It’s hard to believe how quickly the month has gone by. Looking back, I am not quite sure where it all went. It feels, as the days get longer, the time races by faster— though that can’t be right. Realistically, I know we are just outside more, therefore, we cram a bunch of things to do in one day and then find ourselves overstretched with obligations we build behind ideals we formed when we longed for warmer weather.
For us, my son had to slow down on his Jiujitsu, though we still go twice a week, and he picked up baseball once more. We started planting our garden, which is important because we don’t have much of a window to accomplish gardening in this state. Usually the last week of May, any earlier and frost will kill it off, any later and you won’t have anything to enjoy in the summer. It’s a tough timeline to nail just right. Especially when you are busy with other family obligations like baseball, jiujitsu, Parish activities, end of the year orchestra concerts, Mother’s Day, the end of Eastertide, and the catapult into The Octave of Pentecost. It is a very busy season. My wife keeps calling it “Maycember”—which I have also recently heard on Hallow’s “Detachment Series”. The phrase lands pretty well. It is a major busy season with the end of school, and all the things I just mentioned; it could very well feel like Christmas season. It makes the Detachment series that much more intriguing.
Here we are, just looking for a slow down. I can’t wait for June, where we can rest in the back yard and enjoy the fruits of the Spring planting season.
What I’m Reading
If you are familiar with how I have these structured, I usually have something about what I have read, as in the past tense, to encourage others to read. However, I want to give you a little more into what I am currently reading. Not everything has been read and re-shelved. This is what I am reading, considering, and actively working on.
Please note: The fiction I am reading are short stories that supplement the main books I am reading. I may have talked about it before, but this is something of a “Personal Curriculum”. That term has become fairly popular recently, it is a learning method that removes the traditional education, but is fulfilling in other ways. If you are interested in the concept of “Personal Curriculums” you may want to check out my friend, Mariella Hunt. She mentions how Marilyn Monroe had some form of this concept, along with Abraham Lincoln, in her latest piece about Marilyn Monroe:
You can also check out other sources about how to set up your own “Personal Curriculum”, you can read April Edward’s advice on the concept here:
The following books and stories belong to my own “Personal Curriculum” which is covering the concept of writing. Though I have been writing for years, I want to become a better writer. I hope that with more personal studying and exercising the writer’s mind, I may bring better things for my readers to enjoy. This is especially true as I am currently writing a novel.
Steering the Craft by: Ursula K. Le Guin
When I was in college reading the mandatory reading list for my Fiction Writing class, or my English Classes, some of the best books were the books about the writing craft as a whole. We are talking, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, or Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. They are tools that every writer, in my opinion, should have in their back pocket. Regardless of what genre you are writing, be it fiction or academic. One of my favorite books reading was Bird by Bird. Lamott has a great way of defusing the ticking time bomb your brain becomes while staring at a blank page, waiting for your great masterpiece to come along.
Because of this experience, I want to continue building my own curriculum and keep studying the craft of writing— not just because I am writing my novel, but because it is important to find topics you enjoy and learn all you can from different people, genres, times, and lives.
Steering the Craft is right up there in some of the greatest craft books. What I am thoroughly enjoying is the writing exercises she has throughout. It gives me a moment to pause what ever project I am working on in, to reset my mind and build the concepts and understand what works and doesn’t work.
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
Not any relation, that I know of. If he is, then I am in for a treat. His style is spot on. Another one of those craft books that helps get through the blank page and build an entire world ready for print. This is another one of those books I am reading in my own self-built personal curriculum. I am calling this curriculum “Personal Masters in Writing”. I may not get a formal paper with my name on it to land the best Journalism job ever, but I will have the basis and understanding of writing and storytelling. I hope as I get through these books, you see an improvement in my writing style.
Writing Fiction by: Janet Burroway
Digging into this to cover the concepts I need to finish my novel in progress. I will be writing my novel in conjunction with reading Writing Fiction, to give my story more depth. It’s always good to learn from the masters on building depth and meaning in our writing.
Supplemental Reading:
These short stories listed here are supplemental to the personal curriculum I have built for myself in my “Creative Writing Degreeless Master’s”. Some you may notice are Catholic in nature or have Catholic undertones, such as the Flannery O’Connor story. I want to ensure my own personal curriculum gives me things to think about within the ecclesiastical sense.
