AI and the Soul of Art
An online app was making the rounds yesterday all around the social media. Writers and readers would input a prompt into a box and an AI algorithm would create a digital painting to correspond to that prompt.
You could play around with the art style and themes and, there is no doubt, some of the paintings produced were visually stunning.
I have always found the concept of AI being programmed to produce art icky. Whether it’s for writing, painting or music composition. Not because I don’t believe computers will ever be able to produce something as good as humans do: I am not as naive as that.
The idea, however, for creating the planned obsolescence for the human soul should bother us all.
My friend pointed out that this new, computer-created art has no soul. I thought about that, and I think it really doesn’t matter, truly. I believe that art, in whatever medium, has two souls.
One is the soul of creation, the drive to make something new, to translate emotions into something yet more ethereal.
The second soul of art is on the recipient side. The emotions and feelings it evokes. The memories is stirs up.
Those two souls are, to me, quite separate from each other.
The art created by the AI has the power to create an emoitonal response through the lines and colours, through the hints of form. The lack of human involvement at the point of creation changes nothing at the point of art consumption.
That word, consumption, is the key for me though. The capitalist system most of us live under, with its relentless pressures, already narrows our field of vision. It robs most of us of resources and time, for the benefit of very few. It tells us we have to monetise each love and passion, because worth is measured in supply and demand, not in emotional value added.
Turning art into one more thing for us to passively consume, stripping off the drive to create (because how can you compete with a self-teaching machine’s perfection) and thus leaving us with what? More time to work for others and more time to buy what we don’t need with money we don’t have.
There is a global rise in people being diagnosed with all kinds of mental health issues, with a deficit of this, and an excess of that. Anxiety, attention, keeping still, keeping productive, keeping emotionally numb. The pathologising of a normal human reaction to the messed up system we have created, so as not to find fault with the system itself.
How much easier to tell you your art, your soul, is not worth the work. Just consume what the computer has spat out, then medicate for the sadness of a lack of agency till you are once more satisfied, or an approximation of satisfied that will keep the owners of this world in business.
My most anticipated books of 2021!
I thought what better way to celebrate the death of the awful 2020 but by celebrating the art that makes it all a bit more bearable?
So here are some of my most anticipated reads of 2021, in no particular order, if you’re wondering what this author likes to read in her spare time!
I can’t wait to get my teeth into all of them!
Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
The wolves are circling and a young king will face his greatest challenge in the explosive finale of the instant #1 New York Times-bestselling King of Scars Duology.
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulleey
Debut author Angeline Boulley crafts a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, for readers of Angie Thomas and Tommy Orange.
As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother.
Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Angrboda’s story begins where most witches’ tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love.
Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who Angrboda is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin’s all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life—and possibly all of existence—is in danger.
With help from the fierce huntress Skadi, with whom she shares a growing bond, Angrboda must choose whether she’ll accept the fate that she’s foreseen for her beloved family…or rise to remake their future. From the most ancient of tales this novel forges a story of love, loss, and hope for the modern age.
Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker
How close would you hold those you love, when the end comes?
In a society where self-preservation is as much an art as a science, Norah and Arthur are learning how to co-exist in their new little world. Though they hardly know each other, everything seems to be going perfectly – from the home they’re building together to the ring on Norah’s finger. But the earth is becoming increasingly hostile to live in. Fortunately, Easton Grove is here for that in the form of a perfect little bundle to take home and harvest. You can live for as long as you keep it – or her – close.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess’s traitor brother.
Sistersong by Lucy Holland
King Cador’s children inherit a land abandoned by the Romans, torn by warring tribes. Riva can cure others, but can’t heal her own scars. Keyne battles to be seen as the king’s son, although born a daughter. And Sinne dreams of love, longing for adventure.
All three fear a life of confinement within the walls of the hold, their people’s last bastion of strength against the invading Saxons. However, change comes on the day ash falls from the sky – bringing Myrdhin, meddler and magician. The siblings discover the power that lies within them and the land. But fate also brings Tristan, a warrior whose secrets will tear them apart.
Riva, Keyne and Sinne become entangled in a web of treachery and heartbreak, and must fight to forge their own paths. It’s a story that will shape the destiny of Britain.
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.
When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift.
When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community.
Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.
Witches Steeped In Gold by Ciannon Smart
Iraya Adair has spent her life in a cell. Heir of an overthrown and magically-gifted dynasty, she was exiled from her home on the island nation of Aiyca when she was just a child. But every day brings her closer to freedom – and vengeance.
