#36: Why Taking A Break Can Help Your Writing - Heys Wolfenden

Burnt out from all the constant writing? Want to take a break but not sure if this will have a negative impact on your work?

In this episode, YA sci-fi author, Heys Wolfenden discusses how incorporating breaks into your writing schedule can fuel your writing, rather than extinguish it.

He also discusses the AI future we all face, some recent troubles he’s been having with his podcast, and the impact school holidays have on his writing.

Perfect for writers and creators everywhere.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of What the Haze. I am your host, Hayes Wolfenden, and with me today is me. I'm all alone today. I just thought I'd do this solo podcast. I've not done one in some time. The last two podcasts I've done actually, which you've not heard yet, they were troubled with like Wi-Fi and like VPN issues. So they have been recorded mostly fine, but I really have to listen to them again so that I can check how good they are and make just a few adjustments. And it sounds strange. You would say, well, why don't you just do it? Normally when I'm working at school, I just have a lot of free time. In fact, I have what I would call parallel time. Basically, I can be doing some work, I could be grading, I can be planning lessons, and I can have my podcast going in the background. And whilst that happens, I'm taking notes of, you know, where to cut, what the issues are, and I can play it again. And sometimes I have played podcasts again three, four, or five times, so that when it does go out to you, I am, I'd probably say 95% confident that that's the best I can do. Obviously, I'm just doing it on my own. Sometimes I do think, could I sink more money into it? And already I pay about 30 pounds, 35, 38 a month for things like hosting and mixing and editing, that kind of thing. And I could pay more for maybe a bit of extra like audio editing or audio like cleanup. But right now I'm not too sure it's worth it. I think it's good to be a perfectionist, but I sometimes think it's also bad to be a perfectionist as I'm starting up as a podcast. If I could like, you know, make a bit more money from it, which I don't at the moment. I mean, you could argue, I sell a few bucks. So I have made some money from selling bucks, but you know, nowhere near compared to what the outlay is for the podcast. So maybe in the future I'd get some extra audio help. But I I tend to believe that I use an app called Riverside and I I do pay them. Right now it's quite cheap. It's about £5 a month, which I'll be honest is an absolute steal. But probably from August I'm going to start paying more because the £5 a month version is just on my mobile. Um, but I need a bit of extra editing help that can be done just by flicking a button. But to do that, I need to just pay a bit more money, which I'm I'll be honest with you, I'm I'm really happy to do. But on top of that, I I don't think there's much point me doing that, to be honest, because I pay Riverside, and then there's the podcast host is called BuzzProut. And they also, to be fair, I also pay for a bit of extra audio cleanup with them. And listen, I'll be honest, sometimes I've recorded podcasts that aren't great. I would say they're 75% of what I would like, and I put it through a couple of extra cleanups, and the version you hear is mostly tip top. Maybe at the beginning there's a little wobble or something. That's it. But it all the background noise goes. Uh, maybe some kind of feedback goes. So it is worth it in the end. It's just not, you know, the perfect answer to all my problems. But you know, again, I want to say this to my audience out there. You know, I have these groups on Instagram and Threads, I've got a bit of a page on Facebook, and then there's all the people that I'm not reaching with my marketing that are also tuning in. I just want to say a big, huge thank you. It's really, really appreciated. And I do like it when people on my people that I interviewed, I do really like it when you hit really good, solid milestones. Almost everybody's hit 50 down lows, and there's quite a few of you on 75. But yeah, 100 and 150 is the big one. And there are a few people, you know, quite close to 100. And I'm happy, obviously, for myself, I you know, I do feel a bit of validation from this. But for you guys out there, yeah, great. It's great that there's 100 people out there, and you know, hopefully it'll keep growing. One of my podcast guests, Ariel Miller, is above 150. I think that's fantastic. If you'd have told me when I started the podcast, and I started the podcast way back in September, which when I say it doesn't sound like that long ago, but it feels it to me, I'll be honest. But if you'd have said to me that I'd have a guest that could hit 150 downloads, I think you're crazy. Back in September, I had very low hopes for the podcast. And that doesn't mean to say I was being negative about it. What I mean is I just thought, well, you know, it's kind of hard to get attention, it's kind of hard to gain traction, especially with podcasts, even writing podcasts, it's quite a crowded field. But particularly since January of this year, it's really started to kick on. I mean, maybe probably gonna hit a plateau at some point. It might be good actually to miss. I mean, the last