Latest / Books4Guys / The Power of Reading, Writing & Thinking Deeply in the Age of AI | Douglas Cole

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The Power of Reading, Writing & Thinking Deeply in the Age of AI | Douglas Cole · Books4Guys

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're back.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think the twentieth.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys start a lot later where you're at.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: The colleges do.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Our high schools, K through twelve, they started this week, or I think they're starting this.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, down here a lot of the universities started probably a couple weeks ago, and then high school, and other than that, uh probably three or four weeks ago.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot more school buses going down our street.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot more traffic.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I know when school's back in session, but no, that's awesome, man.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're looking forward to the school year and new set of students, new set of inspiration, probably, a new set of individuals you can work to teach.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, Douglas, man, you're this is the second time on the Books for Guys podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have not had too many repeat guests, so it is an honor to have you back on and to talk about specifically, you've got a book that's, and I want you to explain the situation behind it, but the Whitefield, uh, which is an American Fiction Awards winner, and I know you've got a copy of it there, and I've got it on the website, and we've been putting it out there.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But so explain, explain the book as far as the publishing goes, because when you messaged me, you said, Hey, I've got a a new-ish book due to some publishing, you know, curves.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just explain more about that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The curve.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: The first publisher, Touchpoint Press, um, they had a real deep roster too.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of authors, a lot of books, and the owner had to shut down the press.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think there might have been some health issues.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the details, but that left us all everything, just kind of retreated back to the authors.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Luckily, I work with another beautiful press called Unsolicited Press, and so I talked with them and said, Would you be interested in re-hosting, reissuing, and just having a place for it to be in print?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they were open to that.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, yes, indeed, they would.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Unsolicited Press, too, a beautiful press uh here in uh the West Coast, Portland, they're coming out of Portland.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: The owner manager I've talked to before said that would be a thing that she would never want to have happen.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if for whatever reason she couldn't continue to do the press, her her plan would be to create a co-op and let the authors, all the writers, kind of then be collectively in charge of the press.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's how it found its way into a new printing, which is kind of cool.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: It offers it a chance to be up for some awards again, I guess.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: But it just keeps it alive and and I'm glad for that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So when when was it originally published?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: The fall of 2020.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: The beginning of the big shutdown of COVID.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: There was no so ironically, there was no well, not ironically, but coincidentally, there was uh very little promotion.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, we didn't really know, right?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: We hadn't gotten a bunch of this online stuff in place to deal with that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so 2020 happened, it the book came out.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't go to readings, bookstore libraries, everything, and nobody knew what else to do.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it really just kind of, you know, it landed and and didn't really have a chance to promote it much.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is kind of a nice opportunity to give it a second chance.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that makes a lot of sense then, as you were describing as like a new release, because it is kind of a new release.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's been out there, but you you didn't you weren't able to do the proper steps to market it and talk about it.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, like you said, it's been kind of sitting there and uh having a new press, you know, publisher be able to take it over.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a newfound energy and almost like like the very first push and then fresh push to get it out there and share it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to share it on our platform.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, man, hopefully it it leads to a lot of just fruitful things for you.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe it was just you know it's it's weird, man.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just had someone on too.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about marketing, and I know it's a little bit different, but we were talking about just the timing of things and just how that matters so much in different areas of of products or things or creations, and just having the right thing at the wrong time, it just it'll it just doesn't help with the potential of what you've created.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But finding the right time is all is like the main thing.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned a lot about that recently.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to hear your wisdom.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll send it over to you because I've I've got a book, it's actually called Now, and it's talking about just creators and and when when to put your product out there and just you know, looking at different details and such.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: But again, in 2020, you don't really we're no one's planning for that, so it's that's not something you can really learn, you know, at the time, but you know, different excuse for that one.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a global excuse.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, talk Douglas.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to go like too much into detail because again, we're trying to push this book and we want people to pick it up and read it, but just high-level overview.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: What do you like about it?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are you excited for people to experience when they read it?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and just kind of what was your well, I don't know, the the process, what made it enjoyable for you to put it together?