Literary First Drafts: Me vs. ChatGPT
Who’s better at generating an essay first draft? ChatGPT or me? I considered this on my drive to work as I was dictating notes into my phone for a first draft. So I invented an experiment: write my first draft as I normally would, then, feed the same dictated notes into ChatGPT and ask it to write a first draft of the same word count.
On a trip to Arizona to see my writer friend and essay expert, Windy Lynn Harris, we went to a coffee shop and set a timer. We’d write for one hour. When the time was up, I had a nearly 900-word first draft. This is presented below, unedited save for a few redacted lines to protect some innocent(ish) eighth graders I know. Then, I turned to ChatGPT for its first draft, which is also below. My instruction: “Write a 900-word essay with these notes…”
Before I get into what I learned, I have a few words about first drafts. Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts,” and I’m letting you read mine, which makes me cringe, but I’m staying true to the authenticity of my experiment. So please consider this draft as I do — one step up from notes — base material. End of caveat.
My fear as I entered this experiment: what if ChatGPT’s first draft is as good as my final draft? The results were fascinating. They were also a relief. At least for now, I’m not worried about the robots overtaking literary work. Here’s what I learned through this experiment:
1. ChatGPT is fast, confident and grammatically correct. It took me an hour to write my first draft. ChatGPT did it in under 10 seconds. That kind of speed and accuracy communicate confidence. But one should heed the warning on ChatGPT’s opening page: “May occasionally generate incorrect information.” Confidence and competence are not synonyms.
2. ChatGPT is good at formulaic writing. A business proposal, a press release (PR is my day job), and probably a news story. ChatGPT’s first draft of my essay followed a formula as well: state your hypothesis up front, build up your argument/theme, restate it at the end with a new perspective. Creative writing formats don’t seem to be its thing…yet. I asked it to rewrite the draft as a lyrical essay, which follows below as well. It rearranged the essay into stanzas and rhymed the words (another formula). As far as poems go, I hate it, but I’m also impressed that it found a way to rhyme those words into a poem in the time it took me to take a sip of water.
3. ChatGPT writes tight sentences. Whereas mine sometimes rambled as I worked toward my point, some of ChatGPT’s got there quicker. I was tempted to lift a few. My favorite tool for this in real life is the Hemingway app and I’m going to keep using it because I get a weird satisfaction from sharpening my words and seeing my readability score improve.
4. ChatGPT doesn’t reflect my voice well. I’m betting that if I spent time feeding ChatGPT examples of my work it would get better at this, but in this first draft, it didn’t even though my notes are in my voice. It used the word “jolly,” which isn’t one I’d have chosen here (or maybe ever). And the sentences sound more neutral. You can see this reflected in the first paragraphs.
Mine: “Matthew said that one of his meditation mantras is “embodied contentment.” He is substituting for the Dharma in Daily Life meditation this morning. I’m exhausted. I’m frazzled. I can’t focus. Where is my breath? My back hurts. I should go get a heat pack. I need to put ice melt down. Maybe I should take a nap. I can’t get out of my thoughts and into my body. I’m meditating?”
ChatGPT’s: “Embodied contentment is a state of being in which one is able to find contentment and peace within their body, amidst the chaos and stress of everyday life. This morning, as I listened to my meditation teacher speak about embodied contentment, I found myself struggling to settle into the idea. My morning had been filled with chaos and stress, from shoveling snow and racing to get my daughter to the bus stop, to worrying about my overdue car inspection.”
5. ChatGPT fails at understanding some of my intent. For example, in its draft, it wrote, “He laughed at the absurdity of it all, but still took my money.” My intent had nothing to do with this man accepting payment for something he probably shouldn’t. It had to do with a shared sense of absurdity regarding the state’s requirement that electric cars be inspected for emissions.
Would I use ChatGPT to generate first drafts of things at work? Absolutely. RFP responses, press releases, etc. There are enormous time savings to be found in generating first drafts of formulaic content. I also see interesting benefits from having ChatGPT write content in different voices and tones so you can do some A/B testing. It doesn’t replace writers though. We’ll need them to make the words are good, to fact check, to provide context, and to ensure there’s a human connection.