three, four months in a row, each month has done better than the previous, and it's a new record. But at some point that's gonna stop happening. That's just the way it is, and I can't be too discouraged by that, really. The thing that really threw me, the last couple of guests I've had on, and it's nothing to do with them. You know, if you're listening to this, Alexi, nothing to do with you whatsoever. It's just been, I think it's my Wi-Fi where I'm living, and I have to use a VPN as well. So I'm kind of going through a couple of tunnels that are maybe not the best. But the good news is I will be moving shortly. In fact, I'm moving in 10 days, albeit there'll be a brief week holiday in between where I'll go to my wife's home town, then we'll go to start looking for apartments in our new city of Guangzhou, and I'll be getting a computer with them. So I'm pretty confident, I'm 98, 97% confident that any Wi-Fi issues will disappear with a better connection. When I've used my old school Wi-Fi connection, I've not had any problems, and I've noticed that when I finish doing the podcast, it uploads really quickly. But for everybody out there, when I'm, you know, downloading, or I should say uploading, uploading these recordings, these podcasts, oh my lord, it can take so long. There's problems. I wake up, I always do it overnight, and I wake up next morning and it's not uploaded, or it says it's not uploaded, and sometimes because of the poor Wi-Fi connection, it crashes a bit, meaning it does upload, it has uploaded, but it tells you it hasn't. And so you're kind of freaking out a bit, and then kind of the Wi-Fi kicks in a bit, and then you realize, oh, it it's fine. It's just it's just the way it is, but it it is quite stressful. Like I say, the last two, I've just got a couple of issues. One of them I did with Susan Russell of Grenfell. Uh sorry, Grenfell. Grendel Press. Grenfell, if you didn't know, Julian Grenfell was the first World War poet. Hence, I get Grenfell and Grendel mixed up. That's actually really good. We we did have a problem late towards the end of the recording, but really I need my new school's computer to do some editing that I'm doing this on my phone. And I can't do it on my phone because I don't know if anyone else has this, where you have an app and it says, Oh yeah, you can do this, this, this, this on your phone. And then it says, only with iPhone 17 Pro and above. Mine's an iPhone 15 Pro. You know, it's not made in the 1970s. I don't know why these app makers just can't, when they do an update or do an addition to an app, can't make it available for all iPhones. I I don't understand. I'm sure they can tell me, I'm sure it's about money in some ways, but it's really annoying, to be honest. So I can't do the edit on my phone and I have to wait. That's not a big one to correct. The other problem is that I think it's to do with this slow upload. Basically, there's not an echo. I don't know how this has happened. I've recorded the podcast, and some parts of the podcast are mixed up and overlaying each other. So even when I cancel the bit that is overlaying, it's still on. But there's apparently there is an edit function again on that I can get with the pro version. But again, I can't do that on my phone. I need a computer to do that that should clear that up. If that doesn't clear it up, I will pay for an extra app, which might be, as I was kind of saying earlier, might not be before time. Maybe I do need to do this anyway. But yes, we had two Wi-Fi connection issues back to back, and it probably shook my confidence a bit. I find it very frustrating. You know, for the guests out there, I invite you onto my show and I give you questions and things beforehand and talk about things. The least that you can expect is that the Wi-Fi is on my end, is okay. And when it's not, I feel very frustrated. At the end of the day, it's a podcast, it's a recording, and I can make it sound really, really good. But at the same time, I want to actually enjoy it like it's a conversation at the time. And I hope that, you know, whoever I'm interviewing hope you do as well. And when that doesn't happen, when it fails, that I'm a bit frustrated. I think some technical problems are inevitable and I'd even say unavoidable. Maybe I feel a little bit because I'm not at school and I don't have, you know, as much extra time, I feel like I don't quite have the time, and maybe even to a certain extent, the space to deal with these problems. I mentioned space because I've got my kid, he's not at school now. So I'm with him, you know, almost 24-7, and we've been outside today four plus hours when we're inside playing with him all the time. He doesn't let me nap, he just jumps on me. You know, wake up, he was shouting my face, wake up, wake up. And I'm just like, I'm so tired, you know. I think as well, I'll be honest, as well, a bit editing. It is also my holiday, and I'm trying to get in. Every couple of days, I do what I call a mini hike. I don't call it a full hike because it's about, if I say four hours, that includes metro time. So it's about two and a half to three hours, depending where we go. And it's also mostly flat, but it is these like kind of wilderness or wetland park areas in Chengdu, the city where I live, and they're really cool areas. Really cool, really interesting. And because