A Novel Only a Human Could Write

I finished reading a fabulous book not too long ago, a book that filled my imagination but also spoke to me personally. In the few rare moments when I'm not panicked and despairing about what's in the news, I feel a sense of awe that books like this even exist and that human beings made them. You have at least once in your life, I hope, found yourself in a book coma, so you know what I mean. You know about crawling out from under what a human writer did to your mind and your soul, not sure what to do with yourself now that the book is over and you can't read it again for the first time.

When I think about certain passages and moments from this book, I'm still floating in the air above myself, shimmering with wonder, though weeks have passed since I devoured the last line. Isn't that the best experience? Especially when everything around you feels so fraught and fractured and fucked up? You got lost in a book because a stranger wrote you an escape hatch. What a gift.

I'm teaching a speculative novel workshop this fall—I'll share more about it below; registration opens Monday!—and so with speculative fiction so urgently in the forefront of my mind, you can imagine how fantastic this has made my current reading list. As I work on building the course, I've revisited a few old favorites and I discovered some new novels I'd like to make use of in my craft talks or on the reading list. That's how I found the book in question.

It's called Beautyland.

Connecting with a book, for me, is so personal. This one brought me back to myself in interesting ways. Much of what I got from it is impossible to explain in this public-facing place. Through reading it I was jolted into remembering a novel I started years ago and abandoned, and I wondered if I've reached the point in my life where I could see what it needs, and if having read Beautyland has opened up something inside me that now allows it to reemerge. I also found myself swimming in childhood memories sparked from reading Beautyland. There was a deep familiarity, even though the story and the place and the people were different from my own experience. There was a shared thread of unspoken understanding. Not to mention that, as a writer, I admired the way Beautyland was crafted. I adored how assumptions I'd made as I was reading broke open in breathtaking ways once I reached the end.

I've never met the author who wrote Beautyland—though she happens to be from the city I live in now. But I don't need to meet her to feel changed by what she gave me. This was a book clearly written by a human being. It thrums with humanity, as all the most affecting novels do. It speaks to me about the pain and alienation and, yes, beauty of being alive.

How could some entity that never lived do the same?

I'm talking about GenAI writing books. Do we really want to hand over our art to AI to have it create it for us? Really? For all the times I've joked about wishing I could fall asleep one night while I'm struggling with a novel draft only to wake up to find the manuscript finished for me by a friendly ghost who can mimic my sentences, the truth is I do want to write my own books, even when the process hurts.

Even after the agonizing slog of writing a synopsis, the horrors of an unwilling opening paragraph, the heartbreak of... well... a lot of things, the rejection, the grotesque and needy performance aspect of being an author and asking people to buy your book like I will do shamelessly later in this newsletter... I want to write. I don't want only to have written.

But it goes beyond that.

Why in the world would I want to read a book written by generative AI, that inhuman semblance of supposed consciousness that hurts our planet and destroys our communities and shatters our careers in ways we can't even fathom yet and that is working to keep us from thinking our own thoughts? Any heart that faked its way into an AI-written book would be stolen from the slurped-up words of what actual human beings have already written. (My own books were some of those scraped to feed the AI bots that people now use to "write" their own fiction.) I don't want to read a hollow story created by a water-guzzling data center, even if a human wrote the prompts that spat it out and edited it to make it read less like slop. Even if GenAI gets better and better at mimicking us, wearing our skin and manufacturing our hearts, as it will in less time than I want to admit, I don't want to read it either. If you love books, how could this not matter to you?

"I came to feel that large language models like ChatGPT are intellectual Soylent Green — the fictional foodstuff from the 1973 dystopian film of the same name, marketed as plankton but secretly made of people. After all, what are GPTs if not built from the bodies of the very thing they replace, trained by mining copyrighted language and scraping the internet?" —Meghan O'Rourke

This is what I'm unable to understand about this current precipice where we find ourselves. GenAI is being shoved down our throats by every corporate overlord in every aspect of our lives. Our jobs are forcing us to use it. I have to actively avoid using it whenever I go online; I don't think that cutting it off completely is even possible anymore. But I do know I would never let it near my writing. I'd stop writing books first.

