So for awhile now, I've been using ChatGPT in my writing endeavors. I know there's a fair bit of controversy over using AI in writing, and GPT in general, so I wanted to write this blog entry to explain how I use it, and how I think it can help other writers as well.

What I do NOT use GPT for
It's important to start here. While GPT can certainly write an entire story for you, that's not what I'm using it for. The quality of such a story is debatable, and using AI in such a way would be completely negating any creative aspect of writing. I'm no longer writing a story, I'm just using what is essentially a highly advanced article spinner to write one for me. I don't want to do that, and at that point, it isn't even really my work anyway.

I also don't use GPT to come up with characters or plot. There's a gray area here, which I'll get into, but again, I don't use GPT to just write for me. I decide the plot, characters, stakes, and everything else. ...

It finally happened.

I have finally signed up for college.

I know that for most people, college is 'the thing' you do after high school. That's 'how it works': high school, four years or so of college, get a job, retire in however many years.

Coming from a self employed family and being homeschooled drilled such notions out of me early on. I realized that just doing 'the thing' that everyone else did was not what I wanted to do, especially when I saw people with mountains of student debt, stuck in a cubicle working a job they hated for the rest of their lives, breaking their backs trying to make their bosses rich.

I wasn't doing that. No way.

So I largely dismissed college for a very long time. It took me a long time to figure out that while what I had learned was valuable, I had gone off the deep end with it. College itself isn't bad; you just need to know what you're doing.

In terms of college,...

Some of you might have heard of Stackexchange.com, the community of 175 Q&A websites devoted to different topics. Users submit questions, other users answer, people upvote helpful answers, and knowledge is spread.

I've been a member of writing.stackexchange for a bit over 5 years, and of worldbuilding.stackexchange for a few months less. They've both helped me gain a lot of information and knowledge I otherwise wouldn't have had, as well as given me the opportunity to spread what I've learned.

Stack Exchange
I've always respected the stackexchange community for being open-minded. It's kind of a given: on a Q&A website you have to be receptive. You quickly learn that everyone has different opinions and different ways of looking at things. If you don't honor that fact of life, you are quickly forgotten. At the same time, it's important to hold to your own opinions, because the variety is what makes stackexchange work. For every question there...

I try to keep an optimistic attitude about Star Wars. The last two films have been... well not that great. I know some people loved them, and I wish I could say the same, but it is regrettably not true.

Episode VII felt like JJ was being super cautious, keeping things open-ended and following a pre-proven plot from A New Hope. The similarities were palpable.

Episode VIII I actually greatly disliked. It didn't feel like a Star Wars movie, and it felt like Ryan Johnson was deliberately taking the fans' expectations and throwing them in our collective faces while trying to feed us twists which destroyed everything good in the most pointless manner possible. Luke throwing the lightsaber, Snoke's death, that kind of thing. It was just bad.

However, as I said I try to remain optimistic. I feel like JJ understands what Star Wars is all about, and how it should end, and is genuinely trying to do his best to deliver on that and on everything the fans want....

You probably have a good idea what this blog post is about from the title. Your mouse might be hovering around the back button as you continue to read, compelled to do so by the mystical force which surrounds my words (). You know what this article is about.

As it so happens you are wrong. Whatever you think this blog post is about to say, you're on the wrong track. Unless, by some miracle, you have read my mind as I write this. And if that is the case, please let me know. I have need of a translator at times.

Assuming you have not read my mind (and have not been driven away by my obvious attempts to keep you reading), I will now explain what this is all about: neg rep, and the problem with how it is laid out.

The Beginning

We have to start at the beginning. When I joined this site, I was young, opinionated, and showed all the signs of becoming a first-rate online nuisance. I nearly did, until I found the Fan Fiction forum. ...