Would I use ChatGPT for literary writing? Never. Even if the items above were better with time, and they will be, I’m going to keep tapping out my own words. Writing is how I understand the world and my experience of it. It requires me to surrender to the page — to lose track of where I end and it begins. The first draft, while technically the “worst draft” is where that feeling is strongest. Words carry the energy of their authors.
And now to the show and tell –
My essay first draft (written in a coffee shop in Arizona using a timer set for one hour):
Matthew said that one of his meditation mantras is “embodied contentment.” He is substituting for the Dharma in Daily Life meditation this morning. I’m exhausted. I’m frazzled. I can’t focus. Where is my breath? My back hurts. I should go get a heat pack. I need to put ice melt down. Maybe I should take a nap. I can’t get out of my thoughts and into my body. I’m meditating?
Matthew is saying that embodied contentment isn’t only for things we like. If we accept things we don’t like, we can find it too, because we’re not struggling against what is. He uses the word “harmony” and I remember that my intention for this new year, which only happened a few weeks ago, is to be in rhythm with the universe. Exert myself to the point of it being helpful, and let go when it’s out of my control. Accept what is.
I’m working to accept that my mind is busy, but I’m trying to calm it down anyway. Because I’m single parenting this week while my husband is in Mexico. When my daughter, Izzy, left to catch the bus for middle school this morning I’d raced into the shower so I could take my younger child to elementary school. I had 20 minutes. When I got out, I saw a text waiting on my phone, while I’d placed on the sink for this purpose.
Izzy: The bus never came.
I want to tell her to walk, or to come get her bike, but over breakfast, she’d told me about a huge spat some of her friends got into on SnapChat last night after I’d gone to bed. [removed content]. I can’t leave Izzy out in the cold on a morning like this. So I throw on some clothes and then a hat over my wet hair and go to rescue her. As she steps out of the car, she wonders if her friends will get called down to the guidance counselor’s office.
At home, I notice that I’ve scheduled time to get my car’s inspection sticker. Sigh, I’m not in the mood, but I figure the morning is already chaos. Let’s just do this too. My renewal is months late, according to the email from the RMV. Unlike previous years, I actually knew my sticker had expired and waited anyway. I was busy. So busy. Plus, it had been the holidays, but also, my car is electric. What emissions are there to check?
At the Gulf station the attendant says the wait is 45 minutes. “Oh I can come back later. No problem,” I tell him, and then remember to smile.
He looks at the list of names in the lined notebook he has on the counter. He scrunches up his face, thinks and then says, “Okay, how about 30 minutes? One of the people before you won’t be back for two hours so I can do yours first”
Are we haggling? “Are you sure? I mean, that would be great. Deal. Thank you!” I take a seat in the plastic chair next to the cash register to wait.
Twenty minutes later, the owner comes in from the shop. I remember him from last year when I was also late. He’d been amused that I had to get my electric car inspected then. It took him five minutes and when I commented on his speed he’d said, “Ha! There’s nothing to check!” Then he wanted to know how many miles I got on a charge and if the pickup was fast. “That’s a nice car!” he’d said, smiling, like we were on in on a secret joke. His smile said that the government is silly. And that he’s a man who appreciates cars. He likes to understand them. Does he worry that he’ll go out of business when they all go electric? I can’t imagine it looking at this man, fully engaged in the thing before him, which is talking to me about my electric car.
Now, he’s standing next to me pointing to my car that he’s pulled right up to the door. He swings his arm out in front of him and toward my car like he’s introducing it to me. “Here’s your laptop!” His eyes twinkle. I tell him that tune-ups are mostly the car dealership delivering software updates to my car. He laughs.
I sit down in my car, think about this man, and two words rise up: embodied contentment.
ChatGPT’s First Draft, using this instruction: “Write a 900-word essay with these notes [pasted notes].”
Embodied contentment is a state of being in which one is able to find contentment and peace within their body, amidst the chaos and stress of everyday life. This morning, as I listened to my meditation teacher speak about embodied contentment, I found myself struggling to settle into the idea. My morning had been filled with chaos and stress, from shoveling snow and racing to get my daughter to the bus stop, to worrying about my overdue car inspection.