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll work backwards on that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: What made it enjoyable for me to put together was that it had been sort of percolating in my mind for a couple of months before I actually started to write it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and it just sort of formulated it.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pretty fun and beautiful experience that I had it in mind before I even sat down to write it.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I was trying to catch up.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to write it as fast as I could before it vanished, before it evaporated, so I could get it down.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I did in like, you know, a month's time in notebooks, hand wrote it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I got a 30,000, 40,000 word draft written and done, and and I just sort of sat, I don't know if you remember the old Memorex commercial where the guy's in the chair and it all blows by him, and then he's just and I kind of felt like that afterwards.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that was part of the fun of it.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the fun of it was that in that process, the language I used the first person because I liked that for this particular character and story, so that this person can be telling it himself, telling his own story.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Using his own language, but also it keeps it in the mind.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if there's any, you know, unreliability to the, you know, that's that's legitimate.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's the the the person telling the story can't always be trusted.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that was a fun part of it, and that the language of it to me just came out in this very nice, flowing way that it just sounds like somebody talking to you, and I wanted that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm hoping the people, the the sort of experience I'm hoping is is something of an adventure.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a, you know, you know, man gets out of prison, tries to get back into society, struggles in that transition, you know, that those kinds of stigmas are really hard to shake, and really the uh, you know, the ceiling lowers down on you pretty hard.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to kind of capture that feeling.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a certain element of the book that's representing this feeling of being imprisoned, metaphorically, imprisoned, and this is a character who's just getting out of prison, but just entering into another kind of prison, the social prison, which is the, again, the stigmas and the limit the limits and opportunities once you've kind of gotten, you know, knocked down, you're that lower caste.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so in there though, too, I wanted it to be a fun and kind of an adventure.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of humor in it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the character's got a sense of humor and irony, and it's just sort of flowing along, and there's a certain element too of that which is just observational and and and then of course there's gotta be a twist, and he meets up with some old friends, and some circumstances bring new opportunities that are illegal.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so the irony of it I want is that he goes into prison initially under some questionable circumstances in terms of him being guilty, and that once the circumstances designate him as guilty, his behavior kind of then becomes more guilty.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of playing a little bit a little with that too.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so then it's an adventure and it's a you know, crime caper and then an escape.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the ending of the novel is is a you know uh a chase scene.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's fun.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a fun book.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, certainly.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and Doug, this leads to like, I've got probably like a two or three part question here because we and it kind of stems from our first conversation on just you you go levels deeper in your writing and thought process.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of us, especially like nowadays, we're pretty like surface level because of content we see in short form.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, a lot of us don't take the time to really dig in.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you used the phrase like get into the movie of a book, you know, go from just reading words to to getting into the movie plot and like losing yourself.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious to know, again, I'm gonna ask you like two or three different questions because some of it pertains to like what you see from your students as well.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm curious to know like what you see as this like next generation.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But for you personally, when you're writing a story like this and you've been writing a long time, have you noticed it be more challenging to go as deep and to create different, you know, twists and and then different aspects to the writing now than it was maybe 10, 15 years ago because of distractions?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that something you've been able to continue to hone in on and and even perfect more of your craft despite the external changes in technology and things that could take your focus away from it?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I came to a kind of a love of reading and writing early on before a lot of technology was pretty much in place.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sure, you know, growing up, I would have much rather watched television than read a book and struggled a little bit with my own reading.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it was much harder earlier on to kind of stay focused in some ways, uh, not because of the technology, just because of my own relationship to the language.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you're right, I've been doing it a lot of time uh a lot of years now.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so in terms of the craft, it's interesting this question you're asking me, because just a couple of days ago, I'm working on something else right now, and I was thinking in the process how much fun it has been working on it to have a little part of my brain always kind of on this open valence status and thinking, you know, the other things I've read, the other things I've heard, the other, you know, art movie, film, music, stuff like that.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I like when stuff out there finds its way, links in and connects in with stuff I'm working on.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I uh the the the vision I had was that as I read, as I go through the world and and and you know, encounter various art that I love, my brain has a lot of shelves and it's sticking little pieces and parts and that stuff on that shelf.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then while I'm working on something like I have been recently, my brain also has a part that's going over to the shelf and like grabbing a few ingredients there and mixing them in with the soup of my work.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are kind of little references, again, adding layers that you're talking about, which becomes part of the fun of my craft is to see those connections.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, what I'm working on now, kind of it's got a little relationship to these books and these stories that I've heard and this philosophy.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I can kind of dial up a little bit of some of those ideas in the work, but I don't want to go too far and make it get pretentious or anything and obvious.