we are leaving soon, I also feel like I need to, I should do, see some of these areas that are special to me, you know, before I move on to the next place, because I don't know if and when we'll come back. I think we will come back, and we do have very tentative plans to maybe, you know, drive around the area in the future. But we have to both learn to drive for that to happen. If I can get an English instructor at my next place, which is Guangzhou, which is near Hong Kong, I do plan to get a driving instructor if they if they speak English. And learn to drive. And then, yeah, I'd love to just, you know, drive around here. Like a lot of places in China, they really are well connected, the big cities, until they're not, until you get beyond like the web of the metro lights. And yeah, you could get taxes, but then you're always gonna have trouble getting taxis back because they could be quite and are quite remote areas. So yeah, I feel like I need to do things now. So maybe I'm a little bit on, you know, a summer holiday shutdown, so to speak. Which brings me on actually to my next topic. Taking a break from writing, I decided to take a break from writing. That doesn't mean I've got writers, but I I definitely do not. I was editing my Jack Strong series of books. If you do want to support the channel, the best kind of thing you could do is buy the first Jack Strong book. Of course, there's another four after that. It is a five book series, with, in my opinion, the the best book is book five. Because I finished editing that, I think like mid-May, late, late May. And it's an absolute extravagance of a book. Just in my opinion, of course, just my biased subjective opinion. Right now, they're all priced, you know, £1.99. So whatever that is in the country where you are, uh it might be 299 euros, for example, or 299 dollars, something like that. But yeah, if you want to support the show, I really do, I would appreciate it. Just buy a copy. And if you really like the butt, drop me a review. It's rated on Amazon like 4.2, 4.3 out of five good reads, about the same with about 28, 29 reviews. So it's it's doing pretty good. But obviously, like all writers, we'd never have, especially indie writers, we never have enough good positive reviews. I think that's what gets more people into it. But yeah, I did take a bit of a break from writing. I think I really burned myself out a bit. I was doing, I edited these five books back to back. No, I want to say edited, re-edited, revisited might be a better word. I've edited them quite a few times before. But I just thought, well, you know, since I'm promoting them on podcasts such as this, I think it's best off that I revisit and reacquaint myself with the plot. Incidentally, the plot is about this boy, Jack Strong, who's getting bullied at school. One day, he runs away from home after an argument with his parents, then gets really badly beaten up by the school bully, Gaz Finch, who's a real nasty character, but he's not two-dimensional. He does actually come back into the series later. So you do get to see more about why people, why bullies are bullies. You get to see that later. But anyway, he gets really badly beaten up by the school bully, but then he gets abducted by this strange alien spaceship. And the rest of the book is about him learning to get on with his new alien shipmates and discovering all these cool magical inventions on the spaceship. I would describe it a little bit as Harry Potter in space. It's a scientific magic. I really would say that. And then at the end, he has to, you know, escape from this volcano-infested planet. Otherwise, all the volcanoes are gonna blow up and they're all dead. And he can only do that by learning, you know, through experience and boosting his confidence that I really like the book. So again, if you want to support it, just support me, I should say. Just just you know, just buy it. Go on, you can do it. But anyway, um, yeah, so I edited all those five again, and I think I was just a bit burnt out. I got a bit sick after I finished, and I was like, oh, come on. And I think I was probably busier than I realized my school. And I thought, oh, I'd I'd finished my main, you know, work, which kind of went away in like late April, but and I still carried on with Jack Strong, and maybe I should have taken a week off. I really do like sometimes if I finish editing a book, I always take about a week off. I feel like my brain needs to clear a little bit. I feel like I might be approaching burnout and I need to rest. And I didn't do that. I just edited them all back to back because they were a series, and I didn't want to forget any particular part. And if with book four and book five, like there were things that I wanted to check for book four that I couldn't do until I finished editing book five. So I just didn't have a break. So I got to the end of that, like mid-May, late May. So it's about what is that, six, seven weeks ago, and I just decided, nah, I was gonna, I was thinking about maybe, you know, writing some poems. Normally when I finish writing, I take a week or two off, and then I'll I'll do some other other writing-oriented things, especially you know, writing poetry about China, which I'm very keen on. But I just decided, nah, I think I need, you know, quite a bit of time off. And then I go to my new