I made a mistake

Owning up to it and fixing it

WRITING:

This week, I have to hold my hand up to a couple of things. Firstly, I’ve not done a whole lot of writing.

Don’t want to.

Truth be told, I’m struggling a little for motivation. I’m in a trough, self-belief-wise. Nobody wants to read my stuff etc etc. Other people’s books are great; mine, not so much. It’s hard to pull myself out of it once I find myself here. I start looking for other things to do, putting off opening that Word doc. Ultimately, what’s the point, if the ceiling on my ability stops me ever making anything truly great.

This isn’t, however, what I want to talk about this week.

My other confession is to do with A.I. art. As you know, alongside my traditionally-published work, I have a side-hustle in self-published sci-fi novels. I’ve never had much money to put into promoting them, which is partly why I’ve never made much money out of selling them. This doesn’t matter, as it’s a fun side-hustle where I get to play about in a sandbox of my own devising, knocking together tales of galactic derring-do and adventure. I have a blast writing them, and a couple of friends have a blast reading them, all’s well in the world.

However, this has meant I’ve never had the budget to get anyone to design proper covers for them. My first attempts at doing it myself were decidedly amateurish, I’d be the first to admit. Then A.I. art blew up.

Aha! I thought. Here’s an opportunity for me to get some striking imagery for the covers of my books for a non-wallet-busting amount¹. Right from the off, I knew it was a contentious issue. On the one hand, tech-bro’s were all about opening up creative fields to all and the beauty of pushing forward technological boundaries. On the other, visual artists were very much like, Woah, hang on, I’ve a livelihood to earn here…

I was never 100% comfortable with it, but I justified the use of A.I. imagery on the basis that I could never afford to hire someone to design a cover for me, so I wasn’t taking a cheque out of anyone’s hands. And my sales were at a level where I was hardly making a killing from it.

There are, of course, issues with this. Firstly, there’s a level of entitlement there that doesn’t paint me in a good light.

“I can’t afford something, but I want it anyway, so it’s okay.”

That’s not okay.

Secondly, and more crucially, while I might not being making significant amounts of cash from it, or denying anyone cash I might have paid them because I didn’t have any, people were, are, still getting ripped off.

I wouldn’t want anyone using my work, without credit or remuneration², to train A.I., or use that A.I. to generate writing that ripped off my work. So how was I okay with that being the case for visual artists? Grotesque hypocrisy, that’s how.

Naturally, having thought it through to that conclusion, things had to change. As of this week, all my self-published works have new cover art. These have been created within BeFunky, whose terms & conditions clearly state that use of images created with BeFunky are permitted to be used commercially. Furthermore, they source their stock images from Pexels and Pixabay, both of whom are clear in their own T&C’s that use such as I’m making of them is equally permitted by them. I am now confident that my covers are responsibly sourced, though I shall continue to be vigilant regarding ethical issues in all areas of my work.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Likewise, I’ve updated all my promotional images. I’ve also deleted every A.I. generated image from my computer and closed my account with the A.I. image platform I was using. One thing that hadn’t occurred to me until someone pointed it out recently is that even using A.I. image generators for personal use, generating fun images with no intention of doing anything with them except maybe posting them on social media still tells those companies that there is a market for “their” product. It’s not enough to not be using it commercially - any use of A.I. generated material where that A.I. has been trained via the inputting of uncredited, stolen work is an endorsement of that theft.

I’m just sorry it’s taken me this long to reach this realisation.

It’s almost certainly too late to put that particular genie back into their bottle, but it’s never too late to make sure you’re morally comfortable with how you go about your business. I’m not a judgey person, but for my own part, I’m a lot happier now with how I’m going about mine.

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I have enjoyed:

1. Doctor Zhivago - As much as I enjoyed Far From the Madding Crowd last month, I was left a trifle underwhelmed by Julie Christie. Not her performance, which was superb, but her status as a sixties pin-up. I knew she was supposed to be a dish, but I did not find her to my taste. Watching Doctor Zhivago for the first time this week, though, now I get it.

   

   In the interests of equality, I should mention that Sharif is clearly also a dish.

   I was somewhat surprised to discover it’s one of my brother’s favourite films, having never heard him so much as mention it in the near-fifty years I’ve known him, but I can see why. It’s a glorious epic, beautifully shot with a fantastic cast. Rod Steiger is particularly compelling as the complex Komarosky. It makes the most of its three hour running time, creating a truly timeless sweeping thing of beauty.

2. The Night My Number Came Up - Based on a real-life incident, this 1955 Leslie Norman drama is a fascinating look at the human character. A flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo in the immediate post-war years is the subject of a dream had by Michael Hordern’s character, which ends in tragedy. He relates the dream to the people who feature in it, who naturally think nothing of it, until the circumstances around their flight keep changing to mirror that of his dream. Slowly, the rational, sceptical passengers fall prey to superstition and panic, and it’s that journey from one to the other than gives the film its atmosphere. We’d like to think we’d all dismiss a dream as meaningless, but as those circumstances and details keep changing to line up with the dream, the cast do a wonderful of showing their scepticism slowly dissolve into fear.

   

   “Look Daddy, I’m flying the plane!”

   And he’s not in it much, but Hordern has a cracker of a final line.

3. Norwich Works - You’ve just time to get yourself to Norwich Castle Museum to catch this extraordinary exhibition before it closes on 14th April. Walter and Rita Nurnberg spent the fifties photographing the factories and workers of Norwich. Going much further than mere documentation, Walter’s deliberate framing and lighting, together with Rita’s processing, took the every-day and made it into true art. Rather than going around snapping the workers at work, Walter knew exactly what shots he wanted, and set them up meticulously, with the workers then miming their own tasks for him to shoot. The results speak for themselves, creating images with a cinematic atmosphere.

   

   I’m just waiting for Richard Attenborough or Sid James to appear.

4. Save Yourselves! - If you saw the American drama Search Party³, shown over here recently on BBC3, you’ll know that John Reynolds has an amazing talent for playing ineffectual worriers. It’s an act he pulls out again for this 2020 sci-fi comedy.

   

   It’s different though, because he has a moustache in this.

   Reynolds plays one half of a hipster couple, against the excellent Sunita Mani, whose screen-free country detox coincides with an alien invasion of earth. The humour revolves around how utterly lacking in life skills the modern young person is, and how dependent on their technology they are, which is sort of an exercise in barrel-fish-shooting. But done right, it can entertain, and this is very much done right.

5. Super 8 - Thirteen years on, and still probably the best thing JJ Abrams has ever done. Is it just me, or has this film sort of been forgotten? It certainly doesn’t have the legacy or reputation it deserves, given how popular Stranger Things is.

   

   And it stars one of the finest actors of her generation. It’s insane how good she is in this, given she’s just twelve.

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Greyskin (Deixis Press) and Playtime’s Over (Propolis) are both available direct from their respective publishers, as well as from all the usual places, online and off.  You can also support my work by buying Ray Adams’ self-published books, or by simply buying me a coffee. You can also pay for this free newsletter, if paying for free stuff is your jam.

1. i.e. Free

2. Third writing confession. Until about a week ago, I had no idea the word was ‘remuneration’ and had been cheerfully saying ‘renumeration’ my whole life.

3. One of the greatest tv shows of the 21st Century, of any genre.