About a month ago, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic, among other works, appeared on the Know Thyself podcast.
Prior to her appearance, I was unfamiliar with Know Thyself, but as a long-time fan of Liz Gilbert, clips of the interview made their way into my purview, and I followed them back to the full episode. I have a few thoughts.
Her discussion of feeling like she couldn't make any missteps as a child, and the trauma of that mentality and the journey to unlearn it, is very relatable. As you're not my therapist, though, I'll refrain from going too deep there.
I found her discussion of writing in the age of AI to be incredibly prescient, and I want to share it, in part, here.
When asked how she feels about the fact that AI could write a better novel than her someday…
I'm like there's already people who can write better novels than me. Like, that's been my reality my entire life. Like, every single creative thing that I do, there are people who do it better, you know? So that can't be a reason to not create, that there's some intelligence that can do it better. That already is the case, right? I'm not going to compete with AI if I don't compete with Ann Patchett.
On the temptation to use AI in writing…
I think you'll miss the fun, right? I think it's sort of the question is like, what are you doing this for? Are you doing this to be the best at it, or are you doing this to have the experience of it? And so yeah, AI could do it for you, but then you don't get to go on the ride. You just get to operate the robot. That doesn't seem as much fun for me.
[…] Do you feel like what makes it magical is that it came from somebody who was in a process of discovery and it was authentic, or do you not make it so precious? I think that is precious. I think that is magical.
[…] You know, like I have a friend whose kid is in music school at NYU right now and he's like, "The only ones who are going to be left doing it are the people who just love doing it, because all the other reasons are going to fall away." You're not going to be able to make a living from it anymore, or the robots will do it better, or like whatever. There'll be all kinds of external sources. Going back to our original conversation about seeking the external, like all of those external forces might just go away. And then who's going to be left making something with their hands? Somebody who wants to make something with their hands. And what's going to be the reason to bother doing it? The same reason our ancestors did it: because it's pleasing. You know, it's pleasing. Most of the art that's ever been made in the entire world was not generated. Nobody made any money from it. Like, you made it because it was pleasing. It was beautiful to make.
A quick side note
As I was prepping this section, I had to split up my work across multiple days. Coming back to this draft, I found the following sentence adjacent to the transcript, but not inside a timestamp. I can't recall if it's from the interview or not (maybe how the host segued in?), but I wanted to preserve it because I find it quite lovely.
I think we're seeing this return to the imperfection of the human creative pursuit and music and art and everything as AI is continuing to grow.
I'm fairly certain I didn't write that myself. I'm also fairly certain it's correct.
What Kind of Stationery Did Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Post on Social Media?
Oh, They SenATE With Those Journals
Recently, I logged into Facebook and saw a post from Abdul El-Sayed reading "Oh so we official official 👀" alongside the attached image.
Following weeks of political advertising and election stress, I had the most logical follow-up question to the post: what kind of stationery is "official official" for the Senate?
Abdul, habibi, if you read this, please tell me more about your stationery set! I want to know where it's from, please. Curious minds would like to know.
I did some Google-ing and found an Instagram post from 2021 in which the luxury leather goods maker ROYCE New York posted about being proud to have produced custom writing portfolios for the Senate for 25 years. Maybe they're still in the game? El-Sayed's photo appears to also feature high-quality leather and precise embossing that looks to be ROYCE's calling card. It would make sense if they're still the providers.
If El-Sayed's photo is of their Soft Bound Pebble Grain Journal and you're looking to buy one, it starts at about $65 a pop before any monogramming fees, though the photo makes the stationery look larger than the soft bound journal.
I'll stick with my Paperblanks and Sharpie 0.7mm pens for now.
New to Typeset Tools
Since announcing the launch of my flagship product, Folio by Typeset Tools™, I've continued to be hard at work refining and improving the product experience. Thanks to user feedback, I've already implemented support for dark mode, expanded export options to include EPUB, and made it easier to import your projects from Scrivener.
In the works:
Improving the authorship record to more accurately reflect how your work is tracked, and letting authors annotate things like imports and pasting for their own edification and clarity.
A revamped settings UI, so that all the customization goodies at your disposal are easy to access and not hidden in a modal that opens when you click on the not-clearly-labeled account icon in the upper right-hand corner.
One user reported a bug in which pasting from Scrivener did not carry over italic formatting, so a fix for that is in the works too.
On the backlog, a few things I'm excited to get to work on:
A habit tracker dashboard with goals and reminders. Are you trying to build a daily writing habit? Do you want a weekly word target? Just want to see how your output evolves over time with enough consistency? I want to give you the tools to do exactly that!
Smart integration across your planning, drafting, and research. Right now, you have the tools to plan out your project and store all of your research and worldbuilding, but once you go to draft, it's not easy to cross-reference yourself without leaving the drafting context, which can slow down progress. I'm currently sketching out ideas for how we can pull more of the Research and Plan data into your draft without cluttering the screen or complicating the UI.
Don’t forget that if you want to try Folio by Typeset Tools, you can use the code NONSLOPFUN for 15% off premium at checkout. Wink wink nudge nudge.
Until next time friends,
Blake