How to Create Without AI, part 1: Writing

Writing your own story is probably the easiest kind of creativity. The basics are easy to master, the tools are easy to find, and it doesn't take any more to start writing than being able to form a sentence. Not even a complete one. Just words that make sense.

Fortunately, in using ChatGPT, you already know how to form a thought and write it out. Now, it's just a matter of where to write that thought out. No matter whether you use a computer, a phone, or a tablet, The Document Foundation LibreOffice can run on it. There are a couple of main reasons why I'm recommending LibreOffice instead of Google Docs or Microsoft Office...

1. It has no capacity for AI integration, so you won't be tempted to have it complete your sentences for you.
2. It runs entirely on your device, sending no data to the cloud for analysis, AI systems training, or governmental eavesdropping.

The first thing you'll notice is how complicated the program options seem. You don't need to use any of them right now, you can just start typing. If you make a spelling mistake or a grammar error, the program will tell you about it by putting a red line underneath the word or phrase it thinks is wrong. If this is distracting, it can be turned off by going to Tools / Automatic Spell Checking, and clicking the checkbox to uncheck it.

This next bit is probably the hardest, and I'm not saying that to be patronising. For me, this is really hard to accomplish. You need to write something without feeling like you're performing for someone. That first sentence, sometimes it comes naturally, as in a thought I'd had rushing around my mind for hours; other times, I have to dig for it. Sometimes I dig in the wrong place.

"That's rhetorical nonsense. You don't dig for a sentence." Not literally, no; as you learn to write on your own, you'll learn how to make your own rhetorical nonsense. Then, you'll learn that most of what you love to read is composed on 90% rhetorical nonsense. There's another name for that: "Metaphor". Expressing an idea by equating it to something else. When I said "you have to dig for" a first sentence, that meant you sometimes need to search your imagination very, very hard indeed to find it. When I said "sometimes I dig in the wrong place", that meant that sometimes that first sentence ends up being entirely wrong. At that point, you can either rephrase it, eliminate it and come up with a new one, or start over again if nothing seems to be going right.

Relative to digging for an opening sentence, don't think about digging for buried treasure. Don't think about your opening sentence being a shining, glimmering, splendid thing to behold; think of it as an old bottlecap. It's pretty near the surface because it hasn't been intentionally hidden. As you dig, you find more and more bottlecaps. A second sentence, then a third, then a paragraph. Now you change where you dig, and you find a tin can! A second character to introduce! See? Metaphors! You get the impression from what I've written that, sometimes, writing your first paragraph is like digging for stuff at random. Don't be concerned with the final form of your story, don't even be concerned with how a teacher would grade it or how a critic would judge it. Just write! Anything!

For your homework in Creativity 101, I want you to do one of the following assignments. You don't have to "turn in" any of these assignments to me; just do them for yourself. Remember, nobody is judging you, nobody is going to give you a grade, you don't have to feel like you're a performing animal. The only rule is, you are not allowed to use any generative AI system to write any of these. You must write them yourself.