The more I think about how AI might impact sales and my mental state of mind, the more I think writing goes beyond questions of revenue and time management. I think it goes much deeper than that.
My name is Stephen Allan, and I am a recovering Catholic.
That's the glib, surely overused joke that I make to my friends when the discussion of religion and deeper beliefs come up. I say it in the sense that I am recovering from twelve years of Catholic school, many more years of forced church attendance, many more years of participation in rituals I never found value in, and a lifetime of mental models that I am not sure are the most beneficial for all (as my wife likes to point out, whether I like it or not, a patriarchal-centered view of the world at least colors how I see things, if not outright dictates it).
But though I do not ascribe myself to one religion, let alone Catholicism, I find myself utterly fascinated, perhaps even impossibly gripped, by the God question. Is God real? If he (He, if you prefer; or she/She; or it; or without name) is real, then what's the level of involvement? Constantly intervening, or set once at the start of the universe and forget? (There's a tangent to be had here where physicists will tell you "start of the universe" is the wrong way of thinking, because time did not exist before the universe, ergo there's no "start" [and even this is surely too simplistic], but I find advances in physics to make the possibility of God even more incredible, not less).
You could probably make a fair argument that everything since the Kastori Chronicles, for me, has grappled with the God question. War of the Magi basically asks "what are we if we defy our gods?" The Forged and the Forgotten, in part, will ask "what are we if God seeks to destroy us?" These questions don't have definitive answers, and I'm not sure any amount of scientific knowledge or methodology can answer philosophical questions like these. But there's one thing that grappling with these questions and their implications through my writing has shown me.
The act of creation and the grappling of the questions that come with it cannot simply be called a business, a passion, or even a calling. I'd go so far as to say it's how to live, a duty, even.
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I understand the people who instinctively recoil at the word duty.
It was my duty to attend Mass on Sundays for years on end. It was my duty to tuck my shirt in, make the sign of the cross before every class, and to offer up prayers at the start of every school day. Duty imposed upon you, especially by a hypocrite--knowingly or unknowingly--might be one of the worst things of all.
But when the duty speaks to something deeper, be it duty to family, duty to yourself, or duty to the gifts you have, I don't think there's anything more meaningful or more profound. In my life, I have a duty as a father and a husband to protect and love my family; there's nothing I resent or recoil from about that. Of course I don't love having my writing times interrupted or hard conversations, but while our relationships are built on love, such moments don't really depend on love as much as they do duty.
In the same way, I think creators have a duty to make the most use of their talents, regardless of what the outside world throws at us. Because to me, God--or nature, or chance beyond our control, or something greater than our consciousness--has given us particular skills we must use.
I find that when I write fantasy, I become not just a better writer but a better man and a better citizen. When my friends who are creative immerse themselves in their creativity, even if only for an hour a day, they are more pleasant to be around. Most of us, frankly, aren't making money in our work, and even fewer of us are making living wage money off of it. But doesn't that speak to the point? Doesn't the idea that we still do things not because they bring us money but because they help the world point to a sense of duty?
I would go so far as to say that those who are creative but are not just fulfilling a sense of duty. They are the most alive of all of us.
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A statement like that risks--or perhaps just outright is--being judgmental to those who want to create but cannot for whatever reason. So allow me to add some caveats before I go further.
The title of this post "to create is to live" does not suggest a need to create all the time. It does not suggest perfect consistency on a day to day, week to week, or even year to year. It does not suggest that every piece of art must be perfect (in fact, I would argue 99% of art is better released imperfect sooner than perfect later). It does not suggest that those struggling with real life issues, whether physical, relational, or financial, need to put those to the side in favor of creativity.
What I do want it to suggest is that to create is to fully explore what we are each individually capable of. For me, that is worldbuilding, creating stories that tackle questions of God, and writing characters that I hope readers remember. For others, that may be a painting that captures a painful expression or a song that induces great emotion. It's the act of creating where we realize what we are most capable of while we are alive; it is the act of creating where we most become like God, whether or not we believe in the God of Catholicism or another religion.
I thought I had come to the end of my thoughts on "will I write if AI progresses" after I wrote the prior two blog posts, but of course, as this post shows, I haven't (and therefore I should stop assuming I will). Thinking on this has also made me realize something else related to AI. Namely, people talk all the time about how AI can't capture art and human emotion like, well, humans can, and while I think they're correct, I think they're correct for different reasons.
AI, in my opinion, will be able to share a great story if you look purely at what's on the page. It can't do that yet, and it's probably a few iterations away from getting there, but it will be able to eventually. I think those who feel otherwise are in denial of how well AI can replicate voices and content in shorter bursts, meaning its only a question of memory and recall before it can do so over the length of a longer series.
But part of what makes Lord of the Rings so great for me, for example, is knowing how Tolkien's Catholicism and experience with war influenced it; part of what makes Wheel of Time incredible is seeing how Robert Jordan's time in Vietnam affected him. If I read a book that has the exact same plot as Wheel of Time, just with different names, but it comes from AI with no backstory, personality, or beliefs, it will never land the same. Not because the soul of the book may not come through, but because the soul of Robert Jordan wouldn't come through--because there would be no soul on the other end.
I suspect this bodes poorly for pulp genre fiction, and I can't say I'd be too sad about that. Even though I write and market in a clearly defined genre, we need more people willing to bend the rules and defy expectations. Not because it's "subverting expectations" or whatever throwaway line was used to explain bad movies or books.
But because only through that path will creators live as they were meant to.
And whether that's God, chance, or something else dictating the "meant to," we'll all be better off for it.