Jeremiah Trout and His Writer Friend

I was contacted recently by a reader who found themselves in a peculiar situation. His name is Jeremiah Trout, or at least that’s the name he prefers to go by. After verifying his claims as best I could I decided that his story fit the theme of this blog. He agreed to let me share it with you, and I’m glad.

Jeremiah, like myself, has always wanted to be a writer. However, one of the first things he said to me was, “I fear I don’t possess a creative bone in my body.” I assure you, reader, by the end of this tale you will, as I do, believe very differently.
Mr. Trout’s troubles began when he received an email informing him that a short story he submitted to a reputable online publisher accepted the piece and would be publishing it on their site within the month. The publisher transferred the funds automatically and the rights to the story, unbeknownst to Jeremiah, were no longer his. This is why we should read the terms and services, ladies and gentlemen.
While most writers, myself included, would be thrilled to have a story accepted and would take it as an indicator we were on the right path, Jeremiah became frantic. See, he had only submitted the story as a sort of litmus test of his potential. He never expected it to be accepted let alone bought.
Jeremiah had made the grievous error of submitting a story that was not his. He didn’t commit the sin of full-on plagiarism, but he wrote to the publisher that they could not publish the story because it was not wholly his to sell.
They loved the story or at the very least required something for their deadline and they pushed Jeremiah to inform them of who wrote the story so they could publish it. Jeremiah proceeded to explain that his computer had written it.
“Of course it was written on a computer,” they replied, “We didn’t expect you to have a typewriter in this day and age.”
Jeremiah, in an effort to clear up the matter, insisted, “I afraid you misunderstood me. My computer wrote it… itself.” He went slightly deeper and explained that he had created an artificial intelligence of sorts that wrote short stories automatically. Ending the explanation, he said, “I submitted a few of the half-way decent ones to publishers.”
The publisher scoffed at the description of “half-way decent” and demanded proof of Jeremiah’s creation. Luckily, Jeremiah didn’t send over his software putting all of us aspiring writers out of business and quickly lining the pockets of all those distributing tales of fiction. However, He did send over a few copies of the computer’s earlier works. He sent me the same things when we started our correspondence.
I would say I read them, but that would be a lie. These documents were unreadable. They were only a tad better than an infinite number of monkeys trying to write the complete works of Shakespear. Any first-year computer science major could write a random word generator that had a better plot than these stories.
Despite these early signs of hopelessness Jeremiah persevered. He researched story writing and programming, and he looked for solutions to making a program that might be more creative than him. At first, it was slow progress. He found countless bugs but continued to fix them. After what seemed like endless changes to the neural network he eventually had an artificial intelligence that worked. Mr. Trout’s machine had begun to put together a passable story. Then with some feedback, more computing power, and the ever-valuable asset of time, the computer started to create works that the inventor thought were decent. I’ve read some of these, and I will admit, I had a hard time putting them down, a sentiment I assume the publisher shared.
The publisher was ecstatic once they heard that this nearly endless supply of stories was available. They offered Jeremiah funding to pursue his project further and an open forum to share all of the computer’s tales.
However, the promise of money for the machine was a blow to Jeremiah’s ego. He knew that he would never be able to write with half the talent of the device. When he did sit down to write, like most writers, it took him forever to get started. Moreover, even when he struck a vein inspiration, it would never hold up after a second reading. Trout’s hopes were dashed before he had gotten any traction. This was when he concluded that he didn’t have a single creative bone in his body. Of course, if he were genuinely uncreative, then he wouldn’t be having any of the problems he was facing.
The publisher ran the story despite Trout’s wishes for them to redact it. Since Jeremiah didn’t write the story, they didn’t give him credit as the author. Instead, they gave the machine a pseudonym I’ve forgotten, but they did put an asterisk next to the name and added as a footnote that the near genius and a man ahead of his time, Jeremiah Trout had discovered the author.
Maybe this was a political move in an effort to soothe Jeremiah’s ego and encourage him to sell them more stories. However, there is something to be said for someone who has created such an awe-inspiring program.
I hope one day Jeremiah will start the program back up and spin some fantastic tales for the world to read. At the very least I’ve encouraged him to continue to keep the pen wet and to write even if he feels like everything he makes is garbage. However, after meeting with him and getting a feel for his personality, I am sure he’s already trying his hand at engineering something even more magnificent than a computer that writes short stories.