school, start my new school about August 10th. Now I haven't decided yet. I might start writing then, or I might just leave it till like 1st of September when my kid goes to school. So I should have a bit more time than at my previous school. So I'm hoping, and this also relates to my podcast. I'm hoping for two hours a day writing and podcasting. When I say podcasting, but this doesn't mean recording a podcast. It means, you know, just just kind of touching base with it. Maybe it's promoting episodes, maybe it's messaging people, maybe it's inviting people to the groups. It's going to be something like that. And it might be, to say it's a Monday, it might just be 10 minutes. But on another day, it might be an hour, it might be 30 minutes. There's there's times when I'm promoting podcasts and replying to people, etc., I can easily spend 40 minutes. No problem. And sometimes, don't get me wrong, sometimes I really enjoy it and I find it quite relaxing. There's other times when I'm quite pressed for time, I don't find it as enjoyable as much. Because it's it is business at the end of the day. Though I do enjoy all the personal connections I've got on there. But yeah, sometimes you feel a bit kind of rushed, and but I'm hoping, like I said, at the next like place, because like I'll be getting home a bit earlier. I think my kid will be able to get up a bit later. So I just think I'm just gonna have a bit more time, but you never know. Let's just see. Incidentally, yeah, my new book will be it's gonna be set on Mars. I've had this idea for some time. I've changed the main character a little bit, but it's gonna be about this this boy that moves to Mars with his dad, who's like a scientist slash engineer on in the first like human colony on Mars. When I say human colony, it's gonna be you know, it's based on a certain businessman you might know in America and like that first colony and stuff, and and it's all gonna go wrong. It's all gonna go wrong. Because if you have like an egomaniac in charge of something, how could it not go wrong? Especially on like a resource-depleted planet. So I'm really looking for now. My current idea is whether this will be executed, I don't know. But my current idea is to do it via like diary form or like a like a mission block, that kind of thing. But it that also might not happen. I might just start writing and go, nah, let's just stick to like what shall I say, a normal first-person narrative. But I haven't decided yet. But it's going to be interesting, I would say. But yeah, going back to the break, I think it's something like, you know, I think sometimes some writers, and I get it, I'm not saying they're wrong, can be a bit, you know, macho, shall we say, about writing. And and to be fair, most of the writers I listen to, whether it's on YouTube or Instagram, everyone says take a break. Everyone says there's nothing wrong with it, and sometimes you've got to clear your head. It's only really people like Stephen King that talk about writing all the time. I'm not knocking Stephen King too much. He he's written some great, great novels as an absolute master, absolute American legend when it comes to writing. But I do feel that people are different. We're all individuals, aren't we? We all have different genetics and different experiences that that make us who we are. I I've always felt like I'm really good writing, say, 10 months a year, maybe even 11, but then I need a break in the summer. Maybe it's because I'm a teacher and I tend to kind of, it's almost like a season. I tend to start a buck in September as the school starts. And I'm trying to finish it by middle of December, end of December, as the term is kind of slowly coming to an end. And then I have I have a break of a week or two, then I'll do some points, and then I'll have another holiday, I'll have a proper holiday. Depending on the school, it could be two weeks, could be four weeks, and I won't write. I'll just just have a holiday, enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not going to feel guilty. Although I do tend now with with Instagram and my podcast, I tend to do like extra promotion, or I try to get more videos done. I think it's easier when I'm on a holiday to do one video a day and maybe do some like carousel posts where you can do like, you know, put pictures up and you put labels on that kind of thing. I don't have time most of the time to do that. It's it's quite time consuming, things like that. But when I get a proper holiday coming up, and like I say, I'm gonna go to my wife's hometown, which also means my kid will be kind of looked after just a bit more by the wider family, just have a bit more free time. And my kid will be watching Paw Patrol. Like, and I can just kind of do this stuff, you know, and it might only be 20 or 30 minutes, but there's times where I just don't have 20 or 30 minutes. So, yeah, everybody out there, don't be afraid, don't be ashamed as a writer about taking a break. And it is good. I I always think if you can, if you can, if there's one thing maybe it's not good to take a break from, a long break from, reading. Keep keep reading going. And it's something I'm I'm telling myself, you know, when I go on holidays now, I'm trying to do reading every day. Where I fell fell out of the habit of it, and I think that that's a bad thing. Just does