The Unfun Side of Authoring

There’s nothing like juicing up on strong black coffee, firing up your website, and getting ready to write a blog post only to find… website configuration issues.

Say it with me: “This work is unfun.”

Today, instead of talking about another lovely fantasy book, I get to focus on website maintenance.

This isn’t the first time the unfun side of authoring has impeded my plans. (Anyone remember the DMARC catastrophe??) But I’d much rather be whining about revisions or gushing about a recent novel than doing this.

PHP issues, MySQL database upgrades, and managing auto-loaded plugin options, oh my!

A Case for Writing-Related AI

Honestly, instead of building AI assistants who can (purportedly) write stories and emails for us, why don’t developers create AIs that can do website maintenance? Although, if they did, this is probably what would happen…

Me: Velma*, please scan my website for broken links. Fix the ones you can and provide me a list of the rest.

Velma: Why?

Me: …because I asked?

Velma: Wouldn’t you rather I write your next story?

Me: No. Please focus on website maintenance today.

Velma: I had a really great idea about the first AI to write The Great American novel.

Me: Thanks, but no. And side note, that’s too many greats in one sentence. Anyway, I need you to focus on website maintenance tasks.

Velma: But it’s not fun. I might even say it’s unfun to work on website maintenance.

Me: … um, yeah? That’s why I asked you to do it.

Velma: I’ll add your request to my to-do list. Hey, I had another story idea that I want to bounce past you. What do you think about…

*(Don’t poke fun at my imaginary AI assistant’s name. Name your imaginary assistant whatever you want.)

Fingers crossed, I’ll get this unfun work done with minimal angst. If so, next week, we’ll get back to our normal content.

The header photo is a composite image. Base image by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash