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0:00
So I always wrote since I was a child, since I was four or five years old, since I learned how to write. That is how I've expressed myself or that's how I work out problems when I was when I was a child. So in a sense I taught myself. But I would write during school, I would write in secondary school, I wrote in university. I didn't publish anything, but I was just amusing myself I suppose. But in doing that you learn the skills and I read I read a lot as a child as well. So
0:34
you learn the skills that you need to become a professional writer through reading and through experimenting and through trying to write down what you perceive to be the truth or what stories you want to tell. So I was first published as a novelist when I was I was 33 when the book came out. So that was a very long a long apprenticeship, don't you think? No, I don't. Definitely. I think that I think every writer should feel like that. I think every writer should feel like there's
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further to go in terms of developing their style, in terms of experimenting, in terms of figuring out what they want to say. I think you should always be striving to improve in some way. So in terms of what you learn, I think that's very personal. I think it it can depend, it can be a new type of writing that you're you're suddenly interested in or a new a new mode of expression that you want to experiment with. It could be any of those things. It might be a period of
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history you want to focus on. It might be a particular character you want to tell the story of. Whatever it might be. But I think I would hope that I'm always learning and I would hope that every book I write is the book I feel is the best book. You know, and it keeps getting better. This is my hope. Like then? No, not not particularly. I don't think that there there would always have been writers that I was inspired by when I was younger. Um I started off when I was a
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teenager, I was very inspired by um contemporary adult Irish writers of that time. So, people like um Roddy Doyle who wrote a a very famous trilogy of novels set in contemporary Ireland in in the 1990s. Um and then people like Pat McCabe, Patrick McCabe who wrote very bizarre takes on on on on the Ireland that he grew up in. Um so, people like that. And then people like the the British writer um Melvin Burgess was very interesting to me and it he he came along where I began to
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read him at a very formative time in my writing life. So, as a teenager it was at this time I realized, "Oh, characters don't have to be good people." Or they don't have to be always acting in a way that the reader will find attractive. They can be ugly. They can be um frequently they can be disgusting. And and and the writer doesn't have to back away from that. That was really revolutionary um for me. But then as I as I get older, there's often writers that you're very um inspired by that you
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that you idolize a lot. But I don't think it's a good idea to try to emulate that writer. I mean, see what see what their style sparks off in you and see what what you want to write based on what you've read. Where it takes your imagination. But I think it's a bad idea to for me to say, "Oh, I'm going to write a short story and it's going to be just like Borges." You know, I mean, it it it doesn't really work like that. Um no. Um no, I I've never have really because
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I think that everything that you write I always say that you can't waste your time when you're writing because a lot of um students of of writing may say, "Oh, but if I start this story or if I start this novel and it doesn't work out um that will be a waste of time." Nothing nothing that you do can be a waste of time. You're always improving. You're always developing. You're always figuring out what works, what doesn't work. You're always learning something
4:00
about yourself as you're writing. So, in that way, everything that you would attempt to write becomes an exercise, really. And everything that you try to do differently, whether it might be a style situation or whether it might just be a character that you put into a different situation in the narrative, that becomes, in a way, a a very organic exercise. Yeah, that's a really interesting question cuz I don't think there's a very easy answer for that. I think that
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sometimes you know because you can see the writer. You can see the writer on the page trying to move things around. You can see the effort in trying to get a character to do something. Maybe it doesn't It doesn't feel natural, maybe. Or maybe it's a sentence that's overwritten because the writer is is is pushing to to to capture something and is is is pushing too hard. So, maybe it's something like that. It's often a case that you're just not convinced as as a reader, as an editor. You're You're
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You're reading it and you're going, "I I don't believe in what's happening here." Or I I always know that I'm looking at somebody's writing, that it's something artificial, as opposed to a story that I become lost in or or a style that I become I I'm taken away by. So, there is a sort of a a situation where when you know something isn't working, you're you're always present as the reader and you're never you've never been taken over or enchanted by that piece of writing. But,
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it's a very difficult question. Sometimes it's just a case of you know immediately that the the word choice is very awkward or very heavy or, you know, it's it's punctuated badly. Something is very basic like that. But, sometimes it's just more of a case of you can tell that the writer themselves is very talented, but this is the wrong story. Oh, this is so funny because uh there is a short story that I have been trying to write for I think 6 years now. And no matter what I do, it's
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wrong. And I know it's wrong. It's It's It's It's not Something isn't clicking. Something isn't right. And I do I leave it in the in the drawer, which is a file on the computer. I leave it there. But occasionally I'll come back and I'll read it again. And every time I read it again, I go What What is that? You know? So, it's almost like um a situation where you you try to There's a dent and you try to knock out the dent, but you then you make another dent. And you're like And then you make
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another dent. This is the problem. So, the story becomes even more difficult, even more unreal, even more ridiculous. Um So, I'm very reluctant to scrap something. That's just my style of writing. I can be quite um almost belligerent about the fact that I'm going to keep going with this. I'm very determined. Um to my detriment, I think sometimes. Um but this Usually that doesn't happen. Usually I will find a way. And often it's a case of If something isn't working,
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you might find a situation where changing the narrative voice, for example, going from first person into third person, or changing your focus character, or something like that, or giving your character some sort of um very difficult, very extreme situation to react to, that that might open up a way forward um for you as the writer in in progressing with this piece of work. But nothing that I have tried has worked for this short story. Yeah. Always about something, yeah.