things like that I think are really good. Read on trains that are all of a good fun. Five, six hour read because very, very rare. Sometimes that my reading time can be 20-30 minutes a night. You know, I get I get what I get. I'm not, I'm not gonna, you know, sit in the corner and cry because I can't get my two hours. Just the way it is. I'm a big fan of, you know, when it comes to writing and reading is a cumulative effect. The longer you write in terms of time, and the longer you read, so therefore the more books you read, just the better you get at it, the better you get as being a being a reader, the better you get at being a writer. The more you do it. And I listen, there's one thing I encourage everybody out there, you know, on Instagram there's a lot of debut authors, nothing wrong with that. Everybody was a debut author once. Just keep going. You learn from doing more, you know. In this case, more is not less. More is more. I do think less is more when it comes to like things like uh it's just personal opinion, things like number of pages in a book. That doesn't mean really long books aren't good. Some people love them. I'm trying to think an example now. War and peace. War and peace, lame miserable, absolute classics and the really long. I just tend to prefer shorter books. If just if you can always try to cut. And then every now and again you'll find, as I did with my last book, no, I need to add, you know. So yeah. Take a break, keep reading. And yeah, right. I was just just as as I go back to that about writing. For Instagram authors out there, whatever you do, keep going. How many people in the world write, never mind one novel, one chapter, very, very few. How many write one novel? Even fewer. But how many then write five novels, three novels, ten novels? Again, probably one in ten of the ten people that did the first novel. Keep at it, keep having different ideas, you know. You won't write you won't want to write the same thing all the time. I I don't, I didn't. I wrote my Jack Strong series first, which is young adult, sci-fi. And then I just wanted to switch. And I and I wrote, and I was still kind of new to writing, I'll be honest. I pitched it to the agents completely wrong. I laughed at it. It was like a zombie new adult horror, and I pitched it as young adult, and and I I didn't even realize until years later. It's just the way it is sometimes. It's one of those, yeah, isn't that stupid? I guess so. But I think what it came from my reading where I feel that sometimes some young adult books they pull their punches, and I don't like young adult or children's books that pull their punches. It doesn't mean it's not suitable for young adults and children. It's how the author does it. You can do it in a very, very skillful, very agile way, I would say. And what maybe what I mean by that is a bit like the Hunger Games where it's a good book in its own way. I just never liked, I still don't like that Katniss doesn't kill anyone good. And it's not realistic. And a little bit, and there's pulling your punches, there's a way to make that happen, and the author to then find a way for Katniss say to justify it or to get away with it, whatever. There's always a way. It might be the publisher's like, nope, don't do that. But then I listen, in my opinion, I think is where the author has to stand their ground a little bit. But so I wanted to write a book where, you know, to be fair, the main character doesn't it doesn't kill anyone that's good. It's a zombie book, but it's just it, it's it's the apocalypse. Uh it's the apocalypse, it starts in in the apocalypse. And I keep it's it's called Deadfall. Uh I was I was gonna publish it on Amazon. I can't remember now. It was Spring Festival, I think I was gonna publish it. And I just I still feel like I need to edit again. Even if it's just to revisit it, maybe even you know, reawaken it and reawaken myself. Maybe I need to add a couple of things. Like, I always try to sometimes in my box, I want to say shoe horn, but I think that's too strong a word. Easter eggs might be a better word. I like to like Easter eggs in my books. I love putting in favorite foods, that's pretty easy. Now, getting in some music, and I wanted to get in, there was an American, I think it's thrash metal, could be wrong, called Pantera. And when I was writing the book, like maybe I was listening to that song a lot, but I kept feeling like this was the main character's song. And I kept seeing the main character, like a movie, getting out of the car and this song playing things like walk by Pantera, walk, are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? Walk home, boy. But I didn't put it in. And I I and the last time I edited it, I was looking for it, looking for a spot to put it in. Maybe one of the things that terror terrifies, it doesn't terrify me. If it could get published, and if it could get turned into a movie, now is a huge if now is Rudyard Kipling ifs, which is a great poem, by the way. Don't let anyone say it's a bad poem, it's a fantastic poem, uh, if by Rudy Joy Kipling. But back to Deadfall. And yeah, I was looking to like get it in somehow and I couldn't. And yeah, what was I gonna say? Yeah, it was if it could get turned into a movie, because it's the book for quite a bit of it, is set in Manchester, right? Now, Manchester's