Writing And Me, Part II

 

Hello again Reader,

Your boy is coming at you from the wintry north with another post. Here, it’s a steady -20 to -28 °C; (around -17 to you Fahrenheit people), not a lot of snowfall, but what little has accumulated has stayed. Rime coats everything, and diesel engines and Teslas are fighting for their lives. So, in other words, winter has finally come! (It did around the 27^th, but it wasn’t as cold then.)

Today’s post will be on the lengthy side because I want to talk about… write about, something I am passionate about. Just as passionate as I am about writing.

But first! The Chronologies.

Now that I’ve finished the first draft of book three, I am taking a break from writing anything new regarding our cybernetic friends. Instead, I’m just writing out some of my before-sleep-scenarios as short stories. You know the kind. The ones that shoot across your mind’s eye as you’re laying all quiet-like in bed. Sometimes I can’t get to sleep before I finish the scene in my mind, and I often need to write them down either right then or the next morning. Sometimes I do the same with dreams.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the raw first draft of book two. I know, it ain’t as good as book one, but I hope to fix that in the second draft. Book three is far better; a more condensed narrative like with book one. Book two, in a way, needed to be as long as it is. It sets up arcs that’ll come in play later. It’s kind of like an intersection that branches out into several roads that, in time, will lead to the same place, and even cross at some point. Unit Five-One setting off with Meridia is one, for example. The mysterious sigils and symbols in Buddy’s vision another. Then of course there is Lucia’s predicament, and a more subtle things concerning Jean and Jaques.

I daren’t go into spoilerinos in case you’ve not read book two completely.

I’m looking to get the first chapter of book three out to you next week so all y’all have time to catch up with the story so far. 

More Passion, More Energy!

“So, what’s this thing you wanna tell us?” you ask.

Remember last week how I mentioned that your boy studies Latin on his off time? You don’t? Well, let’s fix that.

Latin is something I’ve wanted to study since Sam and Dean first came across demons in Supernatural. Yes, really. My reasoning is that mundane. Granted, I was around thirteen or fourteen when that happened. They were playing reruns on some channel I don’t recall, late in the night, and I was hooked. (On the show, that is).

Then we skip ahead almost ten years. During that time I’d made little efforts to begin this new hobby I’d dreamed of for so long, until I just decided: “Fuck it,” and bought a textbook online. I did none of the preliminary Reddit deepdives into the language learning or Latin learning communities (I should've). I didn’t prepare AT ALL, nor did I even really have a toolset for learning a new language, (if you don’t count primary and secondary school Finish and English education. Something that came to me very easily).

   

I began my journey studying Latin in 2023 with Henle. And if there are any amateur Latinists out there, you’d know that isn’t the best place to start. Why? Well, it’s a very heavy book filled with exercises that heavily focus on translation and grammatical structure. I’d soon come to realize that this is not the best way to learn a new language.

About six months in of steadily doing EVERY SINGLE EXERCISE and jotting down notes, (half of the book, really), I noticed that, though I could read basic Latin, I couldn’t speak a single word. I, of course, went to Reddit, only to find that Henle is generally NOT considered the best place to start, but rather Ørberg is. Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, Pars Prima: Familia Romana to be exact. (Image below).

 

This book teaches you in the “natural” method and encourages you NOT to use English at all. Every word in that book is in Latin, and it progresses chapter by chapter, introducing more and more of the language to you in a more natural way.

By the time I cracked open Familia Romana, I had all five noun declinations down to a T, and most of the verb conjugations as well. That helped me BLAST through the first twelve chapters of Ørberg, only really stumbling on new words, which context usually helped clue me in to their meaning. For, as the name states, the book is illustrated, and uses phrases and words you’ve already learned, or images, to explain new words and concepts. (Example below).

So, in a way, Henle was a good start for me. With it I built a strong base with which to tackle Ørberg. Now, I study both concurrently, hopping from one to the other. Ørberg teaches me through an enjoyable narrative and teaches me “every-day-conversational” Latin, while Henle helps me to further strengthen and widen my base by hammering in forms and such.

But why am I telling you all this?

 

For You Writers.

Through Latin I’ve come to understand that my knowledge of my native English isn’t as good as I’d like to believe. For all of you that have studied Latin in one way or another, you’ve probably found that there are many cognates in said language that have opened your eyes to the meanings of more esoteric or arcane English words.

My best example, (for the sole reason of it being the most easily remembered), is the word pecuniary. I’ve a little story that goes with this. See, I came across this word for the first time when I learned it in Latin. That being: pecunia. Which literally translates into money. So, pecuniary is an adjective relating to money. i.e. monetary. I came across the English use of the word when listening to a biography on U.S. Grant, and I was startled that I’d understood a word that I’d never heard before. The reason: I’d studied Latin.

That made me stop and think. How many other words were out there, derived from Greek or Latin, which I literally couldn’t fully understand unless I studied the source. How many other ways of expressing the same things could there possibly be, when English was such a vast language comprised of so many other, and older, forms of language.

Needless to say, my Latin studies doubled in speed for the next month. So, take up a new language, if it’s only for a month. I guarantee it makes your writing better.

Why Bring This Up?

For one BIG reason: AI. Yes, that again.

It is sad. Truly sad to see people in comment sections of articles, posts on Instagram or X, and other online places, shouting out AI because the author or creator decided to use a word the viewer didn’t understand. Or people who shout, “no one can write like that! no one even knows what that word means!” because they don’t understand it or even have the capacity to believe that someone else might.

And that’s not even mentioning people who think AI wrote something because the grammar was good, or better yet, because an essay or post is LONG. Like, WHAT THE FUCK? You can’t even have good grammar or spell words correctly, or even know how to write past two-hundred words anymore unless you want to be accused of using AI and LLMs?

We live in an age where if you create something beautiful, people with no creative talent LITERALLY cannot comprehend that you are able to do such a thing, or devote the needed time to it, for the sole reason that AI exists

And that is not even mentioning AI detectors that detect falsely. I repeat: the SOFTWARE DESIGNED TO DETECT IF AI WAS USED, HALLUCINATES AND BELIEVES THAT PLAIN OLD HONEST TO GOD GOOD WRITING IS AI. Why? Because the average writing skills of people (that the software draws from), are so bad, that it confuses what should be a basic level of skill with the use of a COMPLEX LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL.

There are, of course, people who besmirch us creatives by using AI to create, and in turn many (usually unestablished) creatives are labeled as users of AI if they manage to make something very impressive. It is terrifying.

I don’t fear the loss of jobs when AI comes along strong, (if the bubble doesn’t burst). No. I fear the degradation of though to the point that people scratch their heads at how people like Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Milton, Stephen King, Lovecraft, and countless others were able to write something beautiful and resonating by hand or typewriter, without the use of a glorified search-engine working off a shitty prompt, stealing everything good from others.

In Conclusion,

Make something yourself. Learn something new, like Latin or Greek, so that you might better understand the things you and others love. Don’t fall into the temptation of letting AI do everything for you. More importantly, don’t become one of those who shout “AI” at everything because deep in your heart you’re jealous that you cannot do the same. I believe all of us can be creative in some way. But that way is never letting a machine do it for you. Creativity is a skill learned throughout the course of one’s life, from birth do death. There are no shortcuts. 

Thank you, once again for reading. I hope you got something out of this.

’Till next Saturday!