adult alone in a yard, but not both together. Naturally, I asked it if it thought it was better for a child to be left unsupervised in a yard, and it told me it could not make moral statements about leaving children alone, only that it couldn’t get around the block that didn’t allow it to create an image of an adult with a child in the same image.

The next block I came across was regarding age. It had made my nineteen-year-old character look about thirty, so I asked it to make him a few years younger. My character suddenly became ten. I asked it to make him look nineteen again, and it developed a block that claimed that it couldn’t assume traits or features based on age, despite that there is actual science behind age progression. Sigh. AI is a hassle, but it became a weird obsession for me last week. See what you think of how I did getting around the blocks and describing my characters.

  • Hector
  • Arora
  • Kevin
  • Lorenzo
  • Wilford
  • Paco Doble
  • Stephen
  • Fr. Bartek
  • Detective Grazia

Las libélulas doradas

The last two evenings while playing my accordion, I witnessed clouds of gold hovering in front of my house, stretching across the street. I rose and stepped up to the large front window so I could see what the clouds of gold were. They were dragonflies, hundreds of them. I’ve never witnessed hundreds of golden dragonflies before; it was as if I’d entered into another realm or a place of spirit or magic, made even more magical by the glinting of sunlight flashing on my accordion. If only I were a visual artist I might capture my golden accordion flashing with lights surrounded by these dragonflies, and it would be a powerful image of something intangible. Sadly, I’m not.

Please believe me; I’m not an occultist. I’m a Christian, which means I firmly believe in the realm of the spirit, and I also believe God communicates to us through both natural and supernatural means. That is, dragonflies are part of the natural world, just as butterflies are. If you’ve been following me for long enough, you already know white butterflies have been an important symbol to me. When I’m being silly, I call them angels, but I truly believe God has used white butterflies as a means of encouragement and confirmation in my life numerous times, whether they are angels or not. Did I mention there was a dearth of white butterflies during the pandemic? I can’t explain it, but that was the reality. They’ve all but disappeared now, as well, when they are usually numerous at the start of August. Of course, the heat has been record breaking this year, and I don’t expect the usual to occur under such extremes.

Perhaps preparing to work on my delivery driver book, last night I dreamed I was working alongside my character. We were in the warehouse loading the delivery truck together; we drove around in his sweet personal truck together (yes, I gave him a 1978 Silverado because I’m benevolent to my characters); we went to the gym together later in the evening. At the gym, a few golden dragonflies flew around us, and the voiceover that’s been prominent in my dreams lately said, “The time of butterflies is past. Now is the time of dragonflies.” Laugh if you want, but that’s what my dream narrator said. And surprise — I just glanced up from my screen and a lone golden dragonfly flitted through the front yard.

I love to consider such ideas of the natural and supernatural meeting — of a God who created beauty and gave us a spiritual life as well as an intellectual one. I can’t imagine what it would be like to dwell only in the intellectual. Even though that is a human tendency, I’ve tried to push myself to discover the world that exists outside my head, not to mention the one that dwells in the places normal eyes can’t see. In Ephesians 1:18, the epistle writer says, “Open the eyes of their hearts, and let the light of Your truth flood in. Shine Your light on the hope You are calling them to embrace. Reveal to them the glorious riches You are preparing as their inheritance.” I want the eyes of my heart to be open to all the riches, all the wonders God has prepared for me. It’s a different seeing; it’s not superstitious, and the riches are not of this world. But what is the truth of dragonflies? I don’t know. Butterflies brought and still bring, as far as I’m concerned, a sense of hope for the future. Perhaps dragonflies are a different kind of hope — a more mature one. I don’t want to overthink it. Finis. May God bless your week.

When Everything’s a Mess

Let me tell you about the writing process. There comes a point where everything is a mess. Chaos ensues in the mind, and there doesn’t appear to be an exit. My writing method doesn’t help much, as it amounts to “write a 1000 words a day towards the plot and idea you’ve constructed.” At the end of 100 days, what do you have? You have 100,000 words that need structure and organization and editing. After 200 days…. Well, you get the idea. Thankfully, none of my books will ever be over 150k as the outside number. Few people want to read a doorstop. I have three books at this stage of mess: my delivery-driver detective/ghost story, the Albuquerque breakdancing cyberpunk story called either Breakin’ Good or Breakin’ lo bueno (depending on the day), and the sequel to the Roswell alien book already published (Order of the PenTriagon).

The book that was at the closest point of completion was the breakdancing tale. However, I became consumed with my fabulous idea to have a delivery driver be an amateur detective, due to this stalwart sort knowing where everyone lives and what they order, at least if orders don’t have privacy packaging. They are expected to be in neighborhoods, their vehicles parked in front of houses, and they wear innocuous clothing. Because I have a tendency to only write absurdities, I changed my driver from UPS to an invented company called PDEX (Package Delivery Express), whose signature colors are dayglo yellow and charcoal grey. Nobody looks good in dayglo, and it’s ridiculously bright, but the drivers still recede into the background and are able to skulk around discovering murderers. At least, the hero of my story is. I’m pretty sure we should all be wary of delivery drivers in real life, too, as this book was inspired by one particular driver who one day revealed knowledge of where I live and where others in my family live and work, and another driver who has a charming manner and face but gives nothing away. Combine the two into one character, and you have a force to be reckoned with.

That being said, I’m supposed to be making a plan today to bring the delivery driver to his publication fame, but I’m instead falling asleep on the couch even as I work my way through numerous cups of coffee. This book will happen, though. It must happen, even if I have to go back to working seven days a week to accomplish this. I have far too many pursuits; I get burnt out as anyone might and at one time had sworn to keep my weekends sacred. No writing, in other words. That has to change until this book is finished. I have a week’s vacation coming up, and I will use it for this goal. I’m not sure if that’s a promise or a threat. I will either listen to binaural beats during this time, or it will be whatever Spotify comes up with for me — which usually is a list of songs I listen to obsessively because I’m trying to learn them on the accordion. Binaural beats it is, then. One doesn’t need accordion distractions. First, though, I’m going to buy one of those programs that make books really pretty without all the effort involved in making my own ebook and print book the old-fashioned way, with a CSS stylesheet and coding and a desktop publisher respectively. I’m ready for easy. I’m ready for a lot of changes in my life, but some are a lot easier to make than others. God help me!*

Meanwhile, a distraction. Btw, I firmly believe Intocable is the U2 of norteño. There was norteño before Intocable, and then norteño after. Rock listeners don’t always perceive how much U2 changed the sound of music for years (you can still hear their influence in Christian rock), but they did. Same for Intocable — so many norteño songs emulate their sound.

*Speaking of difficult changes, I gave up drinking. I had given it up for Lent and made it about three weeks. I started again over a month ago, and I’ve had one lapse. I drank two shots of vodka because I couldn’t relax after staying up late to watch Sound of Freedom. It was a traumatizing movie. Difficult changes can be made, though. If you’d like to know what program I plan to buy, it will be Atticus. It gets good reviews, and I don’t have a Mac, so the popular Vellum is out. Going the easy route and spending money is probably harder than giving up drinking for a stingy do-it-yourselfer. Big congratulations!!