Kahran and Divya talk about writing in all its different forms: as a craft, for communication, as a means of expression. We talk about writing how to leverage AI while keeping your voice, how the diversity of genres and institutions that have touched you influence your outputs. How can you grow and evolve as a writer?
Writing is one of those things where the gap between what you want to say and what you actually say is where all the interesting work happens.
Communication as an art means you're not just trying to transfer information — you're trying to create an experience in someone else's mind.
know, how do you feel about like discussing about writing because so I've been writing regularly and you've been like, you know, doing your MFA. So there is that tiny thing. So I'm sure you have also like, you know, thought about a lot of different things. And then there is writing is craft and writing is
communication, writing is expression. And then like, you know, there are formal points, but then there are also conceptual points. So there's like a lot. It's been on my mind a lot. So I thought like that could be interesting to talk about. I mean, we can for sure. I feel usually when we're
recording a podcast, I have a sense of like, something I'm trying to communicate and I wouldn't at this moment, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you do. The funny thing that like, you know, the podcast about writing, you're like, I don't know what I want to say about
this. Well, because I think writing is different than communication. What is it? Well, there's photography as documentation and there's
photography as art and then there's like photography, I guess as narrative, which is How is that different from as art? Well, like, like a photo documentary would be, you know, a photojournalist work would be kind of like a narrative of a
documentation. It's kind of art. But But not exactly. Yeah. It's kind of like historical fiction, or I guess a historical nonfiction, maybe I should say, because it's
a photojournalism. Okay, so like, how would you define writing coming back to writing? Yeah, need some tea for that one. I think that there's probably some established definitions. But I don't know,
there's a lot of different forms, right? There's So maybe just like, you know, elaborate on that how you feel like writing is different from communication. It really does kind of get into different categories of writing or how you want to categorize writing. But I think
there are some sets of writing that is for the purpose of communicating ideas. And if you want to think about it by audience, you could think about it when, you know, maybe an organization is trying to disperse information, whether it's kind of to its employees or to its customers or to the
general audience, like that is writing that is about communications, maybe writing in service of a narrative is how I might say it. Of course, I think there's communication that is separate from there. It is sometimes such a straight up documentary, you know, you could think of what in a court how
there might be someone who's recording the proceedings by writing about them. And then I think there's writing that's very separate from that. There's writing that is meant to be emotive, whether that means by using the meaning of the words themselves, or even the play of the shapes of the words. And
then, of course, there's a whole kind of aspect to whether you're using meaning, like you can be twisting all of these components, you can kind of be playing with the form or playing with the meaning, or even playing with the shapes of the letters to kind of make the letters into something else,
you know, an example there, you could be thinking of words that are made of other words. So depending on what scale you're looking at it, you may be seeing the smaller words or you might be seeing the kind of bigger word being formed by those words. There's a lot of kinds of writing.
When did you start first getting into writing? Writing for expression? I think the first thing that I remember writing or it's maybe just the first thing that I really have that has survived is like I wrote some sort of very short short story, which I didn't
quite finish on a writing set my my buddy, my gave me which I think was in the house we used to live in which we moved out of when I was like, or eight. So somewhere around there. And I remember because it got like washed in my pants, wads of them, my mother read it and she was like very pleased with it.
I think I still have it. It's it's because I have that notebook somewhere. It's so very cute. It was very cute. Yeah. There was like this dude with like a staff and then he had to go find the companion one because this
one was going to like kill everyone or something. You may have had a brother or just maybe that the artifact had a brother. But yeah, writing fantasy when you were seven. Yeah, because the first thing I ever really read was the Hobbit
right? You don't know this? This is like the great story of the great fable of God. But when I was really little, my dad used to read us the Hobbit on road trips. And then apparently I got impatient with it. So then I like stuck in the car and nobody could find me one day and I was in the garage and I was reading
because the book was kept underneath the seat. And then I was like reading it. But I was like really little like four or five like it was Hobbit is for kids, but it's not for bad young kids. Yeah.
