journal features
movie reviews
photo of the day

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

The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual.

—Ron Paul, May 2007