Jazmyne Cariot grew up dressed in gold, with stolen magic at her fingertips. Daughter of the self-crowned doyenne, her existence is a threat to her mother’s rule. But unlike her sister, Jazmyne has no intention of dying to strengthen her mother’s power.
Sworn enemies, the two witches enter a deadly alliance to take down the woman who threatens both their worlds.
But revenge is a bloody pursuit, and nothing is certain – except the lengths Iraya and Jazmyne will go to win this game.
Two witches. One motive. And a very untrustworthy alliance.
The Betrayals by Bridget Collins
In an exclusive institution tucked away in the mountains the best and brightest study an arcane and mysterious game, as they have for centuries. But times are changing, and traditions being overturned – the truth will come out…
Lore by Alexandra Bracken
Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family’s sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory. For years she’s pushed away any thought of revenge against the man–now a god–responsible for their deaths.
Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.
A Psalm of Storm and Silence by Roseanne A. Brown
The highly anticipated second—and final—book in the immersive fantasy duology.
Karina lost everything after a violent coup left her without her kingdom or her throne. Now the most wanted person in Sonande, her only hope of reclaiming what is rightfully hers lies in a divine power hidden in the long-lost city of her ancestors.
Meanwhile, the resurrection of Karina’s sister has spiraled the world into chaos, with disaster after disaster threatening the hard-won peace Malik has found as Farid’s apprentice. When they discover that Karina herself is the key to restoring balance, Malik must use his magic to lure her back to their side. But how do you regain the trust of someone you once tried to kill?
As the fabric holding Sonande together begins to tear, Malik and Karina once again find themselves torn between their duties and their desires. And when the fate of everything hangs on a single, horrifying choice, they each must decide what they value most—a power that could transform the world, or a love that could transform their lives.
She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
She’ll change the world to survive her fate . . .In Mongol-occupied imperial China, a peasant girl refuses her fate of an early death. Stealing her dead brother’s identity to survive, she rises from monk to soldier, then to rebel commander. Zhu’s pursuing the destiny her brother somehow failed to attain: greatness. ..
The Joy and Wonder of Beta Readers
I’m not impatient, not at all.
I’m just sitting here quietly, as my marvelous beta readers are doing their thing. For the uninitiated, beta readers are all of those wonderful people in your life (or on the web, depending on your preference), who are the first people to read through your novel (who are not you, or some version of you).
Those are the people who will ruthlessly point out anything that simply doesn’t work, that jars, that bores them. They are also, hopefully, the people who will tell you exactly why they love your manuscript.
I’m lucky enough to have a few people in my life, who I know will not sugarcoat it, and will tell me exactly where I might have lost the plot a little bit, or where the stakes are unclear. I have the good fortune of having two local writer-friends, each extremely talented in their own right, and each with completely different expectations/interests. In beta-reading context this works brilliantly for me, as each one of them will focus on a different aspect of my novel, and come up with a different way in which I can improve it.
One of my writer-pals is extremely plot-focused, expecting each page to hook her and bind her to my characters, so that she simply can’t put the book down. Because otherwise, she tells me, she certainly will. So no pressure there. Her no-nonsense approach keeps me on my toes.
My other writer friend writes what one would probably categorize as literary fiction, and she looks for the flow of the language, the mood and the tone. She’s the one to let me know where a sentence needs to be more staccato, and where the tone of the sentence lets me down. I listen to her note-full voice messages with fascination, like I’m invited to take a gander inside her head.
If you write, I highly recommend asking as wide a range of beta readers as possible to look through your manuscript, as they will all find different things which interest and confuse them. It’s the first taste of true readership, and you should savour it, for the opportunity it gives you to improve your work in ways which simply wouldn’t be possible on your own.
Editing the New Thing and the Sparkly Ideas
I’m waiting for my agent to finish reading through my big picture edits (see the last post) of my adult fantasy novel, let’s call it novel X.
What does one do in this time, except drive themselves mad with anxiety? Well, if you’re me, you have a very long list of to-do jobs. When I was querying and then waiting for my agent’s edit points, I completed my YA fantasy novel, set in the world of Slavic sea myths. And now is the perfect time to do the edits on that draft. The. Perfect. Time. So what do I do? I come up with a shiny Middle Grade novel idea that keeps me up at night and sends me to the reference texts for research.
I bat it away and plow away at the YA novel, which I am enjoying, I truly am. And it keeps coming back. Just one sentence, just the opening line… it whispers in my ear. And twenty minutes later I find I wrote the opening scene.
