Writing is a hard way to make a living, which is why a whole ecosystem exists to help you feel like you’re succeeding at it. Hashtags like #amwriting provide steady pep talks for people wading through the muck of a first draft. Dubious-seeming ads on Facebook peddle frictionless methods for selling thousands of copies of […]
I’ve always thought of myself as a writer, although saying it out like that sounds a bit pompous, at least to me. Building something through my words never fails to thrill me, but I wouldn’t say I like to attach a defined role to it. I think the lack of pressure on my younger self […]
I began listening to Wicca Phase Springs Eternal’s Full Moon Mystery Garden after I took two road trips through Death Valley, the first literal (in California) and the second figurative (in a hospital). So when I heard him say, “On a mountain under full moon / I could say goodnight and mean it” and then, […]
If a group of people is presented with a body of text, will they be able to spot the human-written passages over the AI-generated ones? The answer is, well — maybe. AI detection work is at the center of a University of Pennsylvania study in its School of Engineering and Applied Science. Chris Callison-Burch, an […]
Kate Folk is the author of Out There, a story collection (Random House ‘22). She has written for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, One Story, Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Zyzzyva. A recipient of a Stegner Fellowship in Fiction from Stanford University, she’s also received support from MacDowell, the Headlands […]
I was sitting poolside at a San Juan, Puerto Rico, resort bar, minding my own business, when ChatGPT settled into a barstool next to mine and ordered a pina colada. It was a bold move, considering the sun was not yet over the yardarm, as we like to say in the islands. I took another […]
The counterintuitive truth about “the love that dare not speak its name” — a late-19th-century term of art for love between men — is that precluding the name “homosexuality,” it was allowed to be quite loud: It was sung, written, verified and moaned about everywhere, from retellings of classical myths to the dormitories of the […]
Of journalism and artificial intelligence, “only those who create the best original content will survive,” says the CEO of German media group Axel Springer, which owns Bild and Die Welt. Mathias Deopfner said this in a letter to staff but you’ll forgive me for having read it as being shouted in a German accent to […]
Don’t feel like writing? Join the club. Sometimes life is too busy, and our brains are too crowded with schedules, appointments and commitments. Sometimes we lack ideas or confidence. A clear mind allows room for inspiration, but how can we banish the mental detritus? Nature can nurture, so heading for an unpeopled locale can be […]
Richard Anobile, a prolific creator of film books whose friendly collaboration with the anarchic comedian Groucho Marx on a project called “The Marx Bros. Scrapbook” turned sour when Mr. Marx sued to stop its distribution after reading his unedited quoted remarks in print, died on Feb. 10 in Toronto. He was 76. His wife, Elizabeth […]
