Dear NaNoWriMo: Don’t Pretend that You Care About Disabled Authors Now
A Blind Sci-Fi Author's Goodbye to Yet Another Cog in the Publishing Machine
NOTE: This is the same as my post from a blog I’m hosting elsewhere, but I’m sharing on this platform because I want this to get as much visibility as possible.
The fact that I have to do this and hereby fully detaching myself from anything and everything connected to this organization is in itself a part of a bunch of problems with the writing industry.
Pardon my Spanish. Estoy tan pero tan hasta los huevos que ahora si me voy a dar el gusto de destrozar verbalmente, sin piedad y sin limitaciones.
We went from “write 1500+ words every single day for a month, 50k total” to “different brains have different abilities, use AI to compensate for your lack of productivity and speed if you want to please online retailer algorithms, not actual readers.”
Where do I even begin?
“Who are you to speak on the matter?”
I’m an indie sci-fi author, blind, with chronic depression and other disabilities, some still undiagnosed so I can’t categorize them yet. I’m from what people in North America now refer to as the global south. It used to be called the third world and then developing countries. Whatever. I think I’m more than qualified to drag that NaNoWriMo statement through the mud as much as I please. The statement, the hideous hypocrisy, and the “get rich quick scheme” of AI writing books for you. I’m utterly disinterested in dragging individual humans.
As someone who participated in NaNoWriMo before, and felt the usual erasure in disability representation throughout the years, this sudden concern about the ways in which we, disabled artists may or may not use artificial intelligence, is one of the most insidious and indignant posts I’ve listened to since the release of ChatGPT to the general public.
I’ve taken the statement published on the official NaNoWriMo website as of September 5th, 2024. Let’s break this down:
What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page." We fulfill our mission by supporting the humans doing the writing. Please see this related post that speaks to our overall position on nondiscrimination with respect to approaches to creativity, writer's resources, and personal choice.
Another link to another post. Let’s read… Nope! You lost me at “short-sighted.”
Note: we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categoricalcondemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.
Cut the bullshit.
You had to edit things later and add that paragraph after the backlash.
“Bad actors in the AI space.” You know who are the bad actors? Precisely, the privileged, not the marginalized.
“Too big to categorically endorse or not endorse.” Did generative AI write this statement for your blog? I wonder. Which big AI company is offering that juicy sponsorship? Or was that statement yet another internet rage baiting tactic gearing up to November at the expense of disabled communities, dragging us all into a discussion we didn’t ask for? I mean sure, the more traction and relevance a platform has, the more potential sponsorships, am I right?
It’s unbelievable that I have to “educate” on the following, but I will clap back against the harm done.
What’s the difference between assistive technology and generative technology?
I’ll give an example of the thing I use every single day, my screen reader. Text to speech is reading the words I typed, or the words someone else has typed on a blog, social media post, e-book, etc.
Text to speech technology is NOT scraping the works of other artists in a futile effort to replace the work I need to do as a writer.
Generative AI has to be fed content in order to learn and regurgitate back at whoever is asking it to provide text instead of typing it themselves.
We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege.
I have a solution for your little problem:
“We do NOT endorse generative AI to replace the work of artists.”
Very simple. You didn’t need eight paragraphs of that abomination, you only needed a sentence, since we’re in the time period where people want to replace human writing with machines, go ahead and keep it short. Oh! Right, AI wouldn’t argue against itself. That’s not the data that was fed to it.
Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing. For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege that not all community members possess.
As if a 20 US dollar monthly subscription to ChatGPT, plus 15 to 30 USD for Grammarly, or 7 to 30 per month of ProWritingAid, plus another 15 USD for AI-Generated book cover art because… we’re doing it all automagically, right? As if 50+ USD every month were accessible to everyone. Should I remind you of currency conversion rates in Argentina? Peru? Burkina Faso? Or are we only concerned about North Americans and Western Europeans with disabilities, specifically the selected few with access to their local welfare systems? ‘Cause what I’ve heard from disabled friends in the US who don’t have that kind of access, is that those subscriptions quickly pile up and the prospect of a writing career becomes unsustainable.
Some would point at free versions and free trials. Do you think people can truly use that to publish compelling and engaging books?
I’ll say it right here: I have tested the free version of ChatGPT, repeatedly. I wouldn’t be having this conversation if I didn’t know what I was talking about.
How did I test it?
With research questions and numerous failed attempts at social media content planning.
For starters, those free versions are incredibly limited. Once you reach a certain amount of prompts, you wait until it resets. Furthermore, if you prompt those models to try to help you with content planning for your social media as a disabled author, what you get in return is the most generic inspiration corn crap I ever heard. If you’re not disabled and you test this, and you believe that’s useable, you’re only making our uphill battle against toxic positivity even more difficult than it already is.