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a fun part.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about this in terms of students and talking to students, and I'm gonna go back this fall and talk to them about this too, is the way that you have, you know, these various screens open on your desktop, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Your brain is the same thing.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can have a bunch of screens open at the same time, and that complexity and that ability to sort of have your attention in a few other directions can be a positive multitasking without a diminishment of attention or focus.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that beautiful.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like your mind is expanding rather than sort of the distractions of, oh, the TV's on over there, and I got the blue jay knocking at my window here, you know, and that kind of distractionary stuff.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's more like an intense and more amplified awareness.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a lot of fun.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that has something that's developed more in practice.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's really cool that you explain that to your students because that kind of leads into my question specifically about them.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is as you've been teaching, especially, I would say, like over the last, let's say, five, ten years of seeing the transition of what young people are experiencing, just life in general, technology.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Are you more encouraged from what you see as far as them being able to be creative and and chip away at deeper levels of thinking?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or has it become more of a challenge for you to say, like, hey, open up your brain a little bit?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's think, let's dig in a little bit.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not looking for just an answer.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like think of how, like, whatever I'm trying to teach you, what are you thinking?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on it?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is that getting more difficult?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or, or how are young people, I don't know, just just how are they coming off to you as as you're teaching them now?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: What what's the challenges?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's the differences you see?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are more of those kinds of distractions you're talking about.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And students are struggling with that more, I think.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: A young a younger person, yeah, you've got the pull.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, boy, too, you know, AI, you know, and the ease of some of those products.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the literary journals that I'm publishing, too, very loud in their pronouncement of no AI products.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's a temptation, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't see a huge difference in terms of student curiosity or passion or intelligence.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: But students are coming in with less experience in terms of reading and thinking through the process of writing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something I love to amplify to my students too.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm talking to you now about how, you know, when you're writing, your brain is operating in a slightly different fashion.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, your concentration is more focused, but also, you know, connecting into all of the other possibilities.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that sort of flexibility of thought, you know, I don't I don't think that's necessarily less, but I think there's maybe a higher anxiety around writing.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and I teach a lot of students too who are coming to the writing having learned other languages to begin with, and and maybe learning English not as a first language, and so there's another layer of of kind of language anxiety.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm trying to continue to evolve the class so that it can adapt and reach the students wherever they are.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, absolutely a lot of free writing is something I want to do in class so that the stakes are low in terms of punishments or grades to try to and and also, you know, I've been a little more open about my own writing process, I think, in the last five to ten years too, with my students.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And prob possibly because I've been publishing more and feel a little bit more like I I can bring that in legitimately rather of course, you don't have to be publishing to be a good adept writer.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the challenges I think still remain for the students, as I've seen for many years, just you know, the and I and I think it goes to the core of of what makes it easier to write is the reading, reading and critically understanding what you're reading and looking deep into what you're reading and and and seeing those little connections that that writer is making with the items on that writer's shelf of belief and ideas and references and influence, and the central kind of tie-together ideas and and I don't see the a huge difference, but I know statistically a lot of students are coming to the class with much less reading experience.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: What you're explaining is it it takes intentionality and time to dig in and read and think.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I was thinking of like things are moving so fast, people are doing 10 different things at once, you know, and I I have to do it myself to like slow down when reading something to be like, okay, put everything away, like I don't care 30 minutes, like dig into this so that you comprehend it and you don't because I mean, man, I can use Chat GBT to type something out.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I barely read it, and I'm like, you know, I'm not comprehending that.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was going a little bit deeper too.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, like, the teachers who have had the biggest impact on me and professors, they they were really good about like kind of pushing my buttons and challenging me a little bit and almost like calling me out to be like, you just making me do better.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I also know, and I, and it's not every teacher, but some teachers they don't care as much.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it whatever makes the job easier, you know, AI grades, let's get this, you know, you don't get the same kind of just intentionality and care and thoughtfulness into wanting me to be better.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are those teachers out there, and I just, you know, one of my questions is is like, you know, in this day and time, are there are there more better teachers now or less because of AI?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not to their own fault, but like are they buying into AI and fast and just kind of moving without really thinking as much too, which then translates to the students, and then when the students get to a certain point, you know, they're different.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's all these complexities to it, but it's something I was I've just been thinking about.
