The One-Drink Book Club is an informal, (almost) weekly series in which fellow author Emma Lee Jayne joins me and our other creative friends to talk about the life, business, and art of writing and making books … for the duration of one Friday-afternoon drink.
Here’s what we talked about in this episode:
Bill started us off by asking about our influences — which authors inspired us, and how much did we try to emulate them, and do we still today? This became a discussion of voice … and a theory that maybe creation isn’t really creation so much as remixing what’s already there.
Bill then asked what we thought might happen with AI in the future: not a question of whether AI will change books or writing, but whether it might change the ability or way that authors actually write. Will AI neuter us? The answer ended up depending on the question of why we write, and what stories mean to the author.
On a roll, Bill then asked if our questions have their own lives, or whether we control their backstories and they have no existence beyond what we make for them. This became a really interesting discussion about what Emma called “Schrödinger’s parents” — a concept I explained as everything in a character that’s not explicitly spelled out being “quantum and indeterminate” until there is need to define and specify it.a
We ended with a discussion of how we hope our books will be received by future generations … which ended up becoming about the butterfly effect somehow.
BUT WAIT; THERE’S MORE! Emma actually had a come-backer at the end, as a PS, about a new choose-your-own adventure story engine she’s part of, called Zory. You can check Zory out here.
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