Boredom as a Writing Tool

I heard this quote a few years ago about how kids need to let themselves be bored because it's in those moments where they're not being entertained that they create things, and something like a question about how many authors, music composers, artists, and inventors will we miss out on because the rising generation doesn't let themselves get bored. I went searching for this quote and, while I didn't find exactly the one I was looking for, it turns out a lot of people have said similar things.

Robert M. Persig said, "Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity."

Kim Raver said, "I think it's necessary to let kids get bored once in a while--that's how they learn to be creative."

In Nicholas Kardaras's book, Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids -- And How to Break the Trance, he says, “If you really want a child to thrive and blossom, lose the screens for the first few years of their lives[...] Most importantly, let them experience boredom; there is nothing healthier for a child than to learn how to use their own interior resources to work through the challenges of being bored. This then acts as the fertile ground for developing their powers of observation, cultivating patience and developing an active imagination-- the most developmentally and neurosynaptically important skill that they can learn.”

This child is about to do something awesome

I skimmed several articles and noted reddit threads where people said basically the same thing: creativity happens when kids (and adults) are bored, and the fact is we live in an age where we are almost never bored. We always have these little screens in our pockets and if ever there's a moment of downtime, we inevitably pull it out and start scrolling.

I'm not here to judge or to say smart phones phones or social media are evil. What I want to talk about is my own worry that by constantly using my smart phone I have deprived my brain of enough down time to think of stories. 

Lately I've noticed that I haven't been able to make a lot of progress on issues in my novels. Usually when I run into a section where things feel off or I'm stuck trying to figure out the next plot point, I actually come up with the answer when I'm away from my computer, just pondering things out. But that hasn't been happening for a while.

I have two sections in two different books in the series I'm currently working on that I've been stuck on for a while. The first is a section that has already been written and which I have been trying to edit, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. There's not a lot of action, and it's rather long, and the timeline is a bit off. It's boring to edit and I'm sure it's boring to read. The second is a section that I haven't written yet and is full of action, but I don't know exactly what should happen. 

Normally with things like this I would just let it simmer for a few days and the answer would come to me randomly and I would then write it when I next got to my computer.

But that wasn't happening and I couldn't tell why.

Then, at church we were talking about distractions, and I remembered this quote that I can't find about disconnecting from electronics and letting our kids (and ourselves) be bored. I realized that I hadn’t been doing that. I have had plenty of quiet moments lately where I have nothing going on (I have a newborn that needs feeding) but instead of sitting and thinking, I immediately reach for my phone. There's no time for my brain to work out problems when it's being constantly entertained.

When I was little we sometimes called TV the one-eyed monster. I think that monster is smaller now.

So I tried to cut back a little on the electronics. At least a few times a day, if I had a moment of quiet, I let the quiet remain and I let myself be alone with my thoughts.

And already I have come up with a few ideas for how to fix the first section.

Boredom is a writing tool. We need to be bored at least a little everyday to let our brains entertain itself. Often, for me, it will do that by telling itself a story, and then I can tell that story to others.

So if you can't come up with what comes next in your stories, or how to fix a problem section, try sitting with nothing to do. Let your mind wander. With nothing else to distract it, it might come up with a solution.

Will ChatGPT Take My Job?

 When I was young, if someone mentioned artificial intelligence, people thought of this:

this:

or this:

People were scared of any mention of AI and robots because they immediately imagined these things taking over the world and overthrowing humanity.

Who knew artificial intelligence would actually look a lot more like this:

this:

or even this: 

That last one is a from a chat with ChatGPT, a natural language processing (NLP) AI Chatbot, and some people are just as afraid of it and other generative artificial intelligence as they once were about evil robots.

You've probably heard that AI Chatbots like ChatGPT will eventually take your job. And as a writer, they are particularly worrisome because they can write anything you tell them to, including entire novels and screenplays. The implication is that someday, we won't need human writers for written media at all, and paid human writers will be pushed out of the market for the much cheaper computerized version.

So am I worried ChatGPT will take my job?

My initial response is no. Chatbots are an excellent tool. Look how my simple question above was answered in seconds by ChatGPT, meaning I didn't have to search through Google to find every possible example of AI we use on a daily basis, or even open up an article to see if it had what I was looking for. Chatbots are also useful for writing code, as they can immediately give you the code you need in the language you want for a specific task. And, yes, they can get you started on writing, and even help you brainstorm ideas.

But innovators they are not.

Everything coming out of artificial intelligence has first been put there by humans. The way Chatbots work is by looking at what already exists, finding patterns, and then spitting out text based on those patterns. A Chatbot cannot come up with a new story, it can only tell you stories based on stories that have come before. You might argue that's what all stories are, just reusing and rehashing old tropes, putting twists on genres that already exist.

But that's the thing. Humans can surprise us with those twists. Humans make new stories by taking well-known archetypes and turning them on their heads. A Chatbot doesn't know how to do that. They can only look at what came before and repeat it. Only a human can look at what came before and change it.

So none the stories and novels and screenplays that come out of Chatbots are going to be innovative. At some point, without new input, all of these stories will be the same. Sure, some people don't mind that, but I think for the most part people will prefer to be surprised by human tales.

With that said, there is the smallest part of me that worries what will happen if that percentage of people who prefer innovation is lower than I think. If the majority of humanity don't mind consuming the same stories and tropes and archetypes again and again, especially if the cost is low, then eventually human writers probably will give up and use AI to make their books as well. And then all our media will be a boring, beige, barely entertaining pool of repetition.

So here's my call to action. If you don't want that happening, you need to send a message to the people who produce media. Let them know that you prefer to be surprised. Read and consume mostly human-generated media that is innovative and new, and they will get the hint. That's not to say all AI-generated media should be avoided at all costs, but money talks, and if the money is leaning in a certain direction, that's the direction producers will lean toward as well.

Meanwhile, as a writer, I still think ChatGPT can be a good tool to get you started. If you are stuck, or don't know what to do next, a Chatbot can write a few paragraphs for you and you can either edit that or take a few ideas from it. ChatGPT can help you do research on topics you're writing about. Try it out and see how it can help you. But remember, what it spits out is only as good as what humanity has already given it, and, well, sometimes humanity is dumb. Also, it can't reliably give you sources for what it tells you. So, take whatever it says with a grain of salt.