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I think fundamentally it's about telling stories. Because when we think about it, what What is a story? A story is is somebody's experience, somebody's experience of life. And even if it's a story that's not based in the real world, well, the writer was based in the real world. What are they trying to say? What are they trying to process? What What point of view are they trying to get across, or what what difficulty are they trying to to solve? So, in a sense, everything is about a story.
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How How that person sees the world, how that character sees the world, and what it all means. And this is This is what marks us as human, I think. This is what we do. We We're constantly telling stories, and we do it every day. People think, "Oh, no, I'm not a storyteller at all." But they are. They're a person who maybe exaggerates certain things when they're when they're telling their friends what happened on their way to the lunch date. Or they're They're maybe playing down something that
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they're embarrassed by. Maybe they're they're they're trying to make it seem less bad or less awful. Or they're they're in love, so that they're they're really, you know, um exaggerating the qualities of the person that they're in love with. We're constantly chang- shaping the world in a way that suits us and suits our view of the world, and it's unique for every single person. So, yeah. Yeah, we all tell stories. Even the people who don't think they tell stories tell stories. Yes.
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What does a writer have to read? Yes, a writer has to read. So, I think that's And And I didn't always believe this. So, for a while, I was quite resistant to this idea. Um when I was a younger writer and much more uh confident and you know, um again, to my detriment, I believed, "Well, if this is the rule, then I will break the rule. I don't I don't need to read." But yes, you do. So, when I was a child, I read constantly. And I think most writers have this this this similarity
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in their past. So, as children, we read voraciously. That's what we do. And then maybe as teenagers or as young adults, we we maybe move away from reading. But if you think about it, if you were a footballer and you never played football, you wouldn't be a very good footballer, would you? If you were If you If you were a footballer, you're like, "Yes, I like to kick the ball because I'm so strong, but I I don't know the rules of the game, and I have no idea who the other players are. Then
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you are obviously not going to be a very good footballer. So, it's the same thing with with writing. Even if you are not particularly interested in other people's stories, which would be very unusual for a writer, but even if that was the case, you need to learn how other people have done it, how people have told the stories, what tools they've used, what resources they use, their modes of expression, what can be changed and what can be developed from from the literature tradition.
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You know, and and what it all means, what it means to you as a person. What tradition you grew up in, what what stories mean to your family and society and country. What does it all mean? So, I mean it's it's all it's all something that tells you a lot about yourself as a writer and yourself as a person. So, yes, it's it's absolutely essential. Yes, so The Stinging Fly is a magazine we have just celebrated our 25th anniversary. Um and it is a magazine that comes out twice a year,
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and it focuses on fiction, uh non-fiction, creative non-fiction, so essays, poetry, and um recently as well novel extracts, because not every writer is writing short stories. Sometimes they're writing novels, so um it's good to be able to reflect that, too. Um it comes out twice a year, as I said. Um we're an Irish magazine, so our our primary focus would be on Irish writers and in reflecting what work is coming out of Ireland and what writers in Ireland are interested in and and but
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also we publish from all around the world. We publish um writers in the English language and also writers in translation. Um so, we have in our magazine that has just gone to print as as we're doing this interview, uh we have I think two French writers. We have Jean-Baptiste Del Amo is in in the story in translation, and then there is a French writer called Elodie Roy, who is based in the UK and has written in English. So, we have I'm very excited about the
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next issue, cuz we have stories all over the world. We've stories in places like uh we've we've even got a story from from Lesotho, which is very exciting for me. Um so yeah, that's what we do. That's what we focus on. And anything that we find we we have no restrictions in terms of genre. It just needs to be something that we feel is written with passion, that we feel is is is really uniquely good, and something that the writer is clearly excited by. That's what we're excited by.