I also have no desire to read it when others use it. I want to read books written by human beings, in all our messy, flawed glory. I suspect there may come a time in our collective future when those of us who want to avoid AI will need to band together and desert whatever has become of this society. I could see us living in an RV park in the wasteland that the billionaires and trillionaires have left us after they've headed off to their space colonies. We'll be out there foraging for water and hiding from storms, speaking our stories aloud in the firelight the way human beings did in the beginning. Maybe we'll trade our precious paper copies of mangled, dogeared books, and when we lose those copies we'll have to tell each other what we remember.

I'll say: I once read a book about an alien that reminded me of what's precious about being human. I think it was called Beautyland.

Then you'll tell me about the book you read that spoke to you or changed you. It was written by a human being, back when only human beings wrote books.

That's where you'll find me.

Speculative Novel Workshop

Are you writing a speculative novel, or would like to start one, and are interested in taking an online class this fall?

I'm delighted to announce that I'm teaching a new course with Stanford Continuing Studies that starts in late September. It's called Speculative Novel Workshop: The Unreal, the Surreal, the Fantastic, and registration opens on Monday, August 18. This ten-week asynchronous workshop aims to be flexible and full of creative opportunities to experiment with different genres and begin or make progress on a speculative novel. Join me?

Here’s the course description:

For more details and the full ten-week schedule, my preliminary syllabus is linked on the course page. 

If you have questions about taking classes with Stanford Continuing Studies, check out their FAQ.

Registration opens at 8:30 am Pacific on Monday, September 18!

Here are some things to share:

• WEBINAR — Creating Compelling Characters in YA and Coming-of-Age Fiction: Do you want to write with me and have a little over an hour to spare? I'm doing a character-focused webinar with the Writing Barn that features my own personal tips, tricks, and creative exercises to develop and deepen the young characters in your novels! It's on Friday, August 22 at 11am Central, but if you can't make it live just watch the replay in your own time! Only $35. Register here.
• PODCAST — 7am Novelist interview: I had a meaningful conversation with Michelle Hoover at the 7am Novelist on community, coming-of-age stories, isolation, and the heartbreaks and important lessons of the publishing industry. My episode, “Nova Ren Suma: Breaking Expectations to Recover Her Writing Dreams,” is in all the usual podcast places. Listen here.
• BOOKSTORE READING — 5 Senses, 5 Authors at A Novel Idea Philly: If you're in Philadelphia and want to support a wonderful community bookstore, I'm taking part in a special group reading on Friday, Sept. 5 at 6pm. Five local authors will explore touch, sound, scent, taste, and interoception in our own words. Come hear Avitus B. Carle, Laura Parnum, Christina Rosso, Nicole M. Wolverton, and me. Suggested $5 donation. Grab a seat here.
• CRAFT LECTURE — Tin House Autumn Online Lecture Pass: Even if you're not taking the Tin House Autumn Online Workshop, you can access every one of the lectures and generative writing sessions through this lecture pass! My lecture is called "Embodying the Uncanny: The Speculative Coming-Of-Age Story." Buy a lecture pass.

I know I teased having a piece of dream-come-true news regarding my book last month, but I can't announce it yet. Maybe soon.

Otherwise, all is quiet on the book front, which feels admittedly odd when it's only about three months after release. That is, until I take into account our current surrounding reality. If you haven't read Wake the Wild Creatures yet or added a review to the usual places, please do consider! I hope it speaks to you. And to those of you who reached out with incredible responses to the book these past months, thank you so much. You filled my heart, you have no idea.

A Few Last Notes

If you're paying attention, you may have noticed that the full moon already passed and this issue of my newsletter is coming on a completely random day in the middle of August. I'm sure you understand how time slips through the fingers, and how commitments to yourself melt away in the face of so much else. If you're subscribed to the Writer Membership, you'll hear from me on September 1 with a writing prompt and some thoughts on the future. And if you're here for the monthly posts, I'll try to make it on the next full moon because I like it that way.

And if you've read a good book by a human being lately that sent you floating in the air above yourself, shimmering with wonder... please do tell me what it is!