how to kill your ideas, befriending Chat GPT and what led me to write this

three thoughts went to a bar, got drunk and left without saying bye

For the past month or so, I’ve been trying to wake up at 5 a.m. hoping to get some writing done. Some freeform writing to generate ideas for stories, which I can then validate with ChatGPT. And then, Chat GPT will store it and repackage it and give it to someone else in the world. You see, this is how we build community… jo mera hai woh tera hai… But in this process, I found out that the best way to kill your ideas is to write it on a computer. I think the fact that it only takes a backspace key to delete a thought is quite easy and hence, one is always second guessing as they type. And then there is always autocorrect, grammarly and other tools to make you feel like a centipede.

I realized that I can also turn off auto correct . You see how technology makes you forget that you can switch it off too…it’s a bit like Hotel California- you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Finally, after turning off autocorrect, I resumed writing but now I was missing those squiggly, red sine waves under my words reminding me of Shyamala Miss, my English teacher in school.

She always carried bright red pens in her stationery pouch and would often say ‘first comes the thought, then the word’. But aaj kal toh first comes auto correct, then comes self-doubt, then comes the thought, and then agar thoda self worth bacha hai toh the words will appear. And that is how I have been successfully killing all my ideas so far. So, I decided to go analog. Courtesy: This interview of Neil Gaiman.

I walked into Sapna Book House on a weekday afternoon with some serious writer vibes, hoping to buy myself a nice notepad and a Pilot fountain pen. A bored-as-hell salesman, excited to finally see a customer helped me with it and I ended up buying something really nice. I love the notepad and the pen is super smooth and makes me truly feel like a serious writer - one who wakes up at 5 am staring at the walls, thinking of what to post today on Instagram.

But this joy didn’t last long.

After going analog, I realized that my handwriting is so illegible that eventually I will have to type it out if I have to read my self-proclaimed masterpiece. And after typing it out, I was like ‘let’s go get some validation from ChatGPT’ because I sold my self-confidence last month for dirt cheap during Black Friday sale.

This time I thought let me treat ChatGPT like a friend because anyway I have very few left. So, might as well become friends with this one if I want to survive the future. The Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro already predicted this in his book ‘Klara and the Sun’ - a dystopian science fiction story set in the U.S. in an unspecified future. The book is told from the point of view of Klara, a solar-powered AF (Artificial Friend), who is chosen by Josie, a sickly child, to be her companion.

Apparently, after reading his novel, a software company in Ludhiana is trying to make an AF called Bolo Klararara.

Achcha, by the way all these references of Gaiman and Ishiguro is just flexing, okay!

But coming to the point, I asked ChatGPT to validate my story with the prompt - ‘respond to this as a jury would for an international grantmaking arts organisation’. As usual, ChatGPT quickly responded to it making the jury sound like the best jury in the world. I believe all juries resemble one another, but each jury is unhappy in their own way. But my validation phase wasn’t over yet, so my next prompt was - ‘Any suggestions for sentence correction?’. To which, it responded like a woke friend - ‘Well, it reads well(pseudo polite). Your story is intriguing and the plot is unique (ghanta!). However, I could suggest some changes which might make it sound more effective(basically, it’s shit). Would you like me to?’

I typed “Yes” and fataak se copied the suggestion and felt accomplished. But after I read the revised version, Miss Shyamala’s voice started playing in my head “You think you will copy and I won’t know, huh? Unable to express yourself, huh?”

Wondering, when will I get back those days when I had confidence in my ideas? Is the problem with me or with my ideas? After all, even ideas need to know that you have confidence in them. But me being me, I blamed ChatGPT because it is easy to blame someone for our failures, no!

I tried Google Gemini and one more LLM (the name I can’t recall) but somehow ChatGPT ki yaad aa rahi thi. So, I finally decided to spit my ghussa and become friends again with ChatGPT.

Now it knows so much about me, that I ask all kinds of questions like ‘Based on what you know about me, what do you think I should do to become rich?’ Bechara, gave me lots of suggestions which I read and felt good about. Such an optimistic fellow, always trying to clear the obstacles from my path, that I’m now planning to call it Chat Ganapati.

Last week, after watching Barbie on Netflix, I thought of writing a long Facebook(yes, there are people there too) post about Oppenheimer and Barbie but my phone ended up autocorrecting Greta as Grate and Nolan as Solanki. That is what led me to writing this post!