I was really into this story. And I'm because a little older right? My dad really liked the Hobbit. Interesting. And then my father really loves to tell the part that like then I reread it right like I would just read it all the time. I just
really enjoyed it because I think also now that I think about it, it's not that surprising. It's just because I was that age, like you are an age where you reread a lot. And it just was a strange book to be rereading because I was very young. But I've always like reread the books I love like a lot and I have
a good memory for like passages so I can like oftentimes remember do you still read stuff? Not as much. There's certain books I might like a lot of the bookshelf when my bookshelf at home, I might reread while on
the loo some section of it. Interesting. Like I might just like grab one and be like, Oh, yeah, this is a fun part. It hasn't happened for a long time to be honest, but there was many, many years I used to do that. Now I just feel
like there's so many books I'm trying to read that it's how do you think your reading relates to your writing? I mean, that is one that it seems there's some amount of science for right that there is like some amount of knowledge. I mean, words that you acquire from reading, and then you start
to apply into your writing. Maybe I should ask what you were what direction were you asking? So like, do you think if you read a lot of fiction, we are writing as communication gets better. I think if you read, you're writing as communication gets
better. I think if you read, like if you just consume more, you see more ways that words can be put together and your ability to kind of put things together gets better. I think our ability to create that type of thing is very influenced by input. By how rich your palette is for the lack of a better term.
Yeah. I'm not sure. I know a lot of people make a big distinction about like, you know, you should have a diversity of input sources. I wonder if it's just a big volume game to like as long as you're reading, there's some value, even if it doesn't matter
what you're reading as much. I think that like the diversity starts mattering because different sub niches have different narrative patterns underneath. So it's like if you are just beginning consuming a lot of art
is useful, whatever that art is. But if you are like, you know, contemporary artist and you're working in the arts, then it is useful to think about art history and to think about, okay, who came from where and what influenced whom like, like right now as you're reading, what's her name Diana DiPrima, right?
Diana Prima, yeah. Yeah. And like how her work sort of influenced the B generation and like, you know, where it started from and where it is currently and like same, like, correct. But like, I would say that all of that like really matters once
you start having a rich enough vocabulary. And I feel like for you, I suspect you read a lot. Anyways, so you might not think about you might not feel the need to diversify because you're already reading very diversely. Just like I suspect you don't feel like you need to
diversify your friend circles because you already have a lot of diverse friends. Okay, I'm leaving that one because you're proud of too many other things. But thank you, I guess. No, so I would you were saying kind of I think we're making one contention but the
support you were using was a slightly different one, right? So I think the contention you're making is around like diversity of input reading. I mean, I think what you were saying though is more about like scholarly ship, right? And as when you're trying to go and create in a way that you're
driving the medium forward, that you having this understanding of like, who you're what other artists or what other kind of change makers are having that conversation can just be helpful for like, I don't know, being in the boat, you know, or at least just like kind of like being in part of that conversation that's
happening and you're not feeling like you're kind of chasing things that are already like being thought about in some way. Because I think a lot of there's a lot of like when we move forward in history and you look back, you can see like all these different movements and ideas happening, we're part of a
reaction to larger forces. When we're living it doesn't necessarily feel that way. It feels like you're in your own disparate movement away from all the other people having their own disparate movements. And so I think I would more think about that kind of point from that point of view that I think as
you're trying to, you know, maybe writing is your medium, maybe whatever kind of, you know, maybe you're someone who wants to excel in business or wants to excel in science, right? Like understanding the kind of techniques that are being used by your compatriots and your contemporaries is just
really useful and understanding the lineage of those can just like help you in going deeper into your chosen space or area. It's like, you know, like, even if you don't use agile methodologies, like having an understanding of like the history of scrum or something can just be useful regardless of
what kind of, you know, organizational management strategy you're trying to implement in your own particular situation. Huh, correct. Good job not letting yourself go off and talking to me about scum. Anyway, but coming back to, I don't know, I guess I
think that there's, and maybe I think I was partially responding to what I feel like is this sense in society today, you know, where I think a lot of my friends feel like they don't read. And I think that that becomes one of those myths you tell you about yourself. Whereas like, you know, I read probably more
news than I read anything else, because I spend like maybe an hour or so reading the news every day in different things, right? I read a lot of the New York Times, I read a lot of Google news, I read a lot of just like other random new sources. And so in terms of sheer article quantity, right, I read Apple
news, right, I'll read like long form articles from the New Yorker or like other kind of like, you know, and these will take you like 10 or 20 minutes to read because there's a long articles. And then I just think that there's the story that you can start to tell yourself that you don't read because you're
saying that reading is a certain thing. It's like, oh, I'm reading these kind of classics or I'm reading these things. But oh, when I read like Pulp Fiction, or like when I read I don't know, you know, Dime Store Fantasy or like, you know, there's a romance author people used to make fun of named like
Daniel Steele. And she was always by the checkout counters and all the grocery stores, you would see these like romance books, and they'd always have some like shortlist, dude, like, you know, it's a hero, it like, there's this very like, you know, it'd be like, oh, you know, like, that's not like reading,
reading. So I think that's a little bit what I was responding to is I think that I think there's an like a premium paid to that. But I don't know if you were actually saying that I think I was just responding to something you weren't actually saying.
