Who: Janelle Shane

Claim To Fame: Janelle Shane is the creator of the AI humor blog, AIweirdness.com, where she looks at the strange side of artificial intelligence. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED, Popular Science, All Things Considered, and Slate. Her debut, recently released book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How AI Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place uses cartoons and humorous pop-culture experiments to look inside the minds of the algorithms that run our world, making artificial intelligence and machine learning both accessible and entertaining.

Where To Find Janelle: Her Website, Amazon, Twitter

Praise For Janelle: “If you’re terrified that artificial intelligence is going to take over the world, you clearly haven’t asked a computer to write pick-up lines, name pets, or do anything else social or creative. Janelle Shane has, and she’s the perfect tour guide to explain what machine learning can and can’t do–and why it’s already affecting your life. I can’t think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I’ve never had so much fun along the way.” ― Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals

When and where do you like to write? Are you the same-thing-every-day kind of writer or can you write anytime, anywhere?

I write in whatever moments I can find – and the tinier the moment, often the more productive it is. A few moments in a waiting room, or the last minutes before the plane starts boarding, or a bit of lunch break – something about knowing the time is limited sharpens my focus. On weekends I’ll often find a coffee shop where I can get breakfast or lunch too, and write until the music gets too intrusive, or until I’ve absorbed more lattes than I should. Every once in a while (usually under deadline pressure) I can manage a few hours in a row of determined focus.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down to write?

I open the laptop and get going. If I’m at home, I negotiate with my cat over where she will sit while I write (she prefers to curl up across my forearms, but then my keyboard slowly fills with cat hair while my wrists begin to cramp).

What do you do when the writing isn’t coming easy? Do you struggle at all with that dreaded enemy of writing: writer’s block?

I usually have so many things going at once that I can find something that matches my level of focus and motivation. If nothing else, I can sort through lists of neural net-generated stuff.

How did you develop your writing habits? Was there a specific job in your career where you honed in the routine that works best for you?

Writing my PhD thesis was a lesson in curating my writing environment – mostly managing the ideal level of distraction. Alas, I found I was most productive when sitting on a hidden balcony of a university building, which happened to be right at the top of a cliff with a panoramic view of the pacific ocean. It was loud and distracting, but it was exactly the right sort of distraction. I haven’t managed to replicate that. But I have gotten better at identifying what in my writing environment isn’t working, and more creative about making adjustments.

Writers have to be master prioritizers — juggling all sorts of projects and deadlines at the same time. That’s certainly the case for you. Do you have any methods for managing tasks and time to stay productive and not let overwhelm sneak in?

Outlining really helps me prevent huge writing tasks from looking overwhelming. That’s probably my number one productivity trick.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is your first book. Did you find your process differ at all versus how you approach shorter-form writing? What were some of the key lessons you learned that you might apply to the next book project?

I learned a lot about how to keep from being bogged down in details, especially when entire chapters may still be cut. I also learned how very important it is to keep notes and references in a searchable format – still looking for the ideal system on that.

Given your extensive writing and researching on Artificial Intelligence, what should writers be aware of in the way of how AI could potentially disrupt writers and the publishing industry? How can writers harness the power of AI?

Right now AI can craft a sentence, but can’t craft a paragraph, let alone a story. It never gets to the point, or loses the plot. Even when it gets better, it will tend to be pretty cautious, producing writing that you vaguely feel like you’ve read a thousand times. We’re already seeing AI tools that are really helpful in writing certain kinds of hyper-local news articles – like reporting on local sports results or housing prices. We’ll see more AI tools designed for gathering information and making first drafts for other kinds of formulaic articles. But there’s no substitute for human-level writing and editing skills. Writers like Robin Sloan are using AI tools creatively, aiming for glitchy unpredictability, kind of like an improv partner who injects surreal chaos – there’s a lot of possibility here.

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write?

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You was directly inspired in style by Randall Munroe’s book What If? – I was really impressed by how well it worked for people of hugely varying technical backgrounds, and how it managed to be both hilarious and informative.

I also read a lot of science fiction these days. I’ve really been enjoying Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries books and Ann Leckie’s novels – they have terrific nonhuman narrators.

What is your advice to aspiring writers?

One thing I know to be true: write what you want to read.

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