“No!” I shout and go back to my edits. To the edits of that really hard scene in the middle, where the dialogue just didn’t feel quite right and I need to change that one word but I don’t know to what…
Still, the new shiny idea beckons, as I grapple with the muddle of a scene.
Just the rough outline. It’s in your head anyway. You might as well write it down before you forget. Because you will forget. Remember that short story you dreamt up? The one you don’t remember, because you didn’t write it down?
“It was a stupid idea. All I could remember was a live sea being carved up by aliens.”
Perhaps. But you remembered how it feeeelt…
And so I obligingly tap-tappity-tap away on my keyboard.
But I’m at my favourite café today, sipping a latte and feeling strong! So no more distractions, no more diversions, no more interruptions!
But you have this dialogue in your head already… Maybe you can just…
SHUT UP!
Big Picture Edits
I have just completed the “Big Picture Edits” on my last manuscript. My agent, has gone over my book with a fine-tooth comb and came up with an INCREDIBLY LONG list of things that don’t work/could work better/need expanding.
You know all those little lazy bit of writing you think will hide in the awesomeness of your plotting? They will be found out. All the slightly awkward bits of dialogue that you thought “oh, it will be fine“. It will jar on your reader as much as it did on you. And then there were all the little things I did not notice, for reasons varying from “I just love this character and will shoe-horn this conversation in, so it can shine its light upon all” to “well, I meant it to come across like this, so surely since it was in my head, you can see it too, in spite of me not having written a word for it to become apparent?”
All in all, the list of edits was about 100 bullet-points, some of which required barely a new paragraph, some which forced me to rewrite three chapters and add two brand-new ones.
And it was painful, I won’t lie. It took me over two months and extra 20k words But the book ended up being so much stronger as a result. I actually feel like it says what I need it to say now, and the characters are more consistent, more solid.
That’s the beauty of the editorial process, a collaborative one. It’s not meant to be easy.
So suck it up and enjoy the ride.
Books by Women
I have recently come across a Twitter thread by the wonderful Joanne Harris where she quoted a review of her own book, Chocolat, where the author of the review chose to describe it as a tale of a a single mother who liked chocolate. I kid you not.
That prompted an extensive conversation and wide-spread mockery of course, focused around how women’s books are often misrepresented simply because they are written by women. There’s a reason why Robin Hobb and JK Rowling chose to stay gender-neutral on the covers. Books by women are perceived differently. Let’s start with the sad fact that a lot of men will glance over a book written by a woman, assuming straight off that its intended audience are women. Nobody makes a similar assumption about books written by men.
It made me think about all the wonderful, nuanced titles by female authors which have been overlooked or miscategorised because of their authors’ gender. If a book is written by a woman and it has a hint of romance in it, the entire thing can be conveniently dumped in a “romance genre”. If it portrays family relationships or female friendships, it can be chick-lit and nothing more.
But when a man writes about the exact same subject we often automatically bestow an assumption of gravitas onto the work.
Now I’m not trying to be overly critical of the romance genre at all. There are some wonderfully written books in that genre, just like everywhere else. But it is undeniable that most men will not touch anything that has been dumped into that category with a ten-foot pole.
My favourite book of all time, one which I reread once every year or two, is The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I would argue it’s a tremendously sensitive portrayal of loneliness and the habit-forming resignation to a life of social exclusion and anonymity. It shows the crippling fear of poverty, and female poverty especially, which has such power that it can stunt personal growth and thwart even the most modest of personal ambitions. It also describes the strength and determination required to break free, and the exhilaration which follows it.
But The Blue Castle is by no means a terribly famous or popular book. It’s seen as a romance and the subtlety and charm of it are stripped in the descriptions of it. You can buy it in paperback generally, with tacky, pastel covers usually reserved for Harlequin editions. The kind of covers which instantly signal “This is for women only”.
And all I want to ask is “why”? Not just why are women authors thus undervalued and misrepresented, but why are we depriving men of what could be, without a doubt, an oft wonderful reading experience.
Writing Scenes of Pain
Now my writing is filled with a whole lot of pain and hardship and difficulties. Misery writes itself, as we all know. But that could lead you to the entirely wrong assumption that I enjoy inflicting pain upon my characters. I do not. The scene I wrote today felt as upsetting to write as it was for my MC(well, close at least). The current WIP is a first person narrative, which adds another level of upset to the whole thing. As I type I channel the sensation of touch, smell and taste into the descriptions, because that’s what my character is experiencing. There is a sense of responsibility here. If you make your darlings suffer, you have to make it good. Suffering not written well feels trite and like a betrayal of this person you have created.
