by Janis Patterson
Computers can be wonderful things. You can change or cut lines or paragraphs, move copy around, pretty much do whatever you want to do and yet end up with a clean copy with no tiresome retyping of entire manuscripts. It is a tool without compare, but it is only as good (word-wise) as the person using it.
Or it used to be. Now there is a new plague – or savior, depending on one’s viewpoint – in the machine and people are very divided about it. Just to be very clear, I am on the anti- side.
This new creature is available in many places and formats and names, and all fall under the general umbrella of ‘assisted writing programs’ – in other words, AI programs that can do a lot of the work of writing (like putting the words down) for you in a sort of simulacrum of your writing voice and style.
Doesn’t anyone see the horror of this? These programs not only check spelling (which is good) and grammar (which is all too often not so good) but they actually do varying amounts of the writing, with mechanical ease turning out copy that is more like pre-digested word salad instead of genuine writing.
I see the difference as similar to ordering a house kit (as you used to be able to) with all the lumber pre-cut and numbered, ready to put together according to the directions like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and then calling yourself an architect. You’re allowed to do the pretty bits – trim and paint and such, but the actual building is created miles away by a machine. Translate this to writing and you become a technician rather than a writer.
I don’t see why someone who calls themselves a writer or who hopes to become a writer using such a Frankenstein thing. Not only do they have to pay for it, and learn the probably Byzantine command structure, but they get a product that is at best only partially theirs. Instead of all this, why don’t they just learn the rules, learn the craft and learn to really write? It will serve them better longer than a computer program.
There’s a commercial on tv right now for one of these things, and one line strikes me as being particularly egregious – something about if you’re a copywriter and need a dynamite line… Having been a copywriter in one of my many wordsmith incarnations this makes me furious and appalled. In my opinion if you have to have a machine/program/whatever these things are do a great chunk of the writing for you, you aren’t any kind of a writer!
Are some people so desperate to put the word ‘writer’ or ‘author’ after their name that they will cheat with programs like these? I guess so. I personally believe if you can’t do it by yourself you shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Writers should write – not be a technician to a writing program.
Ladies of Mystery 