The snow from the night before had left a couple inches on the ground, and as I shoveled the steps on the sidewalk, I couldn’t help but think about the driveway and tracks my car had left the day before, now turned to ice. As a single parent for the weekend and beginning of the week, I hoped the snow would melt before my husband got home to notice.
As I got ready for the day, my older daughter Izzy went to catch the school bus. I jumped in the shower, hoping to have time to dry my hair before I had to take my younger child to school. But halfway through my shower, Clara came in to let me know that the bus hadn’t come for Izzy. I saw that I had missed a call from her 8 minutes earlier and raced out, with wet hair in a bun and a hat on, to drive her to school.
Izzy had been worried about missing the bus because of an incident on Snapchat with one of her friends the night before. [removed content]
After dropping off my second child at school, I sat down for my meditation practice. My teacher, Matthew, spoke about embodied contentment as one of his “dharma shortcuts,” something that can be useful for a period of time, but eventually needs to be replaced. Intellectually, this made sense to me, but in the moment, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of being harried and wondering how I could possibly embody contentment.
As the day went on, I had to go get my car inspection sticker renewed. I was three months late, and this year the RMV started sending messages to let me know it was overdue. While it should have been helpful, it only made me feel scolded. Unlike previous years, I actually knew my sticker was expired.
At the gas station where I go to get my car inspected, the owner seemed to do it because he loved cars. The attendant told me it would take 45 minutes, but I said I could come back later. He then said he could do it in 30 minutes. I agreed and 20 minutes later, the owner came out. I remembered him from last year when I was also late on my inspection. He had been very interested in my electric car, asking about the miles I got on a charge and how it drove. He had even remarked last year that it seemed silly that I had to get it inspected because there was nothing to inspect. He laughed at the absurdity of it all, but still took my money.
This time when he came back, he was still the jolly person I remembered. He pulled my car up to the front of the gas station, walked inside, and with his arms out, said, “here’s your laptop!” A reference to the fact that my car was essentially just a computer. As I sat in my car, I smiled and thought, embodied contentment. In that moment, I realized that even amidst the chaos and stress of the day, there were moments of joy and contentment to be found. It may not be a permanent state, but
ChatGPT’s Lyrical Version, using this instruction: “Write this as a lyrical essay”
This morning, as I sat in silence,
My mind awhirl with chaos and violence,
The meditation teacher spoke of “embodied contentment,”
But try as I might, I couldn’t find the moment.
_
It had snowed the night before,
Just a dusting, nothing to deplore,
But as I shoveled the steps and sidewalks,
My mind wandered to all the tasks ahead, my heart a heavy load.
_
Single parenting for the weekend,
I hoped the snow would melt before my husband’s return,
And as my eldest daughter set off for school,
I jumped in the shower, a simple rule.
_
But fate had other plans, it would seem,
As my younger child interrupted my morning dream,
To tell me that her sister was still at the bus stop,
And my phone showed a missed call, my heart began to hop.
_
I raced out, hair still wet,
And drove her to school, my heart a fret,
For she had been worried, as we’d talked the night before,
About a friend who’d been bullied on social media, my heart a sore.
_
Back home, I sat for my morning meditation,
But my mind was far from still, my frustration,
My teacher spoke of “embodied contentment,”
But try as I might, I couldn’t find the moment.
_
With a car inspection overdue,
And a feeling of being scolded, my mood askew,
I set off to the garage, my heart heavy with dread,
But as I arrived, a surprise lay ahead.
_
The owner, a jolly man with a love for cars,
Promised to have it done in thirty minutes, not in hours,
And as I waited, memories flooded my mind,
Of a previous inspection, when he’d been kind.
_
He’d laughed and said it was silly, this inspection,
But taken my money all the same, without objection,
And as he emerged, with arms out wide,
He presented my car, “Here’s your laptop!” he cried.
_
And in that moment, I felt a smile,
As I realized, this was embodied contentment all the while,
Not in perfection or the absence of strife,
But in finding joy in the present, in the midst of the life.
