Category Archives: writing

Shedding the Weight of Old Dreams

computing, internet, personal, writing 2022.12.19 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

While testing out the new ChatGPT chatbot several days ago, as I detailed in my most recent blog, I had neglected to notice that the bot allowed you to post follow-up questions in your session, to ask for more information or clarifications or such. While not perfect, this makes the chatbot exponentially more useful at certain tasks, so I want to take back what I said last week and state, on the record, that ChatGPT does represent a quantum leap forward in chatbot technology. I’ve…

This Title is a Very Ideal Title, Which Does Things Like Inform Readers About the Blog’s Subject Matter

arts, personal, teaching, writing 2022.12.13 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

AI bot ChatGPT writes smart essays — should professors worry? (nature.com) For a long time now, I’ve wanted to study Cold War-era fiction from the communist countries of the era. It’s fairly well-known that authors in those countries were restricted in how they wrote, essentially conscripted as propagandists for the state. As such, from the accounts I’ve read, most stories from those countries are stultifying in their adherence to formulas, protagonists invariably coming to sing the praises of communism (if they weren’t already at the…

Overloaded

personal, writing 2021.08.09 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Since a large part of the impetus for me launching the .org in 2000 was my first go-through of The Artist’s Way, I wrote about it so much in the early days of this website that it almost became a form of self-parody. Even now that I’m teaching The Artist’s Way workshops through the Continuing Education department of our parent campus, sometimes I wonder if I’ve given the programme an outsized role in my development over the past two decades. One thing is for sure,…

Sidelined

personal, writing 2021.06.07 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Between the large number of classes I wound up teaching this past spring semester, and all the other craziness that’s been sideswiping me here in 2021, my ability to do research for my next book just hasn’t been what I want it to be. When I relaunched my Patreon last summer with an exclusive-content model, where a substantial amount of that content is going to be my extended thoughts about the books I’ve been reading, I vowed that I would read a minimum of five…

Problematic (Self-) Promotion

personal, writing 2021.04.19 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

My social media feeds usually have a smattering of posts from people I don’t know asking for money, especially from friends of mine reposting messages from their friends who have fallen on hard times. Needless to say, I’ve been seeing a lot more of those posts over the past year, as the loss of work caused by the pandemic has devastated tens of millions in America alone. This is especially true for those who work in art-related professions, as the ongoing economic crisis has forced…