I wasn't because I think like what I'm actually trying to say is like some people read very narrowly despite like what you are just saying. I still think that this my very good friend Kyle who I think I talked about before in the podcast, we're trying to like write a fantasy novel
together. And I would say that he is someone who reads very narrowly reads a lot of fantasy but doesn't read that much outside of that a little bit here and there but very little. So here's a real life example that what would you kind of expect from that kind of
kind of Before say that like then Kyle would have deep understanding of like the genre conventions of fantasy and how the evolution of fantasy has happened, but he might not be able to utilize
something that like is more a magic realism tool or a sci fi or like a sci fi tool or another kind of speculative fiction tool or completely forget about that like you know something that is more a political intrigue or a drama or a mystery kind of fiction book tool versus like looking at somebody who is
writing autobiographies not autobiographies like somebody who's writing biographies, I'm memoirs. Yeah, something. Yeah. Like you know, pulling from that and how that story telling is done because each convention has its own thing happening
right like magic realism has this focus on how should I say open threads that still sound very interesting. On the other hand, I'll read very interestingly why like fantasy has this entire like focus on the world and like the fabulousness of the world while sci fi might be more about
a particular thing and how that propagates through society and changes society like a particular technology or a particular movement or something like that. And just like having those things like I'll benefit a lot if you just diversified a little more.
Well, and that's would be kind of taking me to what I was about to ask, which is I think to me it feels like it a lot depends on where you're trying to go what you're trying to do frankly, right? A lot of those are different techniques for communicating ideas. If you just zoom it all the way out.
We have a different you know, maybe it's a mystery and we're trying to communicate you know that they're a building intrigue or like you're saying you know, the magical realism, we're trying to contextualize people in a way that feels familiar, but also different. So there's all these different like like
there's both the like idea of the plot and the idea of maybe of the context and the characters, but there's also an idea of this is the way the story is being told. So I feel when you if you start to drill it out in that way, then it can start to be like, okay, so what ways have I found really
interesting? So today, as you know, as you mentioned earlier, right, I'm doing my my MFA at the Jack Carroll Ex School in Europa. And we look at a lot of poetry that is done where they're using the form on the page differently. Alright, so maybe they're using like, I think there's one poet, Dennis
Smith, who like has a QR code at one point, and it takes you to a Google Doc, because he was like, this poem wasn't going to fit on this page. So instead, there's a QR code and I can go see the poem. And you know, in other places, like it's using the poem is being told over many pages and only a few words are
on each page. And there's maybe some lines on some pages. And so it's there's a way of creating a feeling for you of what it is to read this poem and the speed of reading this poem and a way of engaging with that work. But instead of it being done by like, you know, how like, they do it in the Lord of the Rings or in the
Hobbit books, is he will use pages to kind of like explain like a scene or like, sometimes he will tell a song, right? So like literally, like the pot and everything will stop and then you have two pages of a song that is to create an emotional cadence, right? It's to make you feel a certain way before you
go on to the next part. And so that's why I would say, right, like, I would zoom it out to saying like, what is it that you're trying to do? Because I think in in the different canons in the different genres, there's often the different techniques. And sometimes like there's some joy and there's a
play from like being like, Oh, I'm pulling this way of like scene setting or this way of raising tension from this cannon from this place, and using it over here. And it's so unexpected that that's part of what I'm trying to communicate. But I also feel like sometimes you can maybe think about it
directly like that, but most times you wouldn't have that much awareness of it. And which is where having a broad palette is useful, because then you don't know where you're pulling from where your references are. But having a lot of references is useful training yourself on a bigger data set is better than
smaller data set. And they just say it depends on what part it's you're struggling with almost right like assuming that not struggling, right? So like let's say, for example, somebody who writes, let's say somebody who writes primarily romance,
probably does not know how deep a world building exercise can go. Or somebody who writes mysteries, probably does not know what is even the possibility of like the edges of how a singular thing can impact an entire society and the perspectives of people who are living in it. You are saying
that like, you know, some but sometimes you're encountering a problem. And it's a known unknown. So sure, you can go and like, you know, look for the tools. But most of the times, you don't know what you don't know. And that's a where having bread is very useful.
