This happened last month.
I was reading a blog post and typed whatever I wanted to say into the comment box and hit publish. Then I freaked out for a moment when I realized that I hadn’t proofread it, nor had I run it through chatGPT to fix the errors my comment would inevitably have.
I went back and read the comment again, and to my relief, it was not poorly written. Of course, had I run it through chatGPT, it would’ve offered some suggestions for improvement, sentence restructuring or something else.
This incident got me thinking of all those times when I was so brave and published without depending on chat GPT. The only proofreading was done by me. There were errors—grammatical, structural, and many more. Sometimes I didn’t know how to correct or even those were errors.
But the more I read and wrote, the more I learned. I got better with practice. Not error free, but better.
That’s how it should be, right?
This dependence on AI is crushing my confidence in my own writing. When I read my older entries, I realize I could write fairly well on my own.
As a result, I’ve been reducing my dependence on AI. And so now, I find it momentous when I spot a mistake in my writing and correct it on my own.
I find it human when I spot a mistake after publishing a piece. We are after all human beings. Imperfect, flawed humans.
Spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are part of how we learn to see them and fix them . They are not wrinkles that need to be ironed out.
This piece is written in response to the three hundred and seventeenth edition of Fiction Monday inspired by the word prompt – WRINKLE hosted by yours truly. Do join in if you have a tale to tell.
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Beyond Scribbles 
I translated a very few of my poems into English by myself in the past, before AI was invented. It was really hard work with lots of online dictionaries (for synonyms, for rhymes, for related words) and, of course, Google Translate, which, at the time, was a disaster. It took a few days to translate one poem. Now, with AI, it takes about an hour.
I’m going to check this comment with Gemini, and I’ll write next the translation, also by Gemini, of an answer to a comment on my blog, where I explain how I use two AIs to translate my poems.
”This is how the hostilities unfold. First, I give the text to Gemini to translate. For haikus, it respects the line lengths, and for rhyming verses, it makes decent translations right from the start. Sometimes it loses the rhythm, and I either point out where it went wrong so it can try again, or I make the adjustments myself. It also has other slip-ups: it fails to understand idioms or adds things for the sake of the meter that alter the meaning of the verses. Occasionally, though quite rarely, it makes outright comical mistakes. For example, it once translated ‘clipe’ (moments) as ‘clips’. After I fix it as best as I can, using dictionaries for rhymes, synonyms, and collocations, I give it back to Gemini to check for any mistakes. Gemini is very sweet; if there are no blatant errors, it agrees with me and praises me, just as it was trained to do.
Then, I move on to the second phase. I show ChatGPT both the original and the translation. It is highly demanding, both regarding the preservation of meaning and ensuring the English sounds natural. However… it enthusiastically destroys the entire meter of the verses, sacrificing it on the altar of a faithful and accurate translation. This is where the real negotiations begin, because neither of us gives up until I find a phrasing that satisfies us both. It can be very frustrating at times because it is right, yet it keeps coming up with suggestion after suggestion, completely ignoring the fact that I keep reminding it about rhythm and rhyme. When I finally hit upon the magic translation and it says it likes it, it feels as if I have ended an actual war.”
I constantly learn from this collaboration with AI, too, and that’s one of the reasons I really enjoy writing for Fiction Monday. The other one is that I find the prompt words you chose very generous with their meaning, and very inspiring.
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I understand how useful AI is in translating the poems, Carmen. My native language is Malayalam. Although I don’t write in Malayalam much, I find chatGPT useful in figuring out the right word I need when I try to write something in my native language. But as you said it’s a lot of back and forth to arrive at the right words.
Thank you for sharing your process with me. It’s enlightening to say the least. Definitely these tool help us learn a lot. 😊
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