Every six weeks, when my time in the lineup comes up, the same question arises, or set of questions: What to write about, and how to write about it? So I went to the hot new tool of the moment: ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is the new artificial intelligence writing software that has set academia abuzz, mainly in an alarmed way, because of its great potential to create plausible-sounding essays about most any topic. Need an essay on the connection between slavery and the American revolution, or an explanation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? No need anymore to plagiarize and risk detection (let alone read and study and actually grasp the material).
Instead, just type your prompt into the waiting textbox, and watch as the software creates what the developers call a “human-like” response because it is based on what countless actual humans have typed about the subject over time. The result will be unique because it is newly created, in real time; for that reason, it will likelier be harder for teachers or professors to prove that it has been created without the requisite human thought generally required to produce an essay.
Prompt: How to write a simple newspaper column.
Answer: Choose a topic. Consider what you want to write about and how it relates to your audience. It could be a current event, a personal experience, or a topic of interest.
Personal experience? That’s helpful, for the stress of a looming deadline can readily become a steady drumbeat, slowly getting louder as the due date nears: a week, five days, two days. But can stress be a topic? Isn’t it too general? What then to write about? A current event? Christmas, New Year’s? Could be trite—it will take some creativity to get a fresh perspective. A personal experience? Could be self-indulgent. “A topic of interest”? Thanks, AI! So I choose to do what procrastinators do: I sleep on it. I figure that if I go to sleep thinking about writing a column about Christmas, or about procrastination, maybe I’ll wake up with some insight fueled by the kind of mashup creativity that shows up in dreams. Plus I write best in the quiet of morning when the buzz of my first coffee is the main sound I hear in my head, and when traces of that weird nighttime creativity still linger. Prompt for later: What is the best way to remember ideas you had in a dream?
Organize your ideas: once you have a topic, think about the main points you want to make. You may want to create an outline to help you stay focused.
In my dreams I am well aware of the pressing need to write. But the need seldom remains coherent and instead is prone to morphing into some other one, like the classic dream in which I have to rush to teach a class and once I finally find the classroom I realize it’s in some subject for which I have zero qualifications, like medieval history or macroeconomics (it’s always an antiquely patinaed wood-paneled room with a chalkboard, like the ones in Good Will Hunting; thank God the stresses of managing classroom Zoom technology have not yet worked their way into my dreams). And all too often even those dreams go tangential as I realize that my need to write, or to teach a class, is trumped by my need to find a bathroom on the way to class. Question for later: As people age, why do they have to get up more often to pee in the middle of the night?
Write your column: Begin with an introduction that draws the reader in and clearly states the purpose of your column. Use the main points you’ve organized to develop your argument or tell your story.
The points I have organized: It is foolish, I gather, to blindly rush forward, not knowing what is to come—or not blindly, exactly; maybe it’s more like the effect you get when you squeeze your eyelids together but still let some light in so that things are fuzzy, half-seen, with only a vague sense of the destination or how to get there. That sort of exploratory probing of ideas, not knowing where they’re going to lead, sounds like a waste of time, just as it is a waste of time when you are traveling somewhere to deviate from the most efficient route shown on Google Maps. Prompt for later: Can there be benefits to not knowing what you’re doing?
Conclude with a summary of your main points or a call to action for the reader. Remember, a good newspaper column is concise, well-written, and engaging. It should present a clear argument or perspective, and leave the reader with something to think about.
In conclusion, I am grateful for the guidance I have received and how it has broken a sometimes seemingly overwhelming task, with its infinite possibilities, into manageable steps. Overall, I have learned that there can be a reliable roadmap for getting though an essay from beginning to end. Looking forward, I am confident that next time around I will be far more efficient in drafting my copy and getting it to Flag Live’s excellent editor. Prompt for next time: What is the importance of simply sitting your butt in a chair and typing to complete that column?
