Category: Ramblings

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Accountability is a good thing… until it becomes reliability

When you are first starting out on forging a new routine, external accountability can be beneficial. Like meeting a friend at the gym on certain days of the week. If you don't show up, you get that phone call.

"Where are you?"

For writers, that external accountability can be used to help keep you on track with your self-imposed writing deadlines. Or it could be as simple as showing up for that write-in and buckling down to write.

However, there is a danger that accountability can shift to reliability.

Let's say that you've been going to the gym regularly with a particular friend, but that friend is going on holiday out of town. Are you the type of person who keeps going to the gym anyway, or do you find an excuse—any excuse—to not follow through on an established routine? If you're the one to find an excuse, then you have slipped into the realm of reliability.

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We could have had a moon base by now

It's fun to sit down with my son and watch the old science fiction TV shows and movies. I've successfully got him hooked onto Star Trek (and he informs me that Deep Space 9 is his favorite series from the franchise). We've binge-watched Farscape (by far one of the best science fiction shows… so funny). We've had discussions about Battlestar Galactica, admiring how the various way the 2004 series pays homage to the original 1978 series. And when he's home on holiday, we've been diving into Babylon 5.

I've successfully convinced him that Firefly should have never been taken off the air when it was, and we both agree that the psychedelic trip into the monolith at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey is just a "WTF?" moment. (But seeing the original gave him an extra level of appreciation when Farscape did their parody scene.)

During our binge watching of old TV shows, he's been laughing at the absurdity of the situations (and how the writers got away with a lot of things that they would never be able to get away with today). But it's the inaccuracies of the past timelines for the show that gets him the most. How wrong did fiction get their predictions for reality? Whenever he gets incredibly cynical, my response seems to always be the same.

Before you start to criticize the science fiction of old, highlighting how wrong they got the predictions, take a look at the real history and the trajectory that we were on when those books were written and when the films and TV shows were filmed.

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Every writer needs to learn to say “No”

On discussion panels for writers, there is always this one question that seems to come up: "If there was one bit of advice that you would give to new writers, what would that be?"

Most of the time, you hear advice about not giving up and persevering until the bitter end. But there is something that I've learned that seems to have stronger importance in the publishing industry than anything else.

Writers need to learn to say "No."

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Generation Spirit

When did I become political? (My stance against AI-generation tools.)

When I started down this publishing venture, I said to myself that there were two topics I would avoid posting about on my feeds. Politics and religion. If you want the lynch mob to come after you, those two topics are the most efficient way to do it. And for over a decade, I have successfully sat on the fence with almost every topic out there.

Sure, there were times when I piped up to say that "enough was enough" when it came to the bullying that was happening in certain corners of the social media networks. But for the most part, I never really took a stance that could be considered "political" on any of my public profiles.

Until now.

In the last year, so many things have happened within the publishing industry, endangering the livelihoods of writers, editors, publicists, publishers… basically, every single human in the industry.

I'm talking about the war against artificial intelligence (AI)… and it's not even AI's fault. The ones to blame for this AI war are the humans who are deliberately taking action that misuses and abuses the technology. And because it is such new technology, those wanting to be honest in this industry have no way to truly fight against what is happening—except to go public and say that it's not okay.

What is happening is far from okay. Copyright of creatives everywhere is being abused in the training of AI-creation tools. The good names of several creatives are being trashed because of false AI-generated works that appear using their names. Creatives are being forced to choose between their future earning potential and that paycheck right now, because publishers are wanting to use their works to train AI, so the publisher can create more works like the creative's work, but without the creative's input. And to top it all off, the technology at the heart of this mess is also being compromised because of the shady practices of the ones looking to abuse the technology.

It's not okay, and I'm publicly taking a stance against the use of AI-generation tools within publishing.

In today's post, I am breaking my promise to myself about political posts on my public platform, because this is one topic that I can't stay silent on.

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Not everyone uses Google

On a frequent enough basis for it to be annoying, someone would invite me to a Google Calendar, or send me a Google Doc file, ask that I fill in a restricted-access Google Form, or any other number of things that you can do with Google. And in every instance, those invites have been sent to my work email (a custom domain email). And in every instance, there has been some issue that all comes down to the lack of access to Google products.

Because Google has become mainstream and so embedded in our everyday lives, there is this assumption that every email address on the planet can access a Google product. But it's an assumption. And when you assume things, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

In today's post, I want to highlight the issues associated with this Google assumption.

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