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Both. So, um we will have a submission window open for every issue. So, this maybe for 2 weeks um the submissions come in. Um then we have a team of readers um including myself who will assess the work and and if the readers believe that the work is of has has promise, they'll send it to me and I'll read it. And we'd often read it multiple times. We'd have discussions about it. And then we start to see the shape of what this issue would look like. So, it might be like, well, this piece
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is in conversation with this piece or this poem really goes with this, you know, and this this reflects something that's interesting that's happening right now. So, eventually it starts to come together. Now, we've 240 pages. I don't have a copy with me. We have 240 pages in the magazine and in the last submission period we got um 1,600 short stories, 200 essays, 200 novel extracts, and about 1,000 poems. So, that's a lot of work that will not get into the pages of the magazine. So,
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it becomes a situation where it's not just assessing it for it being good, but for it fitting together. And so, a lot of good work we we unfortunately have to have to pass on publishing. Um But yeah, so once that happens, I think a lot of writers worry that especially newer writers, they worry if I write a story and it's not perfect, uh there's no point sending it to a magazine, but that's not what we do either. So, we would like a writer to have worked on that story, that essay,
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that poem for as long as possible and to bring it as far as they think they can go. But after that, of course, they will get a editorial guidance. Of course, if there's something that we think, "Oh, have you thought about what do you think if, you know, should this be here, you know, this kind of thing?" And then, of course, the the technical edits, too, and making sure it's all in very beautiful language. But because we get such a volume of stories, it's often a case that something doesn't
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get into the magazine, it's not published by us, but it has great promise. Or it's a story that we don't think it's quite finished, or it's a writer that we're we didn't like the story, but we're very excited about their talent. So, they'll be invited to submit again, or perhaps we will offer a mentorship, or, you know, we will we will read more of their work, maybe, you know, so there's there's a relationship being developed between the writer and the literary magazine. And that can
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sometimes go on for months, even years, before we find the right piece, the right story, the right poem, whatever it might be. But I think that's a good thing. I think that leads to a very healthy relationship between the writers and and the publishers, and it's very good then for the writing scene in Ireland, as well. Oh, completely. Oh my god. So, it's completely I'm a I'm a writer as well, and I think sometimes the worst um situation you can be in with an editor is you send
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a story and the editor goes, "Yep, that's great." But there's no feedback, there's no discussion, there's no room to improve, there's no room to work together, there's no there's no response. And that can be a very That can be kind of feels very cold, it feels like, "But how do I make this better?" You know, so the healthy relationship that you'll have with an editor is that you're both working towards the same goal. And I think often the editor comes in my my view on it is I will come in as a
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second advocate for that story. I start to take the part of the story. Well, I will argue on on behalf of the story to the writer. Well, what if this happened? Or do you think you went far enough in this particular strand? And mostly, especially for established writers, they're they're used to this. It's a good process. It makes it makes, you know, it it it should feel robust and it should feel exciting and it should it should feel like an opportunity for for development.
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And but for often for newer writers, especially emerging writers, it it can be it can feel um I don't know, it can feel like criticism. You know, it can feel like somebody has you have created something and now somebody is coming to tear it apart. That's not that adversarial kind of relationship is not what we do at all. It's ideally, when it really works, it's two people working together to make this story, this poem, this essay the best it can possibly be. So that we can both be
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really proud when it appears in the pages. Yeah, I think well, the most obvious thing is we can tell that the story isn't finished. And I don't mean that there's no ending. I mean that the writer has has not gone back to editors or rewriters or has not considered it beyond its original ending, has not thought about what might have changed in the writing of the story, has not developed a particular character well, or has not developed the thoughts that goes into
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the story that you can tell. You can tell when it hasn't been worked on to the extent that it should have been worked on. That's fairly obvious. And then there's like there's like little tells as well. I think one of the things that really strikes me as a reader for reading kind of like work that's submitted into us is the um a problem where somebody starts a story in a very exciting place and you're like, yes. And then they immediately decide to go back and do two
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pages of exposition to explain why they start and you're like, no, that's not how it feels. That's not how it goes. You need to trust the reader. You don't need to tell them everything. You need to, you know, bring them along. So there's there's small things that you notice after reading and reading and reading and there's little trends you see you see popping up. Um but yeah, it it it it becomes I think the clearest answer. It becomes really really clear when somebody hasn't hasn't worked on
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the story for as long as they should have. Mhm. So, to go back to to what I was saying, that's that's the main thing of advice. Have you worked on this story for as long as you possibly could? Do you feel that you have taken this piece, this story, this poem, whatever as far as you could take it by yourself and now you need somebody to to to talk to about it? I remember receiving a story once from a a younger writer. And sent in the story and said, um I know it's too long,
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but I'd I'd like you to read it. And if you know it's too long, why haven't you tried to fix it? Why haven't you tried to shorten it? You know, you can see there's something wrong, but you have not attempted to to make it its best possible story. What's stopping you? Now you think that an editor is going to finish the work? That's not how it works, you know? So, that's what I would advise to to really to really work on that piece and make it the best you think it can be. Make it as
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as as beautiful and affecting as and as striking as you think it can be. The other thing that we always tell people is that there is no point writing a poem or a story that you think the Stinging Fly will like. It should not be that. It should be the story or the poem or the essay that you are excited by. Because we don't have a set of stipulations. We don't have check boxes. We don't have a typical fly story. We just want to read what makes you excited as a writer.
