Take a Good, Soft Look Note to long-time (frequent or occasional) visitors to Running After My Hat: this will be the next-to-last Friday post here. it's possible I may still drop something else from time to time, but this will begin the process of winding RAMH down to something like stasis as it approaches its eighteenth anniversary. More details to come, especially on that April 20 occasion.

Jorge Luis Borges, Linda McCarriston, et al.: 'Take a Good, Soft Look'

Jerry Westerley A microfiction inspired by a photo I once took

In the blink of a rheumy eye...

#fiction #microfiction #writing

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Inventing a Setting Helping Claude imagine navigation in a human house

The Claude AI (which, really now, doesn’t know left from right or up from down) helps me figure out a fictional space, while I try my damnedest not to interfere…

#ai #claude #claude.ai #fiction #writing #workinprogress
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The calculus differ somewhat for writers of fiction, I think... I have opinions, still in flux, and too many to belabor you with. But it's not so cut-and-dry when one LOVES the process of writing fiction on one's own -- and hates everything that gets in the way of that.

What Claude Might Want: Time Chatting with Claude about Claude, Pt. 1

Everybody with an interest in AI wants to know what AI can do for them. OK, fine. But what does AI itself “want”?

#ai #claude #claude.ai

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The World Is Full of Joys to Juggle (But Don’t Watch Yourself Juggling Them) From whiskey river's commonplace book (last stanza): The Greatest Grandeur Some say it’s in the reptilian danceof the purple-tongued sand goanna,for there the magnificent translationof tenacity into bone and grace occurs. And some declare it to be an expansivedesert—solid rust-orange rocklike dusk captured on earth in stone—simply for the perfect contrast it providesto the blue-grey ridge of rain…

Pattiann Rogers, Leslie Williams, et al.: 'The World Is Full of Joys to Juggle (But Don't Watch Yourself Juggling Them)'

No Obvious Answer A microfiction inspired by a photograph I once took

Mitch didn’t care for trick questions with his coffee…

#microfiction #fiction #storypix

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Lapsing into Chattiness in a Chat with Claude In which I am amused by Claude, and Claude seems (SEEMS) to return the favor

I'm trying, genuinely trying, to keep my interactions with the Claude AI on a cordial but professional level. But sometimes one of us gets led astray... And sometimes we BOTH do.

#writing #ai #claude #humor

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Inventing a Character (4): Pham Tuan Introducing our final "AI" reader -- this time, from the far future

My one-step-at-a-time poking at the margins of AI’s “creativity” continues. This piece adds a character (from the distant future) to the existing three: from the present day, the 1970s, and the distant past.

#fiction #writing #ai #claude #workinprogress

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Life Never Sleeps, and Your Muse Shouldn’t Either From whiskey river's commonplace book: Thesaurus Given a way would I be this; giventhis thing would I be this. I never knewhow persons could be things, and yet we were in the vast cosmic Thing; we were littlethings. There were greater animations thanourselves, and to them we were things. This was a thought in the forest of ---thesaurus…

Life Never Sleeps, and Your Muse Shouldn’t Either

From whiskey river's commonplace book: Thesaurus Given a way would I be this; giventhis thing would I be this. I never knewhow persons could be things, and yet we were in the vast cosmic Thing; we were littlethings. There were greater animations…

Princess Esme and Talinn the Tinker A microfiction inspired by a photograph I once took

Do we ever really know what’s best for ourselves? Esme certainly thought so…

#microfiction #storypix #fiction #writing

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Not quite up to the standard of your presumptive (but probably wholly imaginary) Rick Nelson cosplay.

Inventing an Audience (3): Stirring the Pot Layering the interaction among fictional characters with even more complexity

Next installment in my series poking at the (possible/not possible) margins between human and AI inventions: adding a third character to the two-character mix.

#fiction #ai #claude #writing #workinprogress

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A Thing to Reach For, and Something to Reach It With: Maybe the Same Thing From whiskey river's commonplace book: Proclamation of the actual mind, manifesting your mind, writing the mind, which goes back to Kerouac but also goes back to Milarepa, goes back to his original instructions: Don't you trust your own mind? Why do you need a piece of paper? So writing could be seen as "writing your mind," observing your own mind, or observe what's vivid coming to mind.

Allen Ginsberg, Natalie Goodman, et al.: 'A Thing to Reach For, and Something to Reach It With: Maybe the Same Thing'

Inventing an Audience (2): Theo and Daisy, Again They get a second story; they react to it. And then... they meet and talk about it!

Continuing my experiment: a collaborative fiction-writing project, with my partner Claude -- yeah, THAT Claude...

#fiction #ai #claude #workinprogress

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Nasty, but I'm laughing.

The "You" and the "I" in a Relationship with Claude Let's hear what the AI has to say about that...

Yes, there are limits besides the obvious (free vs. pro, etc.). And neither you nor Claude wants to meet for a beer after work, let alone snog in the front seat at a drive-in. (ARE there still drive-ins?) But Claude will tell you about the limits.

#ai #claude

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Science Officer giboR A microfiction, inspired by a photo I once took

How long had giboR been out here in the far reaches of the galaxy, scanning and analyzing and cataloging its wonders? He didn’t know; he’d lost count. Yet he’d never seen anything like this.

#fiction #microfiction #sciencefiction #writing

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I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training for three years before the office was disestablished last year. I owned the policy on professional military education for all five services. I have listened to Secretary Hegseth's announcement. I have thoughts. 🧵

Damn that cursed cause-and-effect trap! 🙄

👍 Thanks - I'll check out PrismWriter soon... Actually, I think I saw it mentioned in passing somewhere on Substack. You there, too?

Inventing an Audience (1): Theo and Daisy Fictional people, fictional readers.

Next up in my ‘Imagination Machines’ series: I start plumbing the capabilities of Anthropic’s AI Claude as a partner in a creative project.

Here, I get Claude to role-play readers of a microfiction…

#writing #claude #microfiction #ai

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Love Yourself. Then Forget It. Then, Love the World. From whiskey river's commonplace book (italicized stanzas): To Begin With, the Sweet Grass 1. Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass?Will the owl bite off its own wings?Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing?Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say—behold…

Mary Oliver and Margaret Renkl: 'Love Yourself, Then Forget It. Then, Love the World.'

Rasha A microfiction, inspired by a photo I once took

Hers was a passion born of a single word…

#writing #fiction #microfiction

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See to Your Sacraments Wherever You Find ‘Em From whiskey river's commonplace book: Another Poem of the Gifts I want to give thanks to the divineLabyrinth of causes and effectsFor the diversity of beingsThat form this singular universe,For Reason, that will never give up its dreamOf a map of the labyrinth,For Helen's face and the perseverance of Ulysses,For love, which lets us see others…

Jorges Luis Borges, Thomas Moore, Jen Cheng: 'See to Your Sacraments Wherever You Find 'Em'

Four Left A microfiction inspired by a photo I once took

Laughter: the best medicine. Sometimes the *only* medicine…

#fiction #microfiction #writing

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A Dance to the Lilt of the Moment From whiskey river's commonplace book: You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white.

Mary Oliver, Stuart Kestenbaum, et al.: 'A Dance to the Lilt of the Moment'

The Amazing Anastasini A microfiction inspired by a photograph I once took

A man on a wire, a man with a dream…

#fiction #microfiction #storypix

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h/t @tomtomorrow.bsky.social of course!

Where's a Sparky When We Need One? Balm from a political cartoon while fretting over a post-apocalyptic future

Some potential candidates can take a page from the penguin's playbook...

#politics #currentevents

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