Girl by: Jamaica Kincaid
Sticks by George Saunders
Hills Like White Elephants by: Ernest Hemingway
Shiloh by: Bobbie Ann Mason
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
The Dead by: James Joyce
Beginners by: Raymond Carver
What We talk About When We Talk About Love by: Carver / Lish
Bullet in the Brain by: Tobias Wolff
Faith and Culture
Instead of a Bible Scripture or Catechism of the Month. I think I would like to discuss the latest Encyclical; published this month on May 25th.
As an IT professional, I find this Encyclical intriguing. It covers a large portion of what my life consists of, as a writer I don’t like how AI has removed the ability for people to tell a story. I don’t like how LLM’s are using our story telling capabilities to write stories for people who aren’t putting in the work. On the other hand, as an IT professional I use AI to work on code with me and help me learn concepts quickly. So, what does the Pope have to say about this pivotal time in our society?
Quite a bit, actually, and not really anything definitive. Bottom line, I think what we need to remember when it comes to AI or ANY technological advances. We have an obligation to ensure the technology doesn’t interfere with human dignity. We didn’t do so great with the advancement of nuclear energy. What we found to be useful for producing energy has also been used to divide the world further. It has been used in destruction of life, and it continues to be used as a threat to other countries.
This encyclical is a call for all Catholics, Lay and clergy to rise above the machines and remember our calling to Christ. One thing a computer can never truly understand. We are not products with flaws that need to be debugged—we are humans with lived experience.
Lived experience has been hijacked by the age of digitalization. I actually was reading a fellow substacker about this very concept recently when it comes to social media and the effects deleting our social media accounts have on our psyche.
Imagine if we use social media for the original intended purpose, we wouldn’t have doom scrolling and we wouldn’t have addiction to the dopamine that spikes for the use.
I am looking forward to reading Pope Leo’s Encyclical in a little more depth and understand how it affects me most personally. As an IT professional, I have seen jobs go away because of automation. Using AI must be used in a responsible manner as any technology should be used in order to promote human experience—not detract from it. We don’t have to go too far to see how technology is changing our job market. Go into Mcdonalds and order your food, you will likely only see one person by the counter, while there are three to four computers with touchscreens directing you to them to place your order. Technology has helped work people out of a job and it will continue to do so in my career— specifically AI.
As a writer, I have seen poorly written pieces take off, while they have been written entirely by AI. This disheartening trend is not likely to stop. I equate the AI boom in the writing and publishing industry to the popularization of such commercialized books by V.C Andrews. You know the ones, they are somewhat the same story masked by character name changes. My mom used to read them when I was a kid. Though the process is low tech, it is still a form of technology using the template writing method.
It’s smart in a lot of ways, to mass produce as many stories you can in a rush, or for what I do with these Compline Quill articles. I have a general template designed for these so that I have an idea of where I should start and where I should end. The only difference is, the meat and potatoes changes—unlike the regurgitated work by V.C Andrews.
As technology continues to get smarter, growing rapidly around the world, building more connections than could have ever happened a decade ago;
we need to learn from our past about future technology. How Social media took our own personal cognitive capabilities is a prime example of what is likely to occur with AI. I pray we still use it as a tool and not as a replacement for something else that would otherwise have us more present in our friends and families lives.
Past Articles
Behold, Your Mother.
In the second grade, I learned my four-year-old cousin had died. I was too young to really understand what leukemia was. I remember having to wear a mask during her treatment. I remember her angelic smile, even though she had lost her blonde hair. It didn’t really hit me until late that night, being kept awake by Happy, my hamster running on his wheel in the glass tank next to my bed. The realization hit me in the face… if Emily could die, so could Happy. I didn’t want him to die. I didn’t want to die.
Incomplete Novenas
Kids off to school. Work call in the car. Protein shake on the go. Mid-afternoon crash calls for an energy drink or coffee. Coffee. Definitely coffee. New tasking coming down the pipeline. Call home on the drive. Meet family at the gym. Eat dinner at home. Tuck the kids in bed. Crawl into bed and turn out the light.
Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Amen.