So the reason I haven’t posted anything here in a little over a week is because we had a new baby! This one is our second, and he’s our first baby boy.
Unlike the last time, when Mrs. Vasicek went into labor around 7:30 PM and the baby was born in the early hours of the morning, she was scheduled for an induction first thing at 6:00 AM and the baby was born in the early afternoon. MUCH better way of doing things! He actually came out with the first push—the only reason he wasn’t born earlier was because the doctor was stuck in traffic, so we had to wait to start the active part of labor!
This was also our first time having a baby not in the middle of the pandemic, so we got to see the faces of all of our nurses and the doctor too, which was nice (last time, the doctor was practically in a hazmat suit with a face shield). They all got a kick out of the April Fool’s joke we played in 2020, convincing our extended family that we were going to name our daughter “Corona.” Everything went well, and Mrs. Vasicek and Little Buddy were released from the hospital the next day, which was nice.
So our lives have gotten quite a bit crazier, caring for this newborn and adjusting to all of the changes that come with that. My in-laws have been a huge help in making us food and watching our nearly 3 year-old daughter during this time, which has been really great. Still, any semblance of a routine has been shot to pieces, and it’s probably going to take at least a few weeks to recover from that.
Normally, my writing would take a huge hit from this… but I’ve actually been writing more than ever, using ChatGPT and other AI tools to experiment with writing AI-assisted stories. In fact, while I was in the hospital with Mrs. Vasicek, I actually wrote a 6k word fantasy short story during the slower moments. It was kind of funny, because just before Mrs. Vasicek got an epidural, I laughed at something funny that ChatGPT came up with, and she got really mad because there was someone in the room having joy while she was in so much pain. Then she got an epidural, and all was right with the world again.
As of right now, I’ve written five stories in conjunction with ChatGPT. The AI tools are still pretty clumsy at writing fiction, and they’re not masterpieces by any means, but they aren’t terrible either—and it actually takes quite a bit of work to make them not terrible, so it’s not like the AI is doing all of the work. One of these days, maybe I’ll do a blog post sharing some of my methods for writing AI-assisted stories.
I’m also working on the second and third rounds of revisions for Children of the Starry Sea, and it’s coming along nicely. It’s really good that I was able to finish the rough draft and first revision draft before Little Buddy was born, because I would definitely be swamped right now if that wasn’t the case. But these revisions are much easier to do, even in a sleep-deprived state: the second revision draft is all about smoothing out the flow of the narrative and making sure there aren’t any awkward transitions or loose ends, and the final revision draft is about polishing the writing on a sentence level and cutting about 10% of the words. Neither requires a ton of brain space.
So that’s what we’ve been up to out here. It’s going to take a while for things to return to normal, but we’re doing well, the baby is happy, the mom is tired but doing okay, and I’m just happy to be a dad two times over!
Congratulations! 🙂