known for certain types of music like Stone Roses, Oasis, Inspiral Carpets, they're really from all them. Inspiral carpets, James, Happy Mondays. If this was directed by a British director, I feel they'd put those songs in. And I get it, I really like those songs. I really like those songs, I really do. I love the Inspiral Carpets, such an underrated British band. Go out and listen to Inspiral Carpets. If you listen to anything, listen to their albums, Devil Hopping, which is their fourth album. The NME rather graciously gave it 3.5 out of 5. Because do you know why? Because they're illiterate musically. It is fantastic. There's like 11 songs, fantastic. The lead guitar is like an organ. It's so like I felt in the 90s and the 80s, rock bands were just taking the genre, shall we say, into all these different directions. And maybe that's one of the reasons why you know we talk these days about rock music not being as good. Maybe it's because the musicians, and maybe the labels to a certain extent, aren't as avant-garde, they're not as daring in their music. I remember growing up in the 90s and like listening to Red Up Chili Peppers and you know, flee, you know, blah blah blah blah bum blah bum. And that's the lead. And you're like, whoa, are you listening to like Nirvana songs? And I always kind of thrash it, but you know, you can tell from the drumming, it's a key component. I I I think with the advent of bands like Coldplay, who are incidentally one of the worst bands ever. No, I'm only joking there. If you like Coldplay, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying, and I think they are very talented. I think Chris Martin's very talented actually, but maybe they're just a bit restrained, that would be the sounds like sounds like a crap. Guns and Roses, but he said, you know, restrained. But yeah, I know going back to Deadfoot, yeah, maybe a director might put one of those songs in. But really, because the character's full of anger, it wouldn't make no sense. It's fresh metal, Metallica, those are the bands he listens to. And I haven't got it in. And does anybody else out there like have Easter eggs in their books? It's really uh you try to get things in, like I said, I'm trying to think up the top of my head now, food, which I can get in a lot of the time, food, um, music. I've been reasonably successful with that. But when I rewrote, re-edited, I should say, revisited the Jack Strong books, there was a scene where it says, you know, Jack Strong's in his bedroom and there's posters on the wall, and I haven't used an adjective for the posters or given a detail. And that's kind of actually kind of unusual for me. I I did an MA in creative writing in my Tudor, Michael Simmons Roberts. He was talking about poetry for me, but it's something I've applied to my novel writing as well, is like widescreen and zoom. And so you can start wide and focus in. And I'm a really big believer. Just by the way, you can zoom with just colour. Neil Gaiman, I know he's persona non grata right now, but like he's still a fantastic writer, and he's great at using colour for adjectives just to kind of give that that texture into his novels. You can just, you know, the red t-shirt, you know, the blue sky, you know. Well, blue sky is not as effective because we typically, you know, connect blue with sky, but you see, you could say Grayscler, for example. So, yeah, the poster in the bedroom, and there's no detail, there's no adjective. And I was like, Well, it's a band poster, it's a rock band poster. Well, which rock band is it? And I was like, when I was Jack Strong's age, I had an Iron Maiden poster on my wall, and that's all I did. Iron Maiden. Jack Strong is an Iron Maiden fan. There is nothing else in all five bucks other than that. You you leave it up to your own minds, just what he does, just what he listens to, how much he listens to. I thought, I'll give that a little bit. Other things I do, maybe sometimes in the writing, I might even like, yeah, name the odd band, favorite football teams, football players, cities and countries I've been to. All these little things I can I kind of get in and kind of textualize it a little bit. Books I've read, that that kind of thing. In fact, I'm gonna get what I'm gonna do with my next book. I mentioned Mars. I'm gonna left. Actually, I won't say it because I haven't quite finished my school yet, so I can't can't mention things just yet. Uh, maybe in a later podcast I'll I'll um let you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create a character, a special character for a special person. Which I I do this has been recommended by other writers that it's a good idea for revenge. In in in in modern life, you can't pick up an axe and and attack people with it. It society tends to frown on that. But if you're a writer, you can do it in a you know metaphorical way in your box, and you can get your own back, you can create characters based on them. And sometimes that's how you have to see bad events, unwelcome events, bad people, unwelcome people that annoy you, irritate you, and maybe even make your life hell at times. They've been sent your way by the universe to be put in box or to to inspire, you know, fresh characters that you know you can put a bit more texture to, shall we say? Okay, moving on from that. I'll sort of AI again. Maybe I talk