• Why does the subject matter to you?
• Why might it matter to others?
• Do you have a sense of the style or voice you want to write in?
• What other writers inspire you?
• How might AI help you with the project?

• What are you curious about?
• What seems promising or interesting?
• What questions do you have?
• Can you think of any sources that might help with the project?

Again, with your comments, feel free to address other questions.

This article by Salena Sampson Anderson really interesting–finding new metaphors for AI as a way of finding new ways to think about AI.

This is the abstract:

Using Vauhni Vara’s “Ghosts” as a model, prompt ChatGPT (or other AI platform, say Google’s Bard)  to tell a “true” story it cannot know.

1. Write a prompt instructing the bot to finish a story from your own life based on a few details.
2. Read what it delivers and then expand and refine your prompt.
3. Repeat several times, offering more detail and more poetic or lyrical or experimental language each time–with the goal of getting the bot to produce some off-kilter or interesting language and some ways of thinking about the story you want to tell.
4. As you advance through the iterations of your story, start to think about Vivian Gornick’s “situation” and “story.” Is a situation coming into focus; can you imagine the story taking shape as “the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer; the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”
5. Then, cut and paste into a document and mark some interesting moments: turns of phrase, distinctive language, narrative elements, of ways of thinking about the story you might use in your own writing.

I’ve decided to scrap the presentations and have you all do practice readings instead. We’ll start this week, with a pretty easy one.

For Wednesday, choose a paragraph or two from Adrienne LaFrance’s “A Defense of Humanity in the Age of AI.” Read it aloud several times, so you memorize some of the language and cadences.

You’ll read your chosen passages in class, and we’ll talk about what you’re doing well and what you might practice more. Remember, reading well means connecting with an audience. You can do that in many ways. You might be exuberant or funny, or you may be more subdued. The key is for the audience to experience you as a compelling human, communicating–rather than a talking head reading at them.

See the Requirements page for details on the other two readings you’ll do this semester.

See the calendar for your reading dates.

Next Wednesday, we’ll meet in Rosenthal 300i for class. (if you haven’t been, its’ the QC library with the clock tower. You’ll need your QCard to get in.)

Take a look at these links. Familiarize yourself with The Gutenberg Bible. Then, scroll througryh the three collection databases below. Choose one or two titles you’re curious to see when we meet in the library. Post the titles in the comment here, and I’ll give the link to Leila Walker, the librarian who’ll be helping us.

The Zine Archives at Queens College

Chapbook Collection at Queens College

The Gutenberg Bible (Morgan Library)

GLASA (Gay Lesbian Love and Sexuality Alliance) Journals (5 here, and many more in the library, to be archived)

These are the rules for working with archival materials in Rosenthal:

• No food or drink
• Pencils (or devices) only – no pens.
• Cell phone photos okay (no flash)
• Use clean hands (wash and dry completely before coming to class)
• Handle items gently
• If the item has a book flag with a catalog number, retain with the item

Hi all,

I was interested in the lyric essay & what Vlad Ivanov called the Reflective Essay. I started by putting a prior essay into Chat GPT that I am working on editing/ elongating. The essay is about the distortion between reality & dreams, and the narrator in this essay uses the dream world to try to conceptualize her struggles found in reality. While this first draft was created in undergrad, I found that I would rely to heavily on metaphoric language, and while this is still a large part of my writing, I do think I want a next draft to be more thesis-focused.

I asked Chat GPT what the reflective elements are in my writing sample, as it currently exists, and it gave me this response:

“The reflective elements in the writing sample include:
1. Personal Perspective: The narrator describes their thoughts, emotions, and reactions to the events, offering insight into their inner world.
2. Inner Monologue: The narrative often delves into the narrator’s thoughts, providing glimpses of their contemplations and interpretations of the events.
3. Exploration of Feelings: The sample explores the emotional responses of the narrator, such as their sense of wonder, curiosity, and even anxiety in certain dream sequences.
4. Rumination on Memories: There is a recurring theme of memory and nostalgia, with the narrator recalling past experiences like crossing bridges and encountering water lilies.
5. Dream Analysis: The narrator’s dreams are interwoven into the narrative, and they reflect on the symbolic and emotional significance of these dreams.
However, it’s important to note that the writing sample lacks a conventional structure and a clear central thesis or argument often found in reflective essays.”

Oof, Chat GPT definitely was honest with me here. This response did make me think about what we traditionally define as a thesis… is it okay that this piece doesn’t have a clear, structural thesis? Is Chat GPT just giving an objective perspective? While I do want the thesis to be more clear, I don’t want it to necessarily be “structural” (this lends itself to the subject, of unconventional ways of thinking about reality). I think I want to further play with Chat GPT to find this balance.

I did ask Chat GPT to make the existing writing sample into a reflective essay, and it basically took every sentence in the piece, and elongated each (each sentence felt largely like an over-explanation). If anything, Chat GPT’s first go turned me away from the Reflective Essay, as it felt all too formal. But, I don’t want to give up yet.

I just started drafting—like very shitty first drafting—a narrative essay about a kink dynamic I’ve been anxious to write about for some time. Writing sex is hard, and writing complex kink and BDSM feels even harder. I love how Garth Greenwell does it, so I thought hey, why not ask ChatGPT to help me “steal” his form. Like Meg, here’s what I got:

Nope.

Tried again:

FINE, PrudeGPT. One more time:

A bit generic, but okay. It essentially told me to play with sentence structure, subtext + tension, vulnerability + trust, etc. Broadstrokes. I wonder if it might help me break down and copy the rhetorical structure of his sentences if I fed it some text, the way I saw Eula Biss do in her version of Didion’s “Goodbye To All That”. Perhaps something to try for my next exercise. 

I then asked ChatGPT to help me write compelling narrative creative nonfiction, and interestingly, it duplicated a few of the same tips it provided for copying Greenwell’s work.

Finally, I took a snippet of my (again very very very rough) draft of a scene of “narrative nonfiction” and asked ChatGPT to make it more compelling.

My Draft:

ChatGPT’s take:

Truthfully, there are a few words here and there I might snag, but wow. Is this what the internet thinks of us narrative nonfiction writers?

I’m curious to see if the paid version is any better at this sort of thing, since I’ve heard it’s better at subtle shifts in language.