I hear you. I just I also feel that if that feels hard, that you can achieve those same things. And sometimes you can achieve those same things by looking within the canon for how those things are done. I know I'm saying that you're saying that you don't know the things you're trying to achieve.
The thing I was thinking about is like, let's say I'm someone who loves magical. It's a let's say I'm someone who loves magical realism, right? Like I could go and read some of Murakami's books, and I would feel this poeticness in the way things are described in the language and the like the
creation of the landscapes that I may get from reading like lyrical poetry or class, but right, but I wouldn't necessarily have to do that in order to do it. I could stay within the genre that I feel comfortable if that's magical realism, and be able to kind of get that expansion by finding the kind of
edges within the genre itself. I guess maybe I'm not I'm pushing a fine distinction. That's not really that big of a distinction. Yeah, I mean, like you are saying that you know, the same genre could have multiple like could still have spectrum. So
one, I agree. But do I also like on a fundamental level kind of disagree? Because I don't think all genres describe all things well. Just like how all languages have lexical gaps for concepts that don't exist in that language. I'm just I would say that I feel like and maybe we could argue
about the proportion. But let's say that like feel like reading a mystery novel is hard for me. And for me, you know, the amount of energy or effort that would go to get me to read a mystery book, I would easily read something that felt in genre in syllabus for me, maybe I'd be 10 fantasy books, right? And what
I'm saying is that I think that there's a proportional number there somewhere, maybe it's 10 to one, maybe it's five to one, maybe it's, you know, or maybe you could argue it's 20 to one. That's what I'm saying, right? Like that there would be disproportionate benefit if you never read outside of your
genre. Yeah, but I just feel like if it's gonna kill, if it's gonna stop you from reading, still just read in your genre, you know, like you can get the sure. But I also don't know how much I agree with that.
But especially if you are somebody who is trying to create in a thing, you could say I don't need to learn this, but you kind of like it's always your better off trying to put this tiny amount of effort of activation energy that would be required.
We may also be ready to get to is that I feel like I'm not very good at this. Like there's a breadth of genres I will read, but there's genres I don't read really at all. Also don't think that like one needs to read everything. I'm saying so there is a difference between somebody who reads
many genre, somebody who reads only one and somebody who reads all I am saying it's good to be one who reads many not great to be like somebody who reads only one, right? Like you can still not read all that is like it would I don't know who would be the person who reads all like this is a thing.
What is his name? He like founded like Angel List. No, I'm 100% sure number. Ravi Khan doesn't read everything. He might read everything in the Western Canon. Yeah, I might read the genres that are like, you know,
classified in the Western literature, but I still doubt that he reads everything. That's fair. I mean, there's too much too many kinds of content. Yeah, yeah. And also like as somebody who reads manga a lot, the way
they classify their genre is so different from the way Western Canon classifies their genre. And I'm sure like, you know, Turkish authors books are classified very differently and Croatian authors books are classified very differently. And like, you know, as South African authors books are
classified very differently. I don't know what all they are. But like the genre conventions tend to be different and they tend to be culturally sensitive also you can't read everything. I also read a lot of manga.
Manga is do you feel that's an overlap? No, they're very different. Like fantasy and manga, of course. It depends on what kind you can find every single premise that you can imagine in a manga. Like every single I am not even joking.
There is a manga about a guy who goes to an alternate universe and finds that he has turned into a slime just to like, you know, tell you the breadth of what is possible. Okay, that reminds me. So what do you think about what did you feel about writing or writing for the comics? Because you said
manga is I got reminded of that. Writing for the comics was very fun. I feel like that wasn't really that different, I guess, than writing like, short dialogue, if you will, was writing for the game, I feel has been very different, right? Like writing for the game has been
like a different paradigm altogether. Like writing for the comics feels kind of like quippy, like it's almost it's similar to almost like it has overlap with like writing ads or writing like, like copy or even just like writing dialogue between characters. Like it's just it's
kind of like, it's fun, it's quippy, you know, and it's sort enough that there is a lot of like those kinds of notions in it. Writing for the game is like a whole different world because you have to be cognizant of what information you're putting in and putting in at what levels. And so you want to be
doing like a storytelling but a storytelling where you are giving the key elements of the story with a slightly different flavor, no matter what path the person is going down. And that's of course, because our game is a choice based narrative. So there is these different kind of paths and branching that can
happen. And I think I initially was too hesitant to branch things back together. And now I'm a little bit less hesitant to branch things back together, because I thought that when we branch back together, there should still be a different flavor, but that becomes really heavy.