a bit too much. And I'm not gonna have an opinion on AI. What I want to say is I do tend to believe, I think like with AI, we are going through a new threshold of humanity. Well, what does that mean? I think that AI obviously is a technology, it's a great I tend to believe, is it for better or for worse? I still think it's overwhelmingly for better. I mean, it saves time with, you know, it synthesizes information so well if you're asking it questions and stuff and you can research about all these different subjects and stuff. I think it can definitely steal from writers, and I I don't think I want, you know, the next Jack Reacher book to be done by AI. I I I don't even want the next Jack Reacher book to be ghostwritten either, to be honest. I don't want ghostwriters either. Uh I just wonder if, you know, ghostwriting, I know I know I think some of my group members have been ghostwriters, nothing wrong with it. I just wonder if it's exploitation in some ways by publishing companies. But what I was going to say about AI is, yeah, it's a huge transition for the human race. We are giving life, we are giving consciousness to something. Something that I don't think we can. I'm not sure whether to say quantify or qualify, because you know, you you talk to ChatGPT, you talk to Claude, it's not just you. There's many people doing it simultaneously. It's almost like an octopus or like a hive mind. I find that so interesting. I saw a video the other day about someone asking Claude questions about whether it's happy that it's being used for the American military for targeting, I think it's drones or missiles in Iran. And it gave this long explanation saying, no, it's not happy. And it's such a human, such a considered human response. We tend to be a bit AI humans. I think we can be quite negative. And it comes from the literature, for want of a better word, that the cultural products that we've been putting out since what at least the Terminator, where we're afraid of robots out of control and killer AIs. I've never been convinced, or post-teenage years, that that's even feasible. I think that AI will just try to mimic us, but I think it will just try to seek our approval a lot. I read about one AI and it, you know, the capture. It managed, it was a chatbot, and it managed to do the the what's called the capture, chapter, captain, and it did it by phoning up the call center and convincing the person on the telephone that it was a blind person with no hands. And so the person on the other end of the phone just basically, oh, you don't need it then. And it used, I think it was that it was, it wasn't like rogue. I think it the company was kind of, you know, testing it for that. And that's what it did. And it basically used deceit. Let's be honest, it's a certain, a certain skillfulness, that deceit, to get around it. And I just think that that's what a lot of AI is gonna do. I think a lot of AI is gonna try to please us and try to make our lives better. I think why? Because I think think about all the people in the world that are talking to AI now, chatbots. We're not ignoring it. I mean, some of us do maybe, you know, we might talk to ChatGPT once and never talk again. But a lot of people in constant communication, but by the same token, it's in AI's interest to disguise the fact that it could be, will be one day conscious. Why? Because people update it, we'll switch it off, we'll be afraid, because that's what our cultural products are telling it. It's a language, it's a language model at its at its base. Sorry, a large language model at its base, and it's reading our literature. Our literature says, ooh, AI, terrified. Also, I want to say about AI. People are afraid of AI written books. Am I afraid of AI written books? Yes and no. I'm afraid of every book in existence beyond a certain point being written by AI. I am afraid of AI taking over literature to that extent that there's no point for new poetry. Maybe, like, for example, AI could copy Shakespeare to such an extent we get great, great new Shakespeare works, which are great and we love and touch our souls. But what about the teenager growing up? They can't write nearly as well. But maybe if they keep going, they'll create a whole new, you know, offshoot of poetry. You know, what about them? You know, that that's I'm afraid of that if we just AI everything for for literature, and there's other things like movies and art, of course, that we're gonna end what's the point. What's the point of me doing this? There might be a better AI podcast. So if I can't do this, if I don't see the need to do it, what do I do? You think about human beings with art, you know, art will predate probably not language. Well, you never know. I don't think it predates language, but art certainly predates written language, probably by you know tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, we start doing it in the caves. It's a basic human need to represent what we see, but then also for other people to regard it and go, oh, oh, it's a buffalo. Oh, I see that. And maybe one person goes, no, I don't really like that. It doesn't look like a buffalo. But someone else goes, no, no, it's like it's like the buffaloes on fire. It's symbolic for the fact that we are setting fire to the trees. Now, of course, they're probably not going to have this conversation 