The Long Road
The virtues of the arduous creative process
After a year and a half of working, I can see the end of my work on The Rake’s Codex Vol 1 in sight. The layout is done, the final quality checks are underway, and the book will be out before the end of the month. The process of bringing Nighthaven to life has been a painful one, as I have spoken about before. There was a Kickstarter that I failed to deliver, the dissolution of a creative partnership, and a rework of my project to make up for the fact that it was originally intended to be only half of a book. I brought in new artists, paid for them out of pocket, and did my own layout work. I had to teach myself to use Affinity and I’m still in the process of learning how to use self-publishing tools provided by DriveThruRPG and Lulu. To say it’s been challenging would be an understatement. I have wanted to quit more than a few times and there was a time where I thought it would never come together. One of them was as recently as this past weekend. I’m sure my wife would have a lot to say about how this has affected me. We’re close to seeing the results of all of this labor but, at the very least, I can already say that the experience has been worthwhile. I’ve learned a lot, improved certain skills, discovered new ones, and gained a deeper appreciation for the creative process. It’s not easy to do something like this. However, I’ve seen a resurgence in the AI debate and frankly, I’m tired of dealing with people who think AI content is acceptable or even preferable to that made by human collaborators. AI is a shortcut and one that does not lead where you think it does. When you utilize that shortcut, you damage the end product by removing the human soul from it.
When I talk about AI use in creative endeavors, the two primary uses I’m referring to are AI writing and AI art. After all, AI models power a lot of tools that people use these days including search engines, spelling and grammar checks, and preflight warnings. Those tools don’t generate content. ChatGPT, Grok, Magic Studio, etc all generate content based on user inputs. Let’s start with AI writing, the most egregious use of AI for creative endeavors. Believe it or not, many “creators” turn to AI to write the text of their projects. I’ll not beat around the bush; anyone who does this should not be allowed to put their name on the book as the author. The justification for this practice is nonexistent. Defenders will say “The ideas were mine! I just used AI to communicate them better.” That’s not a defense. You’ve literally just described the process of writing and how you had no hand in it. Writing is the act of refining a rough idea into a cohesive work that transmits your idea to others. As the oft-quoted Chuck Dixon says, writing is the process of continuously asking “Is there a better way to say this?” Charles Dickens communicated an atmosphere of tumultuous and revolutionary times in the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities in one of the most memorable passages in English literature. He could have simply written “Times were tumultuous and there was revolution in the air,” but through his unique gift as a writer, he came up with the poetic “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So much is communicated in this paragraph and it’s the kind of thing AI can never create. Only human creativity can generate something like that, but it’s hard work. It takes a heavy cognitive load to come up with engaging ways to convey information. The people who want to use AI to do this are trying to reach the end result with none of the labor in the middle. They want to walk up to a deadlift bar and pull 500 lbs raw without stretching, warming up or training in any way. They think that the way to do this is by using AI but the results are pitiful. The text is just wrong. It doesn’t read as human. It’s cold and technical and uses inappropriate or bizarre idioms. It’s not good, but far too often the people who “write” this way will say it’s “good enough.” At the end of the day, that’s all they’re really after. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to exist.
The same is true of those who use AI art. It’s not as egregious as having AI write your book, but the spirit of creative bankruptcy is still the animus behind it. At least most of the AI art defenders don’t have the temerity to claim authorship of the work. In the medium I focus on the most, RPGs, art is not actually an essential element. Plenty of RPGs have no art whatsoever, especially older ones. Gamers have come to expect art though and having good art is a tool that can sell your book. Plenty of bad books have been sold on the back of stellar art. Suffice it to say books with art tend to sell better than books with no art. The problem is that art can be expensive, especially commissioned art. Small publishers have to be creative and discerning when it comes to assembling art for their projects. Many use royalty free or stock art to fill the gaps between commissioned pieces. Some, myself included, will combine stock art pieces to create new images. There’s all kinds of inexpensive ways to make up for a lack of killer pieces. AI art does something different though. It promises the quality of cornerstone pieces at low to no cost. Imagine having a painting in the style of Larry Elmore without having the wait times or cost of contracting Mr. Elmore to paint a piece for you. As with all things that sound too good to be true, AI art is selling a bill of goods. It generates images that look like Elmore paintings…until you take more than a passing glance at them. Once you look closely, you notice fatal flaws like wonky geometry, odd perspective, bizarre anatomy and lifeless figures. A minute’s inspection gives it away, but the proponents of AI art all claim that it’s “good enough.” Some will admit that it’s a compromise, some even say they’re reluctant to use it but it’s better than nothing at all. At least they have art. Except, they don’t have art. They have content, but not art.
This is the central issue in the AI debate and why I have taken such a hard line against it. Art is not just the existence of a piece of content. It’s the labor involved in making it. Nighthaven isn’t just the words I wrote on a page. It’s the false starts made along the way, the sections that were omitted, the back-and-forth between myself and my editor, the personal drama, the anxiety, everything I experienced or felt during the creative process is what animates Nighthaven. Likewise, the art isn’t just the drawings on the page. It’s the experience of the men who drew it, some of which I have been privy to and some of which they have kept to themselves. It’s all there and it animates the work. AI cannot recreate that, as demonstrated by the way in which AI content just feels wrong in some intangible way. It’s a profound feeling of emptiness. It’s imagery and words sans humanity. It’s not art. It’s just content and its exists for no other reason than to exist. Using AI in a generative manner is a dead giveaway that someone has nothing to say but wants to be heard. If you truly have something to say in your art, I urge you not to take this fatal shortcut. Embrace the long and arduous journey of true creativity. You’ll stumble and fall and hurt yourself, but that will show in the end product. The long road is the only road to where you want to go.