The Grasshopper Sunday June 4, 2023: What is a Book?
An absolutely ridiculous story
Note: I’m a day late with this. To be honest I forgot to publish yesterday. D’oh!
I’m keeping this brief because it should never have been published. The headline caught my eye, Man Publishes 1000 Books With AI. Skeptical, I read it and to start with it never says anything about 1000 books. He mentions 97 and estimates each takes 6-9 hours, using ChatGPT-4.
But then we find out he defines a book as between 3000-4000 words. And the article, which has a weirdly demented picture of the ‘author’, appeared on a blog about getting rich quick.
First of all, I question if this guy has ever read an actual book, or even held one in his hand. The average print novel is around 80,000-120,000 words.
There’s going to be a lot of this stuff and it’s critical to be skeptical, especially if you are just getting started. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not.
Frankly this kind of thing is a huge insult to those of us who actually do the work and know how hard it is. It’s not a success story, it’s bullshit. Nuff said.
I know a lot of fan fiction writers think a few thousand words is a book, but they’re genre writers, writing for other hardcore fans of popular books like the Harry Potter series. Which, by the way, are much longer books than the word count I mentioned as normal earlier. Probably closer to 300,000 words each.
I think it’s great that fan fiction writers are out there writing. But I also hope they try to find their original voice and a new story of their own to tell. It’s immensely gratifying when you first write something and think, this my own, not something that sounds like a writer I like. That may be the moment a writer is born.
“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
— Gustave Flaubert
A note about word counts. If you read this regularly you may have noticed I always include a count at the end of each issue. In its first 60 weeks, The Grasshopper probably adds up to 180,000-200,000 words, which frankly, amazes me. But maybe it can serve as an example of how a book length work evolves over time by simply sticking to it on a regular basis.
I know it can be daunting when a famous writer like Stephen King tells us that his average daily output is measured in thousands of words. It’s just what works for him and he is very disciplined about it. Finding your own writing pace comes with time and practice. And it helps to see writing as your profession, even if you’re not getting there yet.
For the record, King has written 80 books.
I breathed a sigh of relief that somehow the politicians in DC managed to avert what could have been a financial disaster this week. Social security is a part of my income and I’m coming off a slow month in May with my writing. I have no desire to play the cliched role of starving writer.
One of the things I’m going to experiment with on Medium is doing longer pieces. They measure length in estimated read time and most of mine track in at around 4 minutes or about 700 words. Because payment is based on the total read time people spend on my articles, longer generally pays better, up to a point. This has been verified by Medium staff.
I’m going to try some pieces around 2500 words. That’s about what I average here at The Grasshopper each week and it is near my weekly output on Medium, so it shouldn't be a stretch. But you have to have topics you can deeper with and my topical writing doesn’t always lend itself to longer.
I’ve been publishing a sister Substack which they call a section. It’s called The Witness Chronicles. You’ve received a few issues lately that feature a few of my Medium pieces. I was a little wary because they can be very opinionated, much more so than what you see here, but a lot of people are reading it, which has been gratifying.
I’m looking for summer reading suggestions and my go to are my brother and his wife, since they like a lot of the books that I do. But a great book suggestion is always appreciated wherever it comes from. During the Covid lockdown our area libraries were closed and I got out of the habit of dropping in on a regular basis. I need to revive that. Our big central library was a huge part of my growing up.
But librarians seem much less connected than they were when I was younger. They were much more likely to suggest books based on what I was reading. I suspect there is a pretty high level of paranoia when you’re in the thick of the culture wars.
The Republican Party has decided that culture wars are a winning strategy but there is evidence that this may be backfiring on them. I like to think most of us have bigger issues than sowing hatred and distrust. As writers we are directly in the path of these conflicts. The recent rewriting of some children’s classics is abhorrent to me.
Monty Python member John Cleese has declared that no revisions to make films like Life of Brian less offensive will take place, and this is important. The film is pure satirical comedy and meant to offend at times while skewering righteousness. Censoring works made in different times is revisionist history, not unlike DeSantis’ attempts to rewrite the history of slavery in his state, among other educational subjects. This week when he announced his candidacy he declared he would kill the left.
Since I am partially one of those lefties, I should probably be scared but that weenie doesn’t exactly put the fear of God in me. But facism is a real thing and we need to fight it, as artists and communicators. The first thing dictators do is crush free expression and once lost it can be very hard to get back.
On that cheery note, I’m going to wrap this up and get outside. After a few days of near ninety degrees, today is mild and breezy. See you out there.
Did you write today?
Martin
1061 words
A paid subscription or upgrade gets you access to a year’s worth of my writing on writing, a growing archive of over one hundred stories and ideas. Please consider supporting this work financially. A few dollars a month is all it takes. Thank you.