And, unlike in life, suffering has to serve a purpose. We’ve all sat through a badly written show or movie where the protagonist seems endlessly knocked about, but learns nothing, does nothing, and the viewer in the end gets the uncomfortable impression the authors of the protagonist’s suffering are either a)getting some unsavoury sort of satisfaction from the whole thing or b) they keep writing the same thing in the hope the next plotline will eventually reveal itself. Which, as we all know, is the first sign of madness.
But here’s the rub: striking that balance, where the suffering of the MC serves a purpose but not in a too obvious and realistic way is the hard bit. And each time I take from my MC something they love, or inflict physical pain on them, I hope I get it right.
Character sketches
Now for something entirely different… When I write I like to do a few sketches here and there: mostly of my characters and maps, though I have in the past done larger illustrations too. I thought I would share a few of them.
It serves a purpose further than just indulging my love for art. It fixes the characters in my mind. Though they might and often do change within the time it takes me to complete a manuscript, taking the time to pause and commit their features to paper gives me a sense of where they are and where they’re going. And once the manuscript is indeed finished, it’s interesting to look back and see the snapshot of how I imagined certain elements of my WiP at each moment in time.
50 thousand words
Yesterday I reached the 50k words point in my new novel. There is something about reaching that mark that feels significant. Ten thousand words and I feel “wow, I’m writing this thing”, I reach twenty thousand words and I worry how much I still don’t know about this thing I’m writing. Thirty thousand words and the plan for the rest of the novel tends to reveal itself to me, so I can gleefully jot it down. I reach forty thousand words and I begin to question and doubt everything. Is my main character relatable or did I make every single side character more fleshed out instead? Is the plot nonsensical? Can I write? Do I know how to spell “bureaucracy” (generally yes, after a few attempts)?
And then I reach fifty thousand words. And the end is in sight, regardless of how long the novel is actually going to be (my first novel was a whopping 110k words, and the feeling was the same). Suddenly the bullet points of scenes get rapidly deleted, as I run out of the story and the book is done (or the first draft at least).
Now I know this, because this is my third novel. I didn’t know what my “process” was around my first novel. I was beginning to have an inkling with the second one. And now I look towards the fifty thousand word goal like a rusalka looks to a witless young man lost by her pond. I clock it, I pounce, and the rest is easy (if possibly unpalatable to some people).
Slavic Myths
Myths and legends of all description have always held a deep fascination for me. The books available to me mostly covered the ancient Western belief systems, the Celtic, Norse, and Greek mythologies being the most easily accessible. The Norse gods with their unveiled desires and petty meanness, their heroic deeds marked mostly by unrestrained impulses of their immortal bodies, so different from the disembodied and unsexed godlliness preached at me by the Polish Catholic Church.
The Greek and Roman gods felt much the same, though they covered their selfishness with a thin veneer of elegant sophistication, filtered through the prism of centuries of Western art, romanticised beyond any hope of resemblance to the original. I read about them, and their heroes, with interest, although in my child heart I always held them in slight contempt. Better to be unashamedly wicked like Thor, Odin and Loki, than to pretend one’s wickedness holds some divine beauty in it. Apollo could stuff it, in my opinion.
Yet, even though I lived in Poland, of Slavic myths and mythical creatures I knew no more than most. Many of my childhood books were filled with Rusalkas and Utopce with the occasional Poludnica passing by. But there was no true structure to it, beyond the general atmosphere of foreboding marking all those tales. I loved them, but it did not surprise me how little access there was (and still is, notwithstanding some, more resent, excellent contributions such as Bestiariusz by [ TBC]) to any popular texts covering the subject.
There is in general, fairly little known about the prechristian Slavs. The Roman Empire did not reach us, and the written word came only part and parcel with the all-consuming Christianity, which assimilated what it could of the local beliefs, did its best to eradicate what it could not. And so the line between the gods and the mere spirits seems now blurred, and even those creatures which once might have been seen as benevolent forces in the life of men were twisted into something evil, malevolent, satanic even.
Perhaps, therefore, it was the advent of the new religion, so hostile to the old ways, why so many of Slavic legends and those of the myths we know, seem to carry with them the ever-present sense of dread and foreboding. Telling you there is no safety beyond the Church and its teachings.
In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, there is something I have always found appealing about the old Slavic lore. The threat and the sense of the constant presence of the other, invisible forces around us, forces which must be acknowledged and appeased, are very powerful drivers, and they feed the imagination in a way they couldn’t if we knew all about them.
The threat of the invisible, the presence of what we can’t touch. And the fear and the awe that come with it. What a powerful force.