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fixing my fiction

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Nichinan, Miyazaki, 2023.01.02

I've now used feedback from ChatGPT to brush up the story I ludicrously submitted to a Toronto Star short-story contest twenty years ago*. The AI is a harsh master, demanding I clean up my language and do things like introduce conflict and urgency and descriptive settings and character with personality and back-story. Bah! The revision - just a tad late for its twentieth anniversary, is titled Ambassador.

*I say ludicrously because the winning entry was about a fellow who went shopping without his pants. Know your audience, Michael, the first rule of writing.

rand()m quote

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

—Hunter S. Thompson