Becoming Unscrapeable

I found out this year that all of my books have been scraped by AI without my permission, and I can’t get away from the offensive brainless nonsense.

Every week, another one of my online platforms or programs breathlessly announces that they’re offering AI — except I can’t turn down the offer, so it’s really intrusion without consent.

Clearly, it’s time for poetry.

Become Unscrapeable

They say that one way to know AI has written something is that it uses a lot of dashes.

And I apologize for that – it’s my fault.

AI has eaten all of my books – without permission, without compensation, without even a thank you.

And that’s where all those dashes came from – AI stole them from me.

If you walk through the words of my books, you can float on my dashes – as if they’re hands that grab you as you stage dive into a booky mosh pit – where you’ll be safe.

You’ll never even touch a toe near the descenders.

So safe, so cushiony.

My dashes can carry you on a river of curvy – but ultimately sense-making, I promise – sentences that take sharp turns by relying on straight lines.

And you’ll know they’re mine, because they’ll be em-dashes with spaces on both sides. I make my publishers set them this way because I hate it when the em-dashes touch the words on each side.

My dashes need room! They need space – so that you can breathe through the twisting sentences and find your way on the path.

Maybe you’ll need to jump back to start the sentence again – so you can catch up with the words – and those spaces make it easier to find where you lost your way.

I say you, because I knew where I was going when I wrote it, and the dashes helped me get there.

So you keep using your dashes – don’t give them up because some prat thinks they belong to AI now. AI could never.

You tell them that Karla gifted them to you, writer to writer – and that AI doesn’t know how to use them, or how to break the rules with them.

It only knows how to steal and devour and mimic and pander and hallucinate.

So go forward with your real, imperfect – because you know what perfect is – writing style.

Go forward with your real writing by your real self from your real heart, because you have something real to say that no one else possibly ever could.

And AI could never.