Subject’s the wrong way round! “Writing is for the intelligent, dummies use AI”, a ‘smartie’ being a manipulative dummie.
This sort of thing is the end of genuine written culture; it’s the equivalent of painting-by-numbers. Am I surprised that there’s a Chinese involved — they are the masters of counterfeiting and that is what this is, encouraging: just write your guff and we will turn it into a Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, J.D. Salinger or whoever — particularly Hemingway — clone. It’s not about producing good writing or literature, it’s about letting anyone believe that they too can be a good author. It is the antithesis of the creativity it purports to encourage. It goes in Room 101 along with fashion and spurious celebrity.
And by the way, I’d confine Hemingway to Room 101 too, for creating the dumbed-down style perpetrated by would-be-writers who think that filling their verbosity with such irrelevancies as the brand of the toaster or coffee-maker being used, or the manufacturer of the shoes the character is wearing improves the plot by giving their outpourings what they think to be an “authentic touch”, and for encouraging the perception that any sentence over 13 words with more than one subordinate clause — leave alone a passive verb or the presence of an adverb! — is too difficult to read.
A “dumbed-down style” that resulted in some of the masterpieces of the last century. You can’t blame the master for the what his wannabe clones produce.
Thank you for your submission to our online writing submission system. Currently we are unable to process your submission because of greater than 13 words verbose outpouring with more than one subordinate clause. We are very interested in your work because of great potential writings. Please resubmit your entry with corrections to these problem(s). We look forward to hearing again from you.
I refuse to submit to any such supremely unintelligent, clearly reductionist system such as you, with your totally anti-creative requirements which emulate the horrors of the USSR under Stalin when writers, artists and musicians were restricted to working under oppressive guidelines, in default of which they were condemned to ignominy, obscurity or even extermination.
I refuse to submit to any such supremely unintelligent, clearly reductionist system such as you, with your totally anti-creative requirements which emulate the horrors of the USSR under Stalin when writers, artists and musicians were restricted to working under oppressive guidelines, in default of which they were condemned to ignominy, obscurity or even extermination.
Congratulations! Your revised submission, ‘I Refuse to Submit’, has been accepted. You will be receiving a handsome simulfax copy of your own words in the mail soon!
Please be aware before returning your final author’s corrections that, due to print limitations, we cannot print at this time greater than 13 words verbose outpouring. Also be assured the required processing fee, due upon receipt, is only to screen for bot text submissions and is for your protection not ours.
No, not unless you wish to be the literary equivalent of the maker of extruded plastic simulacra of the Venus de Milo rather than the Henry Moore of authors creating deathless prose full of Salfordian wit and insight!
And to you Vic. I hope you haven’t been too adversely affected by the flooding up there. My heart goes out to you people.
My mother came from just north of the Lake District and I have spent much time there, including a week’s stay in Glenridding — poor Glenridding! — just this summer. What they have suffered breaks my heart.
The cheque’s in the post.