• 17:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not sure what the answer is in terms of the AI yet.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have myself kept it at a distance.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not not really fearing it, but just I haven't really got a use for it yet.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I like to write my own stuff, of course.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: For me, the you know, the raw page, you know, the I I like, in fact, I was reading a study the other day.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I like, I like working with paper and pen first.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was reading a study uh the other day that those people who write physically rather than typing, write, and typing's physical too, but writing on a page with a pen, there's a you slow down and your brain gets a chance to slow down and think.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the things I've been teaching to my students for a long time is that this idea of speeding up does not necessarily result in more clarity and depth.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then I remember when I was a kid, there was this thing called Blenwood Speed Reading School.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: You could go to, and they had commercials on TV where people are running their hands across a page, you know, one page for like two seconds, flip, flip, flip.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and supposedly you could read all that and have the same level of comprehension, but it was always a lie, and it's still a lie.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I do in the classroom is I try to create I I bring in, I have a book I use that has pieces that are readable within about a 10 to 15 minutes.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's small, but it's dense.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we can read it in the room, you can get the whole thing and feel like you're on some stable ground rather than necessarily giving a big long thing to read.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one way I'm adjusting, at least in terms of compositional new writing students, is to give them shorter things to read but are punchy and strong.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So at least get that foot in the door.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that a lot.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and one thing, I don't know if this works for everyone, but I've challenged myself to like write more because I read a lot.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Talking to people like you who write a lot as well.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've been like, hey, I need to write.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I encourage like everyone should write their story and share, because we all got different paths and different things we can teach people.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing I've used AI for is I've had it, because I'm really bad about thinking about where to start and kind of how to get going.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people they just say, just write.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, but like I need, I need something to start with.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I've had AI actually like interview me and ask me questions.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can get through like three or four questions, that makes me like think back to a time I felt like this.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I feel like this?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the lesson was?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then I can just type it out and then it goes through and it's like, here's what I think you're saying.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, that is what I'm trying to say.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so like that's helped me pause a little bit and actually write is have it interview me, and then I type out what I'm thinking.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it does like at least create that moment of like intentional, in-depth thought, remembering, and that sort of thing.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's just been something I've been doing recently, and I'm like, this is actually a really cool thing that it's not, I'm not like cheating the system with it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm using it to help me actually produce and think with my own thoughts, but it's just something I've been I've been kind of tinkering with as I want to write more.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just kind of a little trick.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know where I got it from or how I came up with it, but it seems it seems to be working.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm thinking more.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that sounds cool.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't even thought of that.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what's the real difference between that and just having a friend you're talking to and somebody writes down what you say?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: As long as they're your words.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's interesting.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and again, it keeps track of everything.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I can, you know, kind of organize it a little bit.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like you, I've always been a big proponent of like paper and pen, too.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: I got so many notebooks around just for mainly for work stuff.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a big proponent of that too.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there's just there's just so many tricks to the trade and things you can do and things you gotta like experiment with, is kind of, I guess, what I'm thinking.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every person's different.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm sure for you that's a fun thing to to experience with students.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, how do I get through to this kid over here that's different than this kid over here?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, and conceptually they may all be taking in what I'm saying, but one obviously is gonna take, you know, take it maybe a little bit differently or be able to work a little bit differently.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure it's a ch I'm sure it's like enlightening for you, though, to experience those little things to like pick up on and how to maximize a student's potential.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I like your idea.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I might steal it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah of having the AI ask you questions.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: But um I've said before too for students, I know that you know, just saying just right is kind of useless to a certain degree, like, whoa, where do I begin?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I do advocate sometimes, you know, and I don't think this uses AI, but you know, many of the typing program, Microsoft Word and whatever, have dictation features so that you can put it on listening and you can just talk to it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I say experiment with that too.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a nice way to kind of then try to train your inner ear.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: To the, you know, connection between the way your voice sounds and the way your inner written voice sounds.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And not that that have has to match, but you know, to get a little bit more of a start to hear yourself.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that might be kind of one of the beauties of writing too is that it's really a form of intensifying your own listening, you know, so that you can hear your own thoughts.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like the the voice, right?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: We talk a lot in terms of writing, of finding your voice.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think finding your voice is the same moment where, like we talked about before, the writing that you're reading, you know, whoever is writing it starts to just become a movie in your head, just starts to become a person there.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're not struggling with what is the the letter and the sound and the meaning of the word.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think that that then starts turning back and you're trying to listen to your own voice where you're hearing another writer write.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Getting that on the page, whatever it takes, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Have an AI interview you or you know, dictate.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: You just sit there and talk to your, you know, machine and it'll write it down and you can edit later.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: All those generative things, I think that you know, whatever it takes, it's fine.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have fun.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: It should be fun.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at least that early part.
