Before we begin, I have had a couple of people ask about the book review and failed writer content. Those are not items that they generally think of when they get material from my newsletter — they are interested in the tech/society intersection content, which is, to be fair, what the newsletter does feature. There are two questions implicit in the ask, the first of which is easiest. If you don’t want that content but do want the other content, you should be able to manage which sections you get in the subscription management page. Turn those sections off, and you should not get them. I appreciate all my subscribers and legitimately don’t want to flood your emails with things you aren’t interested in.
The second question actually ties into what I had planned to discuss today. This newsletter really does not have a brand, in the normal sense of branding. This probably contributes to the lack of real growth for the newsletter (I mean, the poor quality is likely doing a lot of that lifting, but still). This newsletter, to be blunt, meanders. I mostly talk about the intersection of tech and society, but I also do random book reviews and a couple times a month talk about the process of writing and failing to be published. And that is in addition to random politics, art, and other topics. Basically, I write this not so much because I have a specific goal but because I like the process of writing. Writing is how I think, and this newsletter gives me an outlet. Obviously, I like having people read what I write, or I would just keep a diary, but not so much that I want to “hack my growth” or whatever the buzzword is today at the expense of letting my mind work.
Which brings me to the real topic of this newsletter: the difference between ideas and execution.
This is not a new topic for me, obviously, but it keeps coming back up, at least in my head. The excellent Cole Haddon (go subscribe if you have any interest in the craft of writing and how art intersects with capitalism. I’ll wait) recently asked how people foster inspiration. My answer was essentially stealing. I recently finished writing a play (table read in a few days with some very generous SAG actors associated with my writing group. Never let people tell you writing is not a collaborative process) about society dealing with school shootings by letting wealthy parents pay to clone their kids after they are killed in one. I know I stole that idea from somewhere, though I could not tell you where. And it occurred to me that a lot of people who think that imitative AI can produce art or even ideas claim that my ability to mesh together ideas is all that is required for creativity. And I think that is fundamentally incorrect.
First, and most mundanely, this idea could be brought to life in a lot of ways. You could do a grand sci-fi epic. You could do a complete farce. You could make an intimate horror piece. I choose a small play focused on how three kids and one of their teachers deal with how society has made a profitable business from their suffering, and how the unequal distribution of safety affects their lives and relationships. This applies to all ideas. I am working on a graphic novel script for a mash-up of Encyclopedia Brown and the movie Brick. I am also working on a noir meets Terry Pratchett fantasy. Each of those could be done in very different ways, and each author would have a slightly different approach. That range of options points to how creativity is not about ideas, but rather about execution.
My play is a function of my experiences. It is tied intimately into my experience of how money makes a clear difference in access to health care, and thus how healthy people are. It is also tied to the weird horror of lockdown drills that my own children experienced in school. And, since I do appreciate dark sarcasm in the classroom (sorry, Pink), it has a real strong thread of dark humor and sarcasm as defense mechanism running through it. Mix that with all my other conscious and subconscious influences and you get something that is both mine and different that I would have done a few years ago. Not only because, I hope (though, again, failed writer, so there is not a ton of evidence to support that hope) my craft has improved but because life has worked on me. I am not the same person I was a few years ago. The changes may be subtle, but they are there. The combination of all those factors are what make art.
Ideas are easy. They are in the air all around you, and humans are already good at mashing them together or looking at old things in interesting ways. Executing on those idea is where art happens, in my opinion. And that is why iitative AI so far as yet to produce anything that stands out and very little that feels real. Because all it does is imitate. It does not bring the unique and deeply human quirks that every creator brings to their work. it does not grow, it doe not change it only, at best, remixes. And while remixing can be a part of creating art, it is not the most important part. Nor is it, by any stretch of the imagination, the only component. Art requires human quirks and perspectives. Anything that just re-mixes what has been done before is going to feel stale and derivative. It is going to lack the connection to humanity that makes art feel like art.
Weekly Word Count
About 48 pages on the play and a couple thousand words of prep for both the Encyclopedia Brick and Dashiell Pratchett works (it occurs to me that my naming conventions are really just bad dad jokes in disguise ….). The graphic novel will almost never see the light of day, given that it is illegal for me to draw in eighteen states and six countries, but I like playing with different forms. I think they help inform and deepen my creativity, such as it is.
Have a great weekend, everyone.