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It's a losing battle, and it's one that isn't worth fighting in the first place, because the only people you're trying to convince are ones who *can't even recognize decent writing when they see it*. They're people who can say, with a straight face, that *lists of three* are signs of AI‽ As if they haven't heard every Tom, Dick, and Harry talk about "baseball, motherhood and apple pie" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" before? 5/6

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And in the third place, it's a moving target! "Signs of LLM writing" are likely to change by next spring, but your writing will hopefully last for longer than that. So if you distort your style to mollify this year's crop of AI-accusers, people coming to your work fresh in a few years will just say, "Hey, I think this must be AI, because it uses tag questions in dialogue", or hyphenated compound adjectives, or whatever. You'll have scarred your writing for no purpose. 4/6

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…try to follow every item on them, without fail. Like "never use the word 'like'", or "never use adverbs, at all". Or go into r/writing and/or r/writingadvice, ask, "What are some tropes you don't like?", and then make sure to avoid *every single one* that anyone lists. (Spoiler: you won't be able to.) 3/6

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I definitely *DON'T* think writers should try to avoid using em dashes, or the "not X, but Y" structure, or lists of three things, or anything else that some idiots are trying to push as "signs of LLM writing". For one, it's constricting your own style. For two, it's doing so specifically in a way that caters to some of the judgiest, most hyper-critical readers. You might as well also look up some lists of "writing do's and don't's" and… 2/6

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#WritersCoffeeClub day 17: Should modern writers worry about proving their work is not generated by an LLM?

I think they should only worry about it to the extent that they'd previously have worried about proving that their work wasn't plagiarized. Like, if seriously challenged (usually by one's publisher, not by some rando), it's good to be able to produce prior drafts or other artifacts of creation.

But that's about all. 1/6

#WritersCoffeeClub day 16: What was the hardest writerly lesson for you to learn? Or unlearn?

I think the hardest lesson for me to learn will turn out to be "how not to overwrite", and I sure as hell haven't learned it yet.

#WritersCoffeeClub day 15: How do your immediate surroundings influence your work?

I try pretty hard to keep them from doing so; I don't want to do what the Turkey City Lexicon calls "Dischism". (https://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html, roughly 40% of the way down the page — I have no idea why that list isn't alphabetically sorted.)

#WritersCoffeeClub day 14: Why do you write in the form you do? Why not in another format? (poem, short story, novel, etc)

"Why don't I write in a shorter format?" thought the aspiring novelist whose draft currently stands at over 85,000 words when it's roughly a fifth of the way done. "Yeah, I'll get right on that. 🙄"

#WritersCoffeeClub day 12: What kinds of love appear in your writing?

Quite a few! I'm tempted say "all of them"...

* Romantic love
* Parental love for children
* Blood-sibling love
* Companionate/BFF/found-family love in a siblingly manner between people who aren't related by blood
* People's love for their City
* The City's love for its people
* Love of abstract ideals, like freedom, equality, or doing the right thing

Some plain, carnal lust may also make an appearance; we'll see.

#WritersCoffeeClub day 11: If you could banish one trope for a century, which would you choose?

Women in Refrigerators. I'd like to see writers forced to come up with other ways to motivate their (male) characters.

I nearly chose Forced Pregnancy, because I *HATE* that one, but I think WIR is more prevalent, and banishing it would have a greater effect on the next century's stories. (Sexy Lamp was another close runner-up: give us more fully-featured female characters!)

Encouragement that I'd give any writers, then, would simply be: Don't write what you think you're "supposed to", or what you think will sell. Write what *you want*, write as often and as genuinely as you can. 2/2

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#WritersCoffeeClub day 10: What encouragement would you give writers younger than yourself?

Not sure why it needs to be ones younger than myself. Is that supposed to indicate ones who are "less experienced"? Because if so, it's hard to even *find* writers less experienced than myself. I'm a beginner. 1/2

#WritersCoffeeClub day 9: What incorrect assumptions might a reader make about you?

That I still live in San Francisco.

I also wish there were more diversity and competition in both publishing houses and in distribution channels. (I.e., I wish the Big Four and Amazon didn't have such a chokehold on the industry.) 3/3

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…of people trying to change their own writing styles in a (probably futile) attempt to pre-empt such accusations.

So "AI" is having bad effects even on people who don't use it. That really sucks.

(For the record, I recommend people just keep writing like themselves, em dashes and all. People who will jump on such basic stylistic standards and yell, "AI!" are fools, and there's no need to distort your writing just to cater to fools.) 2/3

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#WritersCoffeeClub day 8: What about the current writing milieu do you wish were different?

Well, obviously, I wish "AI" weren't a thing. I could go on at great length about that, but I'll try to keep it short by just saying that "AI writing" (people passing off computer-generated text as their own) isn't the only problem; there's also the trend of people accusing actual, human-written text of being "AI"-generated, and the follow-on problem… 1/3

#WritersCoffeeClub day 7: How much does your writing occupy your thoughts away from the keyboard?

A fair amount. It's not all-consuming (even leaving aside things like work (which, actually, might not count as "away from the keyboard", since my job is web development 🤔)), but it's one among a group of common things for me to think about.

#WritersCoffeeClub day 6: Do you write daily? Why or why not?

I try to, yes. Three main reasons:

1️⃣ Building a habit is good. That doesn't have to be daily; "M-W-F" or weekly, or whatever, would also work fine. But...
2️⃣ If I don't write it, it'll never get done. I'm acutely aware of time passing me by. I want it *done*, before anything happens.
3️⃣ If I skip a day, I get a nasty break in my progress graph lines. I see that gap for the next two months, until it scrolls off. And it *irks* me. 😅

#WritersCoffeeClub day 5: How much should a writer read?

Enough to have a good understanding of what's going on in their genre(s), and enough outside it/them to not be canalized, and then maybe just a bit more for good measure. Also, enough to keep them engaged with reading, and for their own enjoyment.

Yes, that's purposely a very vague amount.

#WritersCoffeeClub day 4: How do you handle nudity or sex in your writing? Subtly, graphically, not at all?

Neither one has come up yet. Either or both might, eventually, and in that case, I'm pretty sure I'll just go with "what would make a stronger story?"