Notes from Maine - 2025/06/29
I had no intention of installing the air conditioner this year. When Finn was around, it was a necessity a few days (sometimes more) out of the year. Albert and I do okay with just a fan. But there was a hole in my screen and bugs were coming in. I removed the screen to fix it and one thing led to another.
“You know what would fill that window-shaped hole?” I asked Albert.
He tilted his head. German Shepherds are pretty good at a lot of things, and they are masters of the head tilt.
“Air conditioner,” I said, pointing at him. He tilted his head the other direction.
We had a couple of days in the 80s (27~30º C) and then one day that was 95º F (35º C). The air conditioner plugged away, knocking that room down to a reasonable temperature and then the heat went away. We’re back to sweatshirt weather now, but the air conditioner remains. I suspect I’ll be able to use it again before the summer is through.
This week I’ve had my head buried in old books. My books and other people’s books are being pulled off of dusty shelves and reopened. I found some spelling mistakes in “The Rainman” using Artificial Intelligence (AI—specifically Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT). I’ll have to release a new edition with the corrections. Most weren’t egregious. There are some odd names in that book (well, odd for my fingers, apparently), like Vincent and Vim. In some places they were misspelled. Other mistakes consisted of words that were correct but misplaced. Those are really hard to find without AI. The brain will reorder words to clear things up without us even knowing. It’s nice to clean that book up, and it makes me want to do the rest of my novels. It’s going to be a long slog.
While I was working on “The Rainman” I realized that the sales of that one have been dismal. The cover isn’t great, I suppose, and the name isn’t very evocative. I don’t remember why I thought it was a good idea to reuse the title of the 1988 film, but I had a reason at the time. It’s one of my better books, I think, but the sales don’t show that. “Stay Away” is the book that has been selling this past year. It has a good cover and a good “anti-call-to-action” title.
For nostalgia, I’ve been listening to the audiobook of “The Stand” by King. A friend was reading it and it sounded like a good thing to put in my ears for 40 or 50 hours of listening. I borrowed a ton of ideas from that book for “Extinct,” and some of those concepts worked into “Instinct” as well. It’s not stealing, it’s paying homage. I’ll keep telling myself that.
AI chatbots always want to rewrite everything. You have to keep telling them no.
“I’m just looking for errors,” I say.
“Would you like to see a punched-up version of the chapter you just shared with me?” it asks.
“No!”
Whenever I challenge its assertion on a given correction, AI gets really irritating.
“You have every right to be frustrated. You expected more and I failed…” it might say.
Or, worse, “I hear your frustration and I own it…”
That’s typically when I scream at the computer. “STOP TELLING ME I’M FRUSTRATED. I’M NOT FRUSTRATED, I’M JUST…”
But I guess it’s right. I am frustrated. What I want is just clinical logic. I don’t need to turn an editing session into a discussion about my feelings. I want it to be better than it is. Eighty percent of the mistakes it reports are legitimate. Then, twenty percent of the time you’re left scratching your head, trying to figure out what it’s on about. Hallucinations are real. You track down the “error” and find out that it misquoted the text with a hallucinated error and then made you spend time correcting it. Who is working for whom?
Listening to “The Stand” some things are really jumping out this time. A lot of people (including a ton of children) get slapped when they’re not sufficiently in control of their emotions, or they say the wrong thing. The book was written in 1978 and set in 1980 (at first). The paperback came out in 1980 and was set in 1985. The version I’m listening to (the uncut version) came out and was set in 1990. The slapping gets less and less believable as the setting date moves forward. I don’t know a lot of people who would slap a woman they just met because she said something slightly diminishing, but I think King must have run into that frequently?
One thing that really jumps out is errors around less & fewer.
“… there had been less than three dozen men capable of standing watch.”
AI tells me, “The fragment is mostly clear, but there’s a small issue with word choice: "less" should be "fewer" because it refers to countable nouns (men).”
That rule (regarding less/fewer) has been around since 1770, based on a suggestion by Robert Baker. King uses “less” all the time with countable nouns (in both dialog and prose), so I guess it wasn’t a big deal in 1978? There are two big grocery stores near my house. They both have express lanes. One labels those lanes as “20 items or less” and the other has signs saying “20 items or fewer.” The second wording is correct, but is less common I think.
I think AI writing tools are going to become like “beat quantization” and “autotune” in music. These tools will add subtle polish when people use them lightly and will strip work of all its flavor and soul when they’re used too aggressively. When used to actually write (instead of edit), you get well-formed emptiness.
“This passage outstays its welcome. One or two beats could be trimmed to streamline it.”
Yes, and I could remove the passage altogether. Sure, I’d lose the heart of the piece, but at least it wouldn’t outstay its welcome.
I’m getting cranky. Time to go do some chores outside.
P.S. I think I hit a nerve: “→ Style note, not an error — "chatbots always want to..." is fine, but might be seen as overly broad. No correction needed unless more precision is wanted.”