• 23:13
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting you brought that up because I actually I talked to a guy recently who just published a book and he I was asking him, like, well, you know, how'd he he does it he has a lot of things going on?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, what would how'd you do it?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, honestly, man, 80% of the book was from me talking while I was doing my morning ruck.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I throw my weight vest on, I've got like a three-mile walk, and I would just talk my thoughts out of what I'm thinking for this chapter and this part.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's like, about 80% was me talking because that was my time to write.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I wasn't putting, you know, my pen to paper, but I was putting out what I wanted to be in the book, and I was like, man, that's interesting.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Yeah.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever, like you said, whatever it takes, you know, to get it done.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I talked it out, and then I went back and edited it as it, you know, kind of typed it out for me from my words.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, that's pretty cool.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't thought about that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: But that leaves me, one of the other questions I was gonna ask you, because you write poetry, it's short stories, and you've got, you know, a couple novels.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you start to write, how do you dictate and determine what's going to be a poem versus what's gonna lead to a novel?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you start out by saying, I'm gonna write a poem or I'm gonna write a novel, or do you write and then whatever kind of comes out in the beginning determines what direction you're gonna go in?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, starting out early on and kind of even still, sort of, it's the intention once I'm sitting down, like, I what am I working on today?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: What is this thing I'm looking at?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I also like to say, uh I say a lot that there's like very little difference in terms of what's going on intellectually, you know, creatively, working on a novel or a poem.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's just you're still kind of in a similar space.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: The differences are smaller than the mind perceives.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it's funny because usually it's I'm sitting down, I'm I'm working on a novel.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know it, like I've just been working on something too, and and I know it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's kind of uh a slightly different intention or different allowances I leave myself.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: The the novel, like for example, I've been working on something.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: The the challenge I think for that is keeping a certain consistency in voice and tone and diction and style for a longer piece, you know, so that it doesn't feel like it's being patchwork written by different people, different times, even if it's myself.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of unity and flow, that's more of a challenge for the longer piece.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I like it though, because working on a longer piece, I like that getting up every day and like that one's there, and I'm gonna I can go work and I like, okay, even though maybe someday it's like I don't want to sit down, but it's there.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I and then it's like going to the gym.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I like that, rather than waking up like, what shall I do today?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um but at the same time, I love the freedom of what shall I do today?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where some of the most interesting poems and stuff come from.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, it's usually am I gonna sit out on this long journey or am I gonna just go for a walk around the block kind of a mentality when it comes to different forms like that?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: But like this thing I was just working on, I kind of found in my own material I had been kind of accumulating a certain amount of stuff, and then it finally just sort of all gelled, and I went, okay, now I know what to do with it, which is very unique.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: That one years, years in the accumulation, the white field came in, you know, a lightning bolt to the brain.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I try not to create or try to get attached to any particular methods or or expectations and just sort of every day a certain amount, just get up and I enjoy.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: But what was it?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: One poet says, whatever you're working on, if it doesn't work, just call it an exercise.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to just make sure I'm exercising every day.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's all it's almost like, and I may not be terming it correctly, but it's like an organized, organized freedom or organized chaos, because like you want to have a plan, but sometimes that plan is is having no plans.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So hey, I got all this done, I don't want to have anything to do on Saturday, but that way if something does come up, if I do have a thought and all of a sudden I do want to write, then I have the the time to do it.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of just like stacking your schedule to do task after task after thing after thing to where you just you minimize that time to be creative, you organize in a way so that you have some openings to just allow to happen whatever decides happened.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's the best way I I've kind of thought about that too.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like everyone has or I was listening to that was describing that.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, yeah, like you you can't just not have a plan because then you just don't know what to do.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you then you go to the gym and you don't know what to lift, so then you don't even work out because you're like, oh, I don't know, should I bench?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Should I walk?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Should I do squats?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, just it's more stressful than if you have some sort of idea of what you want to do.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: But he's like, same thing with like being creative, plan for that time, and maybe nothing happens, but like you you want to take a nap, but make sure you have that time to where if you wake up with a thought, you have nothing else keeping you from spending an hour writing about it or or putting it down.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, that's a really good way to think about it so that it's less less stressful.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're not doing nothing, you're just giving yourself the opportunity to do things that come up that that may be important.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or you don't know they're important at the time, but they'll they'll prove to be.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, just interesting thoughts.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Always keep a notebook in your pocket, you know.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You never know when that thought's gonna hit you.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've got like a thousand notes on my phone, which is crazy.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I need to go through and delete some of them, but I have so many random.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are just grocery lists from four years ago, you know.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need this.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But no, Douglas, man, this has been thanks again for just all your support of books for guys.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And man, every we're we're so proud to spotlight you and your work and and just I know you've got more coming.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you you've always got something you're working on, it seems.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm sure down the road we're gonna have a a third and fourth conversation.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: But man, I just wanted to say thank you for just your support of what we're doing.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh man, we're we're proud to continue to share your your work with our audience as well.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, man, just keep it going and excited to see just what you continue to do and accomplish.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I appreciate it, and it's fun to talk about it.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, next time, or I'd love to talk again next time I got something out, or you know, just down the line.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, man, good luck with the school season and uh we'll be looking forward to the next conversation.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Terrific.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Chris.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Douglas.