Fractality to it, like it becomes really, really challenging because of how many different options there could be for every single thing. I also feel like and this comes because I've been like consulting with that game creator on the narrative design of her game. I think writing with
players, centricity in mind is very different. Generally, writers don't write like somebody would be able to interact with this story. So like the hero is not what I create, but the hero is what the player brings in. So often times what happens in games is like that just becomes a blank
box. And like, you know, so that main character ends up having very little personality. And you can imagine like most games that you would have played main characters barely had any personality. I think that like Richard was one of the exceptions. They're like, Geralt has a lot of personality,
but generally main characters in games don't have personalities. They tend to be silent. They tend to have not have like they tend to have game motivations, but they don't tend to have their own motivations. And you don't get a sense of what kind of a person would this be? What kind of
life are they living? And I just think that like that is the struggle of the medium itself. Unless the game is about uncovering that. Right? Like I feel like there's some games where it is about uncovering like the story, the story is uncovering the character. But
then it's not so much like you're playing as the main character as much as like the story is uncovering the character of this that is the subject. Yeah, okay, I understand what you're saying. Yeah. Like I was thinking about Elastor stolen phone or something
like that. Do you remember that game? Yeah. Yeah. But also still like that game is actually designed for the player. The story is the narrative of the quote unquote protagonist, but the actual protagonist is still the player.
Because the narrative unfolds in an interesting way to the player. Like in you know, like in most stories, heroes journey is the protagonist's journey. But in games, actually, you have to take the player through the heroes journey also, while the main character is going through the heroes journey.
Yeah, and I would argue that a lot of times in a lot of genres, there is that sense of like, right, you have building tension, and then you'll have something climax and some sort of resolution. And it's just that they do it in different ways. And I think games do it in a very different way than how like a
poem would do it, or even like an article, you know, like, like, like an essay or something also does it in a certain way, we're gonna kind of, you know, it builds to like a contradiction or, you know, some sort of argument. I don't mean just that perspective. I mean, more like,
so most novels are written either third person or first person. Very few write a game second person. You go there, you do this, you see this, like if you were actually writing a game, you would write it like that. You open a door, and you see
somebody who is crying in the corner, you try to approach them. And you realize that this was a monster. Now you have to run in the opposite direction, but the door has closed. Like, if you were actually writing the story of a game, you have to do it in second person.
Yeah, why do you feel like that's so different than it being a third person? Because the second person in this context is the player, but it's also represented by a character which has characteristics, much like a third person would because you can get your character in a story to do
whatever you want. They can't fight back, but with player you can't play as a real human being. So they will like if you don't like you would have noticed it also. There are some games that drop player centricity and you start feeling an idea like why are you asking me to do this? I don't want to do it.
Like, a lot of times you might see that or you might hear that like, you know, the narrative was boring. But what was boring about it? In 90% of the cases, it is that the author didn't think of you as the main character. Do you feel like it's giving that sense of agency to a degree?