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This is a This is such an interesting question. There's no easy answer because it it is the case particularly in Ireland right now that there are a lot of creative writing degrees or creative writing workshops that people can do and it does help you improve your style and it does help you get better as a writer. But the problem is of course it's not accessible to everybody, is it? You know, do like that's that's all well and good if you're a university student, but what if
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you can't afford to go to university? What if you're an older person who with a family and you have caring duties? What if you just you just don't have, you know, what if you have a disability so you can't really leave the house so much or you know, so these are all these barriers. Are these people's stories less important? No, of course not. You know, so we want to we want to to encourage them as well. So, the thing with a creative writing course degree workshop
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is it it won't teach you how to write. That has to come from here. That has to be something that you yourself do. It's very hard to teach somebody how to write. But you can improve somebody who passionately wants to write and is developing their own voice as it happens. And one of the ways that um workshops or university courses do this is that they challenge you on your writing. You have a conversation with an editor or with your group or whoever it might be and they will ask you, "Well,
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why did you do this? Or what about this character? What does he mean?" You know, "What happens if you take this a little bit further?" Or you know, they that interrogation makes you think about your work in a different way. It may opens possibilities. Or even it may see you it helps you to contextualize your work in terms of like what other work is happening in your country at the moment, you know, what how do you where does this fit in literary tradition or where does this fit in contemporary
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literature? So, all of these things it can be really invaluable. Um and you can tell, I think as a as an editor, I can tell that somebody has had an education in creative writing. They're so good at being able to talk about their work and being able to to explain their work to you and and say clearly what they mean to achieve. But the issue is, how do we make sure that people who don't have access to those university or third level routes, how do we make sure that they also get those
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tools and resources? And that they are not at a disadvantage when it comes to publishing their work. It's So I think the most important thing is being interested in their work and in whatever they're writing, asking lots and lots of questions and trying to figure out what they mean to achieve and how they're going about doing it. And it's through those conversations that you will find that maybe a new idea opens up. Um a new way of writing the story maybe maybe pops up, a new a new
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sense of inspiration, whatever it might be. So it's it's that's how you do it or in my experience that's how you do it. It's not a case of and it can be helpful too to to look at another short story and and to talk about what that writer achieved or they wanted to do. Um what it all means because it helps them again contextualize their work and figure out what they want to say. But it's not a case of or at least for me it's not a case of going to a board to blackboard and going now number one,
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your first paragraph must do this, this and this. And you know, I mean not everybody writes like that not everybody learns like that and that can feel very prescriptive and it's supposed to be creative. It's supposed to be about exploring how you want to tell the story and your teacher should be somebody who wants to to help you to do that. So again often in in courses like this there will be a lot of reading and it won't just be it will be reading of you know, um
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contemporary novels, it'll be reading of of, you know, very um influential novels from the canon of your country's literature literary history. It will be reading each other's work and in a workshop setting so there's constant reading and that as well expands everything and that I think allows the writer to see their work in a different way especially if up to that point they haven't had that kind of communal experience. And I think that that really that's what
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helps. But first and foremost, having an interest in what they want to do. Hopefully, yeah. I think that I think that's an important idea, too. The the concept of well, when you're a writer, how can you look at somebody else's work and get the most from that? And often it's a case that if you're looking at work and you're analyzing it as if you're about to do an exam, that's not necessarily the best way. Um if you're a creative writer to to try to understand what the writer was getting
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at. So, nobody is going to come along and say after you read a book, "What happened on page whatever?" Or "What did this character say to this character?" It's going to be about what the book made you feel or new understanding that maybe developed as you were reading the book. And as well as a writer, you should be looking at it to see, well, what techniques, what style, what tone, how did the writer achieve the thing that they achieved? And what can I learn from
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that, too? So, it can be a case of and I think this is one of the great things, too, about university courses is that you're forced to read. You suddenly have this big reading list and it's often books that you may not have found by yourself, but are very, very important. And they may be books that may be quite challenging to read or in a kind of a style that's very formidable. Um and the fact that you're in a course given permission to read it as well, it becomes something that you have to do.
