Welcome readers, writers, authors, and bloggers!
We're glad you're here! It's the First Wednesday of the month;
when we celebrate IWSG Day in the form
of a blog hop featuring members and guests of the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Founded by
author Alex Cavanaugh (Thank you,
Captain!) and fostered by like-minded associates, IWSG is a comfortable place
to share views and literary news as we record our journeys. Check out our newsletter here
The awesome cohosts
for this month’s postings are: Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Liza at Middle
Passages, JH Moncrieff,
and Jemima Pett!
Today’s
entirely optional question:
October 7th question - Many
people are calling for writers who use AI to disclose it. Most who employ
ghostwriters do not admit it - do you think authors who use ghostwriters should
have to disclose that, too? (Thanks Melissa Maygrove, for the question!)
No, I don’t think I
need to or should have to tell anyone if I paid a better writer (than myself)
to convey one of my occasionally brilliant ideas or remarkable life stories in
words I (temporarily, no doubt) could not come up with. Memoirs are seriously
personal business, and so is telling the world your well of words has run dry. Nope.
It can be my secret. And I don’t think I’m alone.
In fact, you couldn’t
have hammered that sort of information out of a single patron of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart either, as they desperately sought to be known as half the
composer that he was by playing the music he wrote for them. Secretly, of
course.
After all,
he (Mozart) was paid to keep it under his hat. It’s all part of the agreement. You
might be surprised how many authors use or used ghostwriters; Michael Crichton,
Ian Fleming, R.L. Stine, James Patterson, and even Mark Twain -to name a few. I’ve
lost track now of how many ghostwriters took part in writing the Bible, but I’ll
never forget the look on Grandma’s face when, referring to one on the table in
the library, I asked, “Who wrote this big book?”
My point is
that ghostwriters are (or were) real people with (in addition to intelligence)
emotions, experience, integrity, and (usually) empathy –none of which you’ll
glean from AI, a non-human compilation of cold, cursory answers that may or may
not be factual, to deep-rooted questions from warm-hearted humans.
In closing,
what a question! Good food for thought 😉
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