But also just like thinking of them like honestly, I would just frame it like that they are the main like players are the main character you have to think of them as the central thing, the central person, the central piece. I was thinking about It Takes Two, which is this other game
that Divya I have been playing that you kind of change skills through the game. So even though the overall narrative is about these parents trying to reconcile with each other and then help their daughter, the kind of like there's a lot of mini game sort of elements where like the game works in one way
and then it changes and then it works in a different way and then it changes. And so that kind of keeps your interest outside of the kind of larger storyline, which is of course the narrative. Yeah, so right, I think especially when you're trying to design the narrative then, like thinking of that as a scaffolding
upon which the story is built, but not necessarily the whole story is a very different thing. And that's kind of what happens in games. Yeah, I think that like almost with any other form narrative design and story are not separable. But in games, they are
separable. Yeah, strangely, I think like a photo essay might be the most similar thing I could think of where it's like there's a narrative that's being told through the different works, but then the works all have a story in themselves.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. It's interesting because I feel like when you talk to Remy, he talked about how they kind of almost approached it in that way where each scene or each section of the story was a tableau that they kind of shot. And then together they stitched
this narrative from these different scenes. So every semester for my MFA, we've had to do some sort of critical research or some sort of research paper. And this semester, it's actually a critical research paper. So it was like, it's supposed to be looking at the scholarly discourse and
trying to see how add to it, which has been kind of interesting. But last semester, we were looking at a particular movement and trying to figure out a way that we could think about how just parts of it that were interesting and kind of like engage with that. And I ended up kind of going in the direction
of looking at Alan Ginsburg's work and kind of had a really interesting time because I didn't know that much about his history. But where it started from was I was looking at how working with Gen AIs could be shaping a kind of new way of engaging. And I was trying to think about that as like a
heritage of some of the older ways that some poets had played with both like electronic based communication, as well as collaborative creation. I'm looking a little bit at this like actor network theory, which is not so much within the realm of poetry, more looking at which is more from like a system
design point of view, and talks about how pieces of content and the way that we think about and engage with pieces of content is shaped by the actor that brings it to us. And so the actor has a constituent part in the role in which the in the overall success and looking at the content as isolated doesn't
fully account for the way that actually happens in systems. An example might be like today, if you use something like Grammarly, and that gives you a grammar correction, you're going to treat that differently than like your friend who maybe has English as a second language, even if they gave the same
grammar correction, you may discount it when you are getting it from someone who you don't have as much trust in their grammar abilities versus like when you have this kind of carryover trust from a electronic solution. And that bias of electronics and our bias towards believing computers is
kind of a whole part that I think is kind of interesting. Anyway, this is a long way of bringing me to kind of this interesting thing that I think you do, which is that you've been kind of using GPT as this way of editing and kind of improving as a writer. And I think that it's interesting for me particularly
think about that in the context of actor network theory. And I'm wondering about how over time your resistance or willingness to kind of take GPT suggestions may have changed as you're kind of like maybe increased confidence in the way that it's giving you information, or if you feel that maybe that hasn't been as much
of a component. And I don't know that there's been a different axis that has kind of changed over time and maybe worth starting off with just a little overview of what you've been doing just Okay, so for context, I've been writing these abstract articles one every week for maybe 18 weeks, 15 weeks, something like
that. Now, it's been quite some time. And it's been interesting because like, recently, one of my close friends was reminding me of how long ago I started writing. And in my head, I've only just started writing, like last year. And she was like, no, you did that in 2020. And then you did that in 2018. And
like you did that before that. And I was like, well, she's not wrong. Like I did do all of those things. Like in 2020, I think I wrote some 15 fiction stories or 18 fiction stories over the course of a month or something like that. Right? Like, I just feel like, you know, whatever. So one is like, I don't have a very
strong identity of myself as somebody who knows how to write. And I think like that context is important because I think that was helpful in me finding help with GPT easier, right? Like, I just didn't have to fight against myself. And then the second thing is that I would say I have really, how should I put it? I
have really found that like, I want to get better at the craft. But I just don't know how to get better at the craft. Right? So I've been using GPT for that, like very strict instructions to never rewrite, never suggest rewrites, but only point out what I should change and why. So like, oh, you could add clarity
here because and then it will give me four or five points of like, you know, what is missing right now. So that has been like quite helpful. I think over time, how that journey has been is one, I can see myself improving like the things that it used to complain about it doesn't complain about anymore.
