You Look Like You’re Writing A Novel

Short Fiction ~ J.W. Wood 

First Prize, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 21 

They’d been developing these algorithms for decades. The old “You look like you’re writing a letter” expanded to include, “You look like you’re writing a clerihew,” “You look like you’re crafting a sermon”, or what have you. For any form you could think of, your computer gave suggestions: better grammar, corrections, emendations.
The writer started tapping on the keyboard:
Julia O’Brien put down her coffee and gazed at her mobile phone in disgust. What was meant to be a convenience had become an instrument of slavery. Her every utterance stored to be used against her by those with access, from brain-dead marketers to the intelligence services. Nominally free, in fact she was chained to an invisible, all-devouring algorithm.
The writer paused. Patches of his screen populated with dialogue boxes offering hints. These machines were so powerful now they had, if not minds of their own, then binary memories so enormous they operated like minds. He ignored the popped-up hints and kept writing:
Modern life seems little more than slavery, since freedom of expression has been interdicted, monitored via the internet.
After those few lines, the inevitable dialogue box popped up: “You look like you’re writing about the role of technology in society.”
“No shit, Hal,” the writer muttered. He clicked in the corner of the pop-up to remove the message. He placed his fingers back on the keys. But then, another dialogue box:
“Are you aware that other writers such as Dick, Philip K., and Le Guin, Ursula K., have already tackled this theme?”
“Yes I am!” the writer shouted, slapping his mouse down on the trackpad. 
Just as he was about to type, yet more dialogue:
“Risk of repetition is estimated at 93.7%. Do you really want to explore the same theme as other writers of greater ability? Other themes are available. Click here to read more.”
“Greater ability? I’ll give you–”
He stopped in disgust. He stood up, chair falling backwards with a thump. Time for a coffee. He headed for the kitchen.
***
It started forty years ago with the first spell checkers. Around the same time as people started paying to have their work considered by magazines. Back then, debate centred around the legitimacy of self-publishing, the ethics of paying to submit. Then came the grammar and style checkers. Writers became enveloped in a techno-cocoon, then redundant as conformity to moral and social norms came to matter more than truth, beauty or anything else.
In the kitchen, he pressed a button on the espresso machine and watched as it gurgled and blew, doing things to beans he did not understand. As the coffee ran into his cup, the writer wondered how to get round his computer’s trickery. Even without a connection, dialogue boxes advised you splatterpunk and cybercore were most likely to attract readers, that literary work would not sell, and that self-publishing was a great idea. Then it tried to sell you “Self-Publishing Solutions” ™, delivered with lots of smileys and attractive women pursing their lips against a pencil as they gazed out of a sunlit window for inspiration.
The writer drank his coffee, listening to Mozart’s Requiem played by an Austrian orchestra over the internet. As he sipped, he reflected that someone, somewhere had recorded his love of Mozart. That person, or bot, had noted him listening to his internet radio during working hours.
The writer put down his cup and snorted. Even Mozart used technical assistance in the shape of his amanuensis, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who completed the last four sections of the work after the Maestro’s demise. And if Mozart had lived now? He could have sketched some outlines and let an online composition tool do the rest. Or even more likely, a modern-day Count von Walsegg, the man who commissioned the Requiem, would have written it himself using a computer.
***
The writer finished his coffee and went back to the study. He sat down and stared at the words on the screen:
Julia O’Brien put down her coffee and gazed at her mobile in disbelief. What she’d imagined as a tormenter was actually an instrument that enabled her to the point of omnipotence. Now she could record her every utterance and use it to fend off brain-dead marketers or even the secret intelligence services, as if they’d be interested in what she did or said. She was free, but willingly engaged with an invisible, all-enabling machine.
A dialogue box popped up:
“You’ve self-identified this work as a novel. Are you sure it’s not a political treatise? Please be aware of libel and slander legislation – false accusations of corporate malpractice may carry prison terms.”
Shaking his head, the writer pressed a key to delete the message. 
Then another dialogue box:
“For your convenience, we have edited your text for style and grammar. Ready to upgrade? Go Pro with Wordly™: Shakespeare’s power at a keystroke™!”
The strains of Süssmayr’s Sanctus, one of his additions to the Requiem, floated into the study from the kitchen. Known to all as Mozart’s work, this score was not his. These tones, this depth, this genius guaranteed Amadeus immortality – but he was cold in a pauper’s grave when it was written. Today, computers acted as a cyber-Süssmayr for writers and – worse – as an instrument of control.
The writer shut his laptop and reached for his old notebooks. Still half-full of fresh pages – enough to set down what had happened for some better, future time. He fished in his desk for his fountain pen and scratched at the page, watching the ink dry as the pen wrote, its meniscus fading like souring blood. But he no longer knew for whom he was writing, or why.

~

​J.W. Wood is a 2025 nominee for the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the US (nominated by Wildside Press). The author of six books of verse and a thriller, his first collection of short fiction, "Captcha This!" will appear from AN Editions (UK) in March 2025. www.aneditions.com

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