A couple of days ago I wrote an article for the Soaring Twenties Social Club called Automated Writing: Should writers be worried about AI? I sent it to Thomas J Bevan at 15:29, and he published it at 18:00. But here’s the sordid truth: at 10:00 that day I didn’t have a clue what I was going to write. Even worse, at 14:00 I stillwas none the wiser.

Gotcha! You say. So the great prolificist had run out of ideas, eh? Well actually no: I had the opposite problem. I’d had so many ideas and corresponding false starts that I was floundering in a sea of ideas. (I like that phrase so much I’m going to use it again: I was floundering in a sea of ideas.)

So what do I mean by “false starts”? For each idea, I either did the research, or wrote a few paragraphs, or both. However, one or both of the following things then happened:

• I lost interest in the idea. Perhaps I’ve listened to too much Enya in my time, but I really do believe that if the writer finds an article boring to write, it’s pretty certain that readers will find it boring to read. If that’s how it is, cut your losses, outsource the work to ChatGPT and be done with it. And make sure you tell readers that’s what you’ve done, unless honesty isn’t very important to you.

• I wrote one or two paragraphs and then ran out of things to say. Now, I’m all in favour of short pieces: there’s a whole art to writing short. See, for further elucidation, How to write short, with a specific focus on book reviews, and my review of Short form creative writing. However, if I set out with the intention of writing long, it’s a bit of a jolt if the thing suddenly just ends.

This was rather problematic, because I was right up against the deadline. However, I have three quick hacks that bail me out every time. Here they are.

Hacks

My first hack is quite simple: wait for as long as possible before setting pen to paper so to speak. I always work better under pressure, which is one of the reasons I’ve never gone on a writer’s retreat: I’d never get any writing done, which I think might defeat the purpose. Given the choice between sitting in a room writing or going for a walk among tree and rivers, I’d choose the latter. I’d end up getting more written on the train home than in all of the previous week.

My second hack is to look through the archives of my published work. There’s bound to be an article that could do with updating, or which I no longer agree with, or which I agree with even more since originally writing it. That’s what I did for the STSC article. I found one I’d written in 2012 about computer writing, and updated it with more details and suggestions based on the current generation of artificial intelligence.

A third hack is to look through previous false starts. This is why I never just delete the ones that didn’t work out at the time. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood then. Maybe I didn’t know enough at that time. Whatever. Taking a fresh look at snippets and unfinished work from months or even years ago reveals what a treasure trove your own “failed efforts” can be. (I put that in quotation marks because I don’t think any writing is wholly a failure. Even if it’s complete rubbish, acknowledging that and working out why are extremely valuable in themselves.)