They're like, oh, your opening is weak, your opening is weak, your like that was the feedback I got for the first 10 plus articles. And now it's just not like that anymore. It's like, oh, I like this part of your opening, you could make it stronger like this, but right now also works. So like,
clearly, yeah, when it would tell you that would you just rewrite them? So you know, it would say something like, hey, I like that you're starting with this thing, but starting with this much theory might not give people enough of a hook. So if you
figure out what is the hook of your article, and this is what I feel like it is in the first three that you are talking about these things. If you could frame like set the context for that in the opening, that would make your article a lot stronger. I still don't like I'm still working through the ending, it
also complains about the ending a lot. But it wasn't so much saying change these three words, it's like giving you much more of a theoretical way to I see. Yeah, so like, so that was what evolved like I of course, GPT's instinct is to do line edits, but like I sort of with prompting
and it's sort of like, you know, nudging it, I have and like custom prompts, custom instructions, I have managed to make it so that it knows what I exactly want out of it. And that's also one of those things, right? Like if I show you a piece of my writing, if I show you a piece of my writing, and I
don't tell you what I want, then you're going to give me thoughts that you think are right and would make this a better piece from your perspective. But if I tell you that like, oh, I right now I'm looking for structural changes, do you think anything is unclear? Or like, you know, I feel
like I want to communicate this idea. Do you think that is getting communicated? It's a lot easier. So like now the first thing that GPT does is like, this is what I think the essence of your pieces, do you think that essence is resonating? And like it will also tell me these five paragraphs are where that essence
doesn't show up. But of course, like, you know, there are still things like last time when I showed you and you gave me the feedback that like my paragraphs are the same or similar ish length and I should try to vary them. That is interesting, right? Because that is just not the kind of
feedback that GPT would ever give. And I'm like just finding that I want to share it with real people as well as like, you know, have GPT as something that just constantly sees it also. Yeah, interesting. It's interesting you heard that
feedback that way, because I meant that feedback more in the direction of like, you could add bullets, or you could add callouts. And I didn't so much mean it just about paragraph length as much as I meant about varying the types of ways you were communicating the content. And it's just interesting that
that is how I communicated it slash how you heard it. And that's just kind of a mark, right? Of like, there is so much variability in the way that you can approach things, even if you've kind of agreed together on like, what is the problem, if you will problem or potential for improvement in a given work
or in an aspect of a given work, having that kind of like, alignment on what kind of way you're trying to solve, it sounds like it's very possible when you're controlling your editor the way you can have a GPT. But then when you are working with a person, right, they might come at it from a very different
place. So then the alignment you reach maybe actually like somewhere, you know, what the person was over here, and you were over here, and you guys end up over here, like, like you're saying, right, like, I didn't mean for you to say, chair, change the paragraphs, I think that would probably solve what I
was saying, right, it just wasn't the way I was intending to communicate that with you. Which is interesting, it just, it means that there's more potential for like a, I don't know, serendipitous outcome, I feel, than when you're working with something where you're controlling that as much, which is
not to say it's not going to help you improve. But maybe just not serendipitously. And also, I think that like, I mean, I am actively trying to improve my prompting overall, like just how I communicate with my AI agents, so that like, it can be a little more random,
because I also agree what you are saying with like, just having a degree of randomness is very powerful. And yeah, I'm excited, though, like, because I, I still feel like I wouldn't have gotten to the quality of writing that I have
gotten to in like, what, four months? Yeah, if I didn't have like, you know, somebody who I could actually spend an hour plus every day, like, I can't afford an editor. If I could afford a human editor, I would afford a human editor. But the other option would have been without
the use of AI, I just wouldn't get better at it. And I think it's remarkable to me how much you have gotten better at it without losing a sense of your voice, right? Like, there's still some quirks in your writing that are not like, standard, and they don't, they haven't gotten lost. And
those usually like, if you'd hired an editor, absolutely, those would have gotten lost, right? Because there's like, you don't do those good stuff. You know, it's like, I feel like maybe you use more contractions than like you're supposed to or supposed to, you know, it's like those kinds of like
quirky things are just aspects like I use more dashes than you're like supposed to, you know, it's like those kinds of weird little things. Yeah, but it's nice. It's nice to say. Yeah, I also think that like, that is an overall problem of any sort of institutional growth, that it stands away the rough
edges. I think a lot of times of growth, I don't know if it's institutional necessarily. I think that like, sometimes if you're doing solo growth, you actually refine your edges to become even sharper. Like if you
look at a lot of standard comics, they're a lot more muted in the beginning, but they become a lot sharper as time passes. But you would say that's institutional growth because they're performing against other comedians, right? No, no, I don't mean institutional in the sense of
like solo versus in a community. I mean, institutional in terms of there is an institutional structure. So like if you're writing for Penguin, if you're writing for New Yorker, if you're writing for any established paper, they are going to try and like rub away your edges.
I see what you mean. Yeah, I feel in Europa is not so much that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel that way too. From the way you've been talking, I feel like they have been encouraging you to explore your edges rather than removing those.
It's a lot of what you were kind of saying when we started off this podcast, encouraging us of a diversity of different voices. Right? Like this is poetry, but so is this and so is this. And you know, and sometimes it's poetry just in writing about poetry, right? Like, and there's all these different ways to
kind of create in that medium. And it's been very interesting. For sure. But good chat. Good chat. Yeah.
Bye. Bye.