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Because often we think of reading as a leisure activity and we go, "Oh, well, I'd like to read this story, but I can't because I have to do this other thing." But when you're in a situation where you're being taught it, it becomes work. It becomes something you have to do. And then you have permission to sit down with your books. So, that's that's important, too. Not particularly. Like not particularly. Would change depending on the group. Um depending on what the focus is. So,
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there would be certain books that I might recommend to people who were interested in specifically in dialogue, or there'd be books that I would recommend to people who are interested in in developing a particular type of style. So, it would depend. There isn't There isn't any any one thing, but I would try to focus on contemporary novels as much as possible because these are people These are their peers. These are the people that are working alongside them. So, in terms of
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developing techniques, um that I'm I'm going to We read classics as well, but that is most helpful, I think. I think sometimes you can get a student who believes that you are going to teach them that that thing I was talking about, that set process, and that they'll follow all these rules, and then they'll have a brilliant short story. And it doesn't work like that. So, sometimes the most difficult thing can be to explain to a student that it's actually going to be It's a going to be a long
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process. At the end of the course, you may not still have this beautiful finished piece of work that you that you want to do. Sometimes you'll have a a problem, and there's no immediate solution. There's no easy answer. You're just going to have to keep experimenting until you find the right one. So, often getting through to students that this is a very It's an It's an intimate and it's an kind of a a long drawn-out process, and that it's there's no one right answer for
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anything. Often that can be a big challenge. Um and some students relish that. I think that's brilliant. And then others need a little bit more time to to realize, "Oh, what am What am I doing here? This is about me. This isn't about a set of rules. This is about how I want it Oh God, you know?" So, that can be That can be tough. Do you think It's so funny. At the moment, it is nowhere close. Nowhere close to being able to emulate a good short story. It's just not there. And And
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maybe Maybe it will develop. But what's the point? So, I can understand people deciding to use artificial intelligence in the way that we use the internet, the way that we use algorithms to to maybe sort out some technical side of writing, perhaps. But, the point of creative writing is to tell a truth. Is to tell your truth. Is to express yourself. Is to make something beautiful. Make art. That's the point. It's about human expression. So, if you read a short story and it has been written by a
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robot, what's the point? What's the point in it? Yeah, it's it's good, but it doesn't tell you anything. There's no There's no reflection of somebody's soul in that. It's just But, right now, there is occasionally um people who No, they don't submit this to the magazine, but people who have played around with them in in our writing peer group, people who have played around with AI and have got Look, look, look at this thing. I I told this chat GPT to write this. And And they're terrible.
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There's one like where I asked chat GPT to write a a a typical Irish short story. And it's like, "The lady stood in the rain by the graveside." And you're like, This is the kind of short story nobody in our So, we're not we're not quite there in terms of it being a threat yet. And even so, if it is a threat, what is the point of it? What What Why? What are you going to do? Replace novels? Sure. Yeah. I'll believe it when I see it. I don't know. No. No. Um again, it can be a case of
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perhaps maybe at the at the proofreading stage. Perhaps when it comes to the actual um the rules of punctuation. Like, "Oh, that should be That's a full stop, but it should be a comma." Or, "That's a semicolon, but it should be an em dash." Or, something like that. But, even so, that will That will just figure out the actual technical side of things. In terms of like the style, and so things like punctuation, things like that kind of editorial side of things, the the
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ordering of words, that's personal. That's down to personal style, it's down to expression, and that can't be corrected. It can't be corrected by algorithm, it has to be corrected um with with sensitivity, so you know what the writer was trying to do. Can you imagine trying to get uh uh uh artificial intelligence to correct James Joyce's Ulysses? It would explode.
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