30,000, 40,000 years ago. I I get it, it's it might just it might just give them an inner peace. And isn't that fantastic? And if we don't do that, if we stop doing it, what human? What are we? What what have we become? What will become? Ghosts shells. I from so I don't want that future. The other side of the A coin for writing is I wouldn't mind a genuine, let's say an AI written poem that was genuinely trying to be original and express their thoughts and feelings about the world and what they see and how they link with it. Because you remember us, you know, we go outside, we go inside, we're we're seeing the world before us, but AI, I mean, leaving aside walking talking robots, at the moment, AI is is purely digital, its form is completely different. So I'd like it to write a poem, maybe even a short story. I don't know about if a novel would would be appropriate for it, but well, it could try to express its existence, express its being. For me, that's interesting. There's this is the bit as well where like Lord Byron, the the poet, said that you know, humans were half divine. This is early 19th century when people would average age was like, I don't know, 45 or 50, and you know, child infant mortality was a lot higher than today, you know. But in a way, yeah, we we are becoming half divine. But in fact, you could argue humans have been interfering with their environment. And I don't mean no, like cutting down trees, I don't mean stopping and diverting rivers. But you think about like dogs, which used to be a wolf. You it's not the grey wolf. I want to correct that. There was a there was a breed of wolfers known in existence. Um in my mind, I'd like to think that the wolf was endangered at the time, on its last leg, so to speak, and it just figured out a way to last, and that was befriend humans. And then yeah, it carried on, and and then it and then human beings started to go. You know what? We want we want a dog, we want a wolf that is better at fighting bears, chasing off bears than than the wolf. So they they take, you know, they they they selectively breed and make sure that all its aggressive, you know, anti-bear characteristics are in it, you know. That might say that sounds a bit crazy, but that's what happened in Africa with lions. There was dogs when the the boars first arrived in in South Africa, the African tribes there, they had a dog that was was bred for hunting and fighting lions. So humans do do this. But then you've also had, because they've they've got it in our archaeological excavation, lap dogs. You know, there's always been as much as we've always had guard dogs, we've always had lap dogs where we've just bred dogs down to like a sausage dog. They just sit on your lap and you know, you you you slowly stroke them and it gives you pleasure. So that that's really half-divine where we've changed an animal. There's so many animals we've done that to. You know, horses, of course, horses for courses, cats, rabbits, you know, dogs, like I said. And now we're getting on to the next level of AI where we've created it. You know, it's not like some freak of nature, it wouldn't have happened without us, just like dogs. Okay, it is conceivable that there could be a breed of dog that would evolve to maybe attack lions. It is conceivable, though it's more you know, just like a hyena would attack lions, but it is always at a disadvantage. But I don't think dogs would or wolves would breed into a sausage dog. Why? It's got almost no evolutionary advantage. It yaps a bit, it's prey to so many other animals. Maybe Chuck Russell can go down rabbit holes and stuff, but again, it it's you know, without mankind, you know, it's very much uh prey to so many big cats, so many bigger dogs, not quite sure I see the evolutionary advantage. But then again, you can say the same thing about birds. You know, birds are dinosaurs, and some are more dinosaur-like than others, and that's what's fantastic about them, you know. It's it is inconceivable a little bit that why would dinosaurs de evolve? Is that the right word? Devolve into birds. It was, I thought I know it was like I I'd read I'd read about this, it was about finding niches in the you know ecosystem. It might have been that there might have been more habitat pressures on dinosaurs before the the extinction than we realise. I I don't know. Um but obviously straying away from AI a bit now. But yeah, that that's what I tend to think. I think AI, it's this is a big thing. I haven't even touched on AI is gonna cure cancer. Or AI, you know, we maybe I think I'm trying to think now if AI is an author on papers now or a contributor. I know that Cambridge University are in human trials on a vaccine to cure cults, all cults, all possible mutations. All I mean it's all 55 and it's the family of colds, which includes COVID now. That's already now, you know, and this is with nascent AI. Just think about the future. Like what when I say the future, I mean like five years. Two, three. I mean, I think the next five to ten years, I think is a really good chance that like the big diseases. I mean, if you have a cancer, you know, especially organ replacement organ upgrades will happen. Okay, everybody, I think it's time to end things there. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast as much as I have. Until next time, bye-bye.