Back to School No Longer
Autumn, or how I am obsessed with office supplies, annoyed by AI, and getting ready for Fantasycon!
I was always good at school. Like it was a hobby. Like it was my job … wellllll, ok, it was my job for a long time. But I loved school when I was a kid despite the bullies and schoolground politics. I knew how to learn and how to make my teachers happy. I liked knowing things. And having my birthday at the end of August, just as school started, meant that somehow my 'year’ cycle was tied up with the school year’s cycle. (When I was only 4, my mom wanted me to get into kindergarten even though the cut-off was right when I was about to turn 5, which you had to be to get in. She insisted the school take me because she had 3 kids by then and needed me out of the house! So I started my final year of school—senior year of high school—when I was 16 and not 17 like most other kids.).
And now it’s autumn, and everyone is back in school. And you know what that means: school supplies! stationery! pens and pencils and notebooks and paper! As a writer, editor, and proofreader, I have drawers full of office supplies, and I have my favorites. I won’t use blue ball-point pens (biro to you Brits), only black or purple or green. And post-its have to be the brand, not generic, because the fake ones never really stick. College-ruled notebooks only. And for my birthday, I got my first fountain pen, a plastic purple Lamy with some awesome purple ink. I also just ordered a new-to-me planner/calendar book from Atoms to Astronauts that I’ll start to use next year. The pursuit of the perfect planner is still underway. (To be honest, I don’t think we ever find the perfect one…) But this one has a cool science-y cover, paper that can handle fountain-pen ink, ‘blank’ month spreads that allow you to fill in the dates so you can start it at any time of the year, and weekly spreads with the same. Oh, and it’s purple! I’ll let you know how it works out.
AI is a four-letter word
As writers, we have to address the robotic elephant in the room.
NanNoWriMo recently came out on the side of AI and the tech-bros who have bankrolled (and are losing money on) this terrible idea, hiding behind accessibility to argue that using gen AI to write a book is the same as, you know, writing a book.
Nope.
I have been on the side of humans over robots since day one and have to say that the way various companies (I’m looking at you, Google and Canva, with the side-est of side-eyes) have been pushing AI down our throats lately is really off-putting. NaNo was already hurting after last year’s grooming problem, and now this? I was never a big NaNo fan, not having ever found November a good time of year to try to undertake 50K, but this takes the cake and basically throws it into a swamp. And you know how I feel about wasting cake!
In my professional life, I have added clauses to my editing contracts that state I don’t and won’t use AI to edit and I expect my clients not to have used it to write. I even recently added one to the copyright page for books I typeset if the client wants it. The only way forward and through this particularly polluted cloud is to be completely up front and to talk about this sh*t so that newbie writers and people uninformed about technology trying to undermine the creative arts know what’s what.
The way to do that? Well, beyond harping on how it is basically cheating and plagiarising other artist and writers, call out how the people whose work has been stripped to train these bots were never asked or paid. And if that doesn’t work? Point out the electricity and water usage. The U.S. just experienced a HUGE hurricane, and that’s not going to be the end of it; climate change is real, and kowtowing to the AI bots is just adding fuel to the fire. We’re supposed to be using less of the world’s limited resources, not knocking at doom’s door.
OK, end of soapbox.
Fantasycon is coming
A week from today I board a train to Chester to attend Fantasycon, which will be my last con for a year until World Fantasy/Fantasycon over Halloween 2025. I’ll be on the programme and will be in the room for the BFS awards to find out how Spec Fic for Newbies does in the Best Non-Fiction category (cross your fingers!). My panel schedule:
Explain Dark Academia To Me Like I’m 5 (Friday 8pm)
Navigating Creative Burnout (Saturday 9am)
Where are All the Mothers? (Saturday 1pm)
Allure of the Apocalypse and Dystopias (moderator: Sunday 3pm)
If you’re at the convention, say hello! And if not, I will see you on the interwebs! But until then: