AI As a Writing Assistant, Part 1

Artificial Intelligence does not concern me about losing my job. In fact, AI serves as an excellent assistant. But as I write in "Using AI to Improve Creativity, Productivity, and Quality," we must remember we're the boss. In this and coming posts, I will show you what I mean. 

The content below, in Arial font, emerged from a two-word prompt that I wrote in Google: "writing tips." For decades, I have taught writing in the corporate, government, and academic worlds using precisely the tips that follow. But it's one thing to recite them; it's another to adapt them to the specific audience I am teaching, whether they be college students, junior staffers, or executives. Tone shifts based on who's writing to whom. It's yet another thing to understand the organizational culture in which I am working. Salespeople write differently from engineers, who write differently from accountants, who write differently from scientists, who write differently from IT specialists. And it's far more to see someone's writing on the spot and explain what works and what needs improvement.

Throughout this series, I will refer to AI help and explain some caveats. Here is the 471-word AI response to "writing tips." 

Finding Inspiration in Art

Hayley Young's exhibition, Orchid Fever      
at the 5-50 Art Gallery, through July 20.         

There's not a thing we humans can't write about. All we need is inspiration. Today I got a cosmic jolt to my imagination when I went to the opening of artist Hayley Young's exhibition, Orchid Fever, at 5-50 Gallery in Long Island City, New York. I've been following Youngs for several years now and continue to marvel at her evolution. In her paintings, I see more motion, rhythm, and symmetry than I am likely to see walking down a midtown Manhattan street at rush hour, with one exception: inYoungs's work, serenity defines the movement. Although orchids inspired Youngs to create the 14 pieces of this exhibition, what I experienced was a lesson in how color and shape can form a vast harmony of water, earth, air, flora, fauna, and humanity that I just can't find in any other form of communication. Yet her art inspires me to try to replicate what she does through words, and while I might not get there, creativity is more about the journey than the destination.

When I posted in this blog 13 years ago a four-part series on finding inspiration, I was trying to explain that a single evening in one's life holds multiple sources of inspiration, in my case a walk, a dinner, a look at Times Square, and a play, on March 22, 2012. During the pandemic, many of us even were inspired by sights we had taken for granted when walking in isolation in our neighborhoods. 

The 5-50 Gallery is a cool space, no more than 200 square feet of a converted garage in a hip area of the city. For a quick subway ride, the first stop in Queens from Manhattan (Vernon Boulevard and Jackson Avenue on the number 7 train), you can find inspiration through July 20 at Youngs's show. Look at the paintings a long time to get the flow and musicality of her work. You'll dance.

Lighthouse International Film Festival at LBI

I have been staying in Beach Haven, New Jersey, for the seventeenth annual Lighthouse International Film Festival. While the weather has not been kind to visitors this year, the movies have been. You could do worse than watch a movie on a rainy day. I've done just that many times over by watching 60 films: 3 feature-length narratives, 3 feature-length documentaries, 43 short narratives, and 11 short documentaries over five days. 

The LIFF is an internationally renowned juried event that screens excellent independent movies from around the world. I will not review any of them here. Enough to say that they're worth watching. You can get a brief description of all of them here. 

But I do praise the festival itself. It is well organized, reasonably priced, and content rich. The 200-plus staff  members are gracious and accommodating, and the venues are comfortable. It doesn't hurt that the LIFF takes place on Long Beach Island, commonly referred to as LBI, a barrier island legendary for its spectacular beach the full length of its 18 miles. The restaurants, bars, and shops are plentiful, and you can take early morning beach walks even in the June drizzle. The LBI vibe is positively chill. You'll feel a cool sense of community and as much entertainment as you can handle from Wednesday to Sunday. Remember the LIFF for next year.

Background Music

When cooking, washing dishes, or cleaning the toilet, I find that listening to music and singing along make the tasks not only tolerable but pleasurable. (Yes, I do pity anyone within earshot.) 

What about playing music when writing? A lot of research is available on this topic. If you start at "Should We Turn Off the Music? Music with Lyrics Interferes with Cognitive Tasks" a study appearing in the National Library of Medicine website, you will find the results, while mixed, point to lyrics posing distractions to thought processes. 

I would not say that I listen to music when I am writing. But the music is on. I call it background music. I hesitate to share the music I play for two reasons:

• I do a disservice to the great musicians, whose talents are worthy of my complete attention. When I do listen to them play, I am moved emotionally and even spiritually.
• The background music of choice depends on the phase of the writing process I am engaged in. Am I planning, drafting, or rewriting?

Having made those disclaimers, I listen almost exclusively to jazz, and occasionally classical, but never to vocals, unless they're of the Philip Glass non-lexical sort. Indeed, Glass's music can be quite focusing. Bill Evans, one of my favorite pianists, is great to have in the background, and greater when paying close attention. Even unorthodox pianists like Thelonious Monk and Lennie Tristano make for helpful background music.

For me, the problem with listening to music with lyrics is capturing the right rhythm of my sentences. That's the very reason why having instrumental music in the background enables me to craft rhythm in a passage. 

Another disclaimer: I wrote this post in a public park, where the background music was a symphony singing birds and screaming children. So enjoyable. 

Remembering on Memorial Day

Since May 5, 1868—some would argue unofficially before then—the United States has set aside Memorial Day as a time to honor its nation's fallen military personnel who sacrificed their lives for their country. No one can be more worthy of a national tribute for their bravery in the face of danger and for their role in changing the world. 

It has surely crossed most of our minds that Memorial Day means to most Americans just a day off from work, a downtown parade, a barbecue, and a lot of traffic. I try to avoid those sentiments by memorializing people who were once in my orbit and changed my world. I can think of my parents, father-in-law, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, bosses, coworkers, and artists who are no longer here in the flesh. I make a point of talking about them to others, to let them know how these people influenced and inspired me with their courage, wisdom, insights, humor, and vision. I shall always remember them for their role in making not only my world, but our world, a better place. These champions, these kings and queens, encourage me to be a better human being and to do my share in paying forward whatever I can.

When I go to that Memorial Day parade or barbecue, I will remember those spirits who still lead me to the clearing. There are so many to remember and to be grateful for.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

I remember playing softball when I was 13 years old in the PS 100 schoolyard across the street from the James Monroe Housing Project in the Bronx. My team was up by one run in the bottom of the ninth inning facing an opponent with runners in scoring position and two outs. We needed only one out to win. I was playing second base hoping a line drive would come my way to make the final out and go home victorious. In fact, the batter hit the ball well over my head directly to the right fielder, our team's weakest defensive player. What would have been a routine catch for all the other players on the field went past the right fielder. Our team lost on a walkoff error. Eight of us were good ball players and one was not. So we lost. That moment might have been the time I learned the meaning of "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

The truth of that expression has emerged time and again throughout my life. The time one fearsome bully in my high school English class threw a rock at the teacher's back, causing us all an afternoon of detention because no one dared snitch on him. Or when I could not suspend my disbelief while watching a staged play because only one actor from an otherwise outstanding cast of eight was hamming it up, ruining the whole theatrical experience. Or the one customer service agent from an employee workforce of ten thousand who acted rudely, spurring me to never again buy from her company. Or the forced lyrics of a song for the sake of rhyming without regard to the verse's underlying meaning, transforming the song from ethereal poetry to mere doggerel. Or the lone wolf bad cop trampling on a citizen's civil rights, reflecting poorly on his entire precinct. These weak links fail to do the right thing. Whether willfully or thoughtlessly, they mess things up for the rest of us. And we must share some responsibility for that.

But some links might be the weakest in the chain through no fault of their own. Think of developmentally disabled individuals, paralyzed war veterans, innocent victims of physical attacks suffering permanent physical injuries, all of whom cannot do the tasks of their more physically capable counterparts. Or survivors of terrorist incidents, who suffer permanent trauma. Or hardworking but poorly paid laborers who cannot afford to make their children look as refined as their wealthier classmates. If it is true that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link—and we know it is true—then we are a sorry society if we, the supposed stronger links, do not do our best to care for these souls, and then we ourselves are weak.

Perhaps you have an aging father who cannot function without your help, or a child who needs your protection and guidance, or a mate slowly recovering from invasive surgery, or beloved relatives unable to speak the language of the country in which you and they live. I have met people who detest illegal immigrants, yet they themselves are the offspring of illegal immigrants; people who demand retribution against criminals, but not when that criminal is a family member; people disgusted by the homeless but whose heart goes out to a homeless person who aided their mother when she fainted from heat exhaustion on the street; people who hate those on public assistance but gladly accepted public assistance if some disaster befell them.

I say all of this because our world is in a strange time. Not one political party, but all of us, look the other way when people in government break the very laws they created and are sworn to enforce. We do not seem to mind that those laws apply in the harshest terms toward some of us and do not apply at all to others. We are living in a paradoxical Catch-22 situation, teeming with hypocrisy, contemptuous of morality, scornful of common sense. I am not romanticizing the old days, abundant with  gratuitous military actions, segregated school systems, marginalized women, and institutionalized disabled people. But in those times, advocating for ending the Vietnam War in the face of a million corpses, marching for Black Americans in light of lynchings and coloreds-only water fountains, calling for legislation on behalf of women's rights in view of inequitable treatment, and protesting for individuals with disabilities upon consideration of their second-class status appeared even to the most reticent among us to be responsible exercises of civil duty at best and  definitive proof of civil rights at worst.

What has changed? It is not a question of what our predessors had that we do not. It is the precise opposite. What did they not have that we do? The answer is technology. The pervasiveness of social media makes everyone an author. Anyone can broadcast on their favorite apps what now passes for news, and it's uninformed news fabricated to vent frustration, resentment, anger, and animosity. People  believe those dangerous lies out there because they speak to their basest prejudices and fears. And we're becoming worse for it.

What can we do about this dystopic world where disinformation flows into our minds at perpetual tsunami force? Three practices come to mind. These endeavors take some effort, like exercising, dieting, praying, studying, or childrearing. We can act decisively in our capacities as consumers, communicators, and citizens to recapture our better selves.

As consumers, we can cancel subscriptions to social media that allow stories and commentaries based on unfounded information. It’s easy to decide what information is based on reality. When a Facebook ad laments the passing of your favorite celebrity, simply go to an alternative source like the New York Times or Wikipedia to corroborate it. This does not mean you should trust the New York Times or Wikipedia. Fact-check them too. I have given up entirely trusting any news source. BBC, a news service frequently cited as reliable, recently devoted the entire half hour of one of its broadcasts to the irrelevant Prince Harry’s plea for monarchy support at a time when Ukraine was torn by war, innocents were dying in Gaza, and oligarchs were enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. I do not support any one source. If you do not want to cancel social media subscriptions, you can at least not spend one second of your scrolling time stopping to view a ludicrous, fictitious story passing as reality. Doing so will make these stories fade away. Ignoring works wonders with amoral technologies concerned only with impressions, likes, and screen time.

As communicators, we have two responsibilities: what we say and what we hear. We can speak the truth. When we hear something we know to be a lie, we should call it out. When we are not sure whether what we are hearing is true, we can simply ask our phone: Did so-and-so die today? Who recognizes the Gulf of America? Has the United States deported its citizens? How many people were killed in Gaza? It’s not hard at all. As listeners, we can avoid sources that commonly lie about or exaggerate facts. Here we should consider not only news outlets and social media but acquaintances too. I am not saying to stop being friends with such people, but to limit conversations with them to matters like “Do you think the Yankees will beat the Dodgers this year? When is trash pickup day? How much do eggs cost in your town?” Small talk has its place. At least we won't lose friends over it. 

As citizens, of course we can demand more from our representatives. But that’s just talk. In truth, we must demand more of ourselves. We are part of this problem. It’s not someone else’s fault; it’s ours. Still, we can wonder aloud—to be heard by others, allies and adversaries alike—why the situation is so out of hand. Once our fight for the truth is loud and clear, our representatives will join in that fight for us. Positive change will then be inevitable.

I was uncharacteristically at a rock concert the other night. The music was blasting from the speakers from where I was sitting 40 feet away from the stage. A toddler, perhaps the child of a stagehand or musician, was allowed onstage and directly under the stage for the entire 90-minute show. As I was shaking my head in disbelief, my friend said, “By the time she’s twelve, she’ll be deaf. Who the hell are those girl’s parents?” True. But it takes a proverbial village, baby. If we continue to do nothing when someone flicks a lit cigarette in a draught-stricken forest, we will burn in it.

"Please call me if you have questions."

Have you ever noticed that some people call you with questions even if you did not close your message with "Please let me know if you have any questions"? And how many thousands of times have you written "Please let me know if you have any questions" without getting questions from your readers? Contrarily, have you observed that sometimes people don't call you with questions when they should, because they clearly don't understand what you told them or mess up on what you have instructed them to do? For all these reasons and a few more, I wonder about the value of that overused closing. 

If you have been in the work world for a while, you know that the daily messages you write could number in the hundreds. We're on autopilot, some of our responses running a single word, like "Done," "OK," "Yes," or "No"; some cutting and pasting previous comments; others embedded in the previous message. We know all the shortcuts. We must, otherwise we would never finish our work. Who has time for anything else? 

I no longer see the point in closing a message with "Please let me know if you have any questions" or its hybrids. I can understand a closing that says, "I look forward to receiving your response" to accentuate the urgency of a message. Or "I will be at meetings all day but at my desk for the rest of the week" to indicate your availability. Or "Since this new procedure will likely require a learning curve, you can click here for the Help Desk" to express support. Or "This proposal will stay in effect for 30 days" to encourage your client to act. Or "If we do not receive a response by Thursday, 12:00 p.m., we will close the case" to cover yourself. Give some thought about the next step for the reader. 

Of course, your reader will contact you with questions, even if you don't tell them to. You might think "Please let me know if you have any questions" is better than nothing. I think not.