Mad in Pursuit Notebook

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Envisioning. My AI story began with images. I learned how to put my own aging face onto generated images. It helped orient me to who I wanted to be as an elder. And I got a good story out of it.

Writing. I don’t use AI to write. It doesn’t sound like me. And the physical act of writing is a great workout for my brain. Crafting an elegant sentence, capturing an apt metaphor, building a cogent paragraph, revising a meandering draft — it all makes me happy. I have a voice. I have something to say with it. I don’t let Grammarly bully me, but I do occasionally let it untangle an overwrought multi-sentence thought.

Writing for a friend. My friend Pat wrote a memoir that explored her life over sixty years with a bipolar lover. It had a happy ending, but she stalled out, unable to come up with a good denouement. On a whim, we uploaded a PDF of her story to NotebookLM and generated an Audio Overview. We were both blown away by the power of her story as told through that medium. She was inspired to get back to work.

Then we uploaded her manuscript to ChatGPT 4.5 (the “creative” model, now apparently defunct) and asked it to generate the final scene. It did a great job, striking just the right tone. She will rewrite it using the specific details she wants to include, but now she has guidance for that work.

Bridge from writing to audio narration. When I hired Anne Marie Lewis to narrate Kitty’s People for Audible, she sent me a questionnaire with challenging questions about the characters and the nature of their voices. What three adjectives would they use to describe themselves? Describe their voice as a musical instrument. What is their animal essence or patronus? Holy cow. My imagination was dry as a bone.

I loaded the manuscript into NotebookLM and asked it Anne Marie’s questions. I considered the answers. They made me smile. Some were perfect. The others inspired me to do better. A brain-wracking project turned into play. And Anne Marie got an excellent guide for her voice work.

Titles and taglines. Here, I’ve used both Gemini Pro and ChatGPT, but the results are mostly unusable, if only because they are oh-so-clever. But they get my own thought process moving.

Since much of what I write is about the stories of ethnic and historical “things,” I did query Gemini Pro about the magic behind National Geographic titles. It was a fun side-trip into “secrets” and “lost histories.”

Broad research. Sometimes I stumble into a disorienting new mental landscape and turn to AI for a guide. For example, my writing about the spirit in old things led me to New Materialism. I was figuring it out, but couldn’t understand why its proponents were often described as rejecting “anthropocentrism.” So I asked Gemini Pro to do some Deep Research. It generated a long essay, which I downloaded to Google Docs for underlining and following links. It was so helpful!

Specific research. I live in a mini-museum — my Monastery of Artful Delights. I love giving each necklace or figurine or vintage photograph its moment on center stage. I love giving each a chance to tell its story. Now, with AI and its deep search features, I can’t shut them up. Ha!

Of course, the more arcane a thing is (like pages from a 19th-century Chinese book on the life of Confucius), the more AI conflates and confabulates. I have to point out its errors and ask for do-overs.

I wind up using both Gemini Pro and ChatGPT to fact-check and play off one another. The process forces me to think more forensically. Step-by-step, its responses lead me to feed it more bits of context that I initially didn’t think were important. There are three shamrocks stamped into the leather binding. Is that relevant? Or, I thought the beads were bone, but their translucency and fluorescence reveal they are ivory. Does this make a difference? Or, I forgot to mention this photo was taken in Utah, so it can’t be a scene from India.

In my story Secret of the Ghost Ship in My Closet, I wound up quoting Gemini because it gave such a concise summary, not worth wrestling it into my own words.

My ghost ship research was pretty straightforward. By way of contrast, my research into a nineteenth-century photo album led to a weekend-long dialogue with AI. The big leather parlor album contained 120 cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards — all celebrities of the era — presidents, poets, abolitionists, novelists, opera stars, royalty, musicians, and more. It was a curious mix, with many more women featured than is usual for this type of album. I asked Gemini Pro to help me figure out what sort of person would have created this particular collection of images.

Together, we zeroed in on the likelihood that it was assembled by a well-to-do Boston woman who was transitioning from her support for abolition to her support for women’s rights. Speculation, of course, but based on a very close look at the mix of photos, photographers, and every little detail about the album itself and its layout. I wound up digging deep into Boston’s progressive history, the early women’s movement there, and the role of salons in giving women an influential voice in the community. We even generated an image of her.

I haven’t decided yet how to write up this experience. Gemini Pro generated a report that I would never claim as my own writing. It was full of lectern-gripping, hand-waving oratory, far from my own voice. However, it was entertaining enough to read aloud to several of my friends as they paged through the old album. I was having my own mini-salons.

Enchantment. I follow closely the controversies and dilemmas surrounding generative AI. I read and listen to all the jeremiads. But I am happy to contribute my writing to the DNA of large language models.

For me, generative AI expands my world. I have delightful new tools to play with. Its aura of magic is a source of enchantment for me. It is wild. Some days, it’s a shamanic journey. Some days, the tarot cards are shuffled into startling new spreads. Some days, it’s the I Ching. Some days, it’s the trickster.

I want to do my own writing, but I love having an AI daemon by my side, pushing me along.

25 Aug 2025

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