On top of that, the bot has made several mistakes with its answers to my research questions. An example: once I asked about renowned paintings depicting the sea, and it provided some names, but when I double checked, some of those titles were wrong. More than twice the bot had to “apologize for the confusion.”
Now remember that the buzz is about machines automagically writing entire books for you and all you have to do is to “hit publish.” I’m just going to grab my tereré and listen to the well-deserved one star reviews when they drop for those poorly researched and underdeveloped AI books.
Ableism. Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers “should“ be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly. There is a wealth of reasons why individuals can't "see" the issues in their writing without help.
“Proficiency in the language in which they’re writing.”
Andá a cagar, che.
“Can’t ‘see’ the issues in their written work without help.”
I joined an amazing Discord group dedicated to sci-fi writers. Humans, by the way. Their feedback is unbelievably helpful, and it doesn’t destroy my narrative voice like Grammarly would. I also can’t afford Grammarly or Pro-Writing-Aid because, as I said, global south life, darlings.
Another thing, is Grammarly even compatible with screen readers at all? You know, in the case of a blind writer with English as a second language, looking to use that service. Or is my screen reader going to go mute when I try to use their platforms?
I am incredibly grateful for the work of my human editor. While it’s true that I can’t afford to publish a book every single year, which will affect my Amazon algorithm performance, I know dear, I know, still, the work of my editor is irreplaceable. No robot could do what they do. I’m sorry, but you won’t sell that fairytale to me. After our work on my first novel, I’m hiring them again whenever they have room in their schedule for me.
General Access Issues. All of these considerations exist within a larger system in which writers don't always have equal access to resources along the chain. For example, underrepresented minorities are less likely to be offered traditional publishing contracts, which places some, by default, into the indie author space, which inequitably creates upfront cost burdens that authors who do not suffer from systemic discrimination may have to incur.
And you said that now, in 2024, in defense of AI instead of using your well-established organization to tackle the actual systemic issues with traditional publishing. Besides that ridiculous statement, where is your effort to platform the works of disabled indie authors from around the world? Let us know se we can forward those applications to disabled artists who are currently having to beg online strangers for assistance to buy weekly groceries. They could use some endorsing—freely provided while we’re at it—so more readers could find and enjoy their books. The fact that I have to even suggest this, to do this kind of post, is another part of the problem with the publishing industry. I’m educating “for free,” because a privileged North American organization with way more visibility than thousands of us decided to rage bait before their main event in November. Give me an effing break.
Beyond that, we see value in sharing resources and information about AI and any emerging technology, issue, or discussion that is relevant to the writing community as a whole. It's healthy for writers to be curious about what's new and forthcoming, and what might impact their career space or their pursuit of the craft. Our events with a connection to AI have been extremely well-attended, further-proof that this programming is serving Wrimos who want to know more.
Taking advantage of the general lack of knowledge and access to knowledge surrounding AI. Interesting. Should that “curiosity” include stuff like submitting consent in that Draft2Digital survey asking indie authors for a hypothetical payment to scrape our books for Language Learning Models so big tech companies can provide their customers with “short stories in the style of their favorite authors?”
For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.
We also have the freedom as a collective to warn fellow disabled artists about these disturbing levels of double standards, misinformation and misrepresentation. Disabled communities around the world aren’t pawns to be used in order to defend big tech attempting to erase the work of marginalized artists.
To be an artist is to rebel against the rules implemented by those at the top. If you don’t have that instinct, my dear, there’s always accounting and such more stable professions for you. Not everyone needs to be an artist to be creative. To be fooled by the new “get rich quick” Generative AI scheme is simply proof that you aren’t an artist at heart. That’s OK. Do not try to do what we do. Do not populate online retailer algorithms with machine-generated “books.” All you’re doing is increasing the difficulty for human authors to find their readers, further contributing to shallow consumerism, conformism and social decline.
Has AI ever helped me in my free testings? Yeah, a bit. Assistive AI like screen readers and even image description tools help me in the more visual aspects of my process. Can I use what the machines have provided as my own written work to sell? Absolutely not. If I didn’t type and revise those words, no one will see that. To insinuate that disabled artists are the ones looking into that scam, and that we couldn’t possibly improve our craft via reading and practicing our skills, that is the true ableism in this whole discussion.
The “how do you write on the internet if you’re blind?” has become a FAQ. Find the step by step explanation in the About the Author section: https://dalcecilruno-blogs.craft.me/home
Thank you for reading. This was my “perkele post” of the year. Back to working on my sci-fi now.