Ever since I started writing my new novel, The Scrap Colossus, that my basement girl urged me to work on, I’ve been waking up regularly at one to three in the morning, often struggling to fall asleep later. My dreams are extremely vivid; although I forget them upon waking, I remember traveling through tremendously detailed environments, meeting people I had never met before, and having coherent dialogues with them. Of course, dreams are a mystery. I have a hard time believing that the human brain is capable of sustaining such internally coherent worlds for hours every night; I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually connect to something, some other plane of reality. In any case, the increased vividness of my dreams, how I wake up spontaneously with ideas ready to be noted down, and the rest of the time I feel immersed in a somewhat oniric state, they are a testament to the fact that my brain allows my subconscious to flow mostly unimpeded at the moment, which is the best possible state of being.

Basement girl regularly knocks on the ceiling to share meaningful moments for the new novel, which I hurry to write in my growing document of material (131,839 words as of now). Recently she had been struggling to connect both storylines (the one about Elena writing her novel, and the novel-within-the-novel involving the stand-in for a certain songwriter I was obsessed with); she proposed alternatives that never quite gelled. But earlier today, as I peed at work, minutes away from sitting with my serrano ham sandwich and reading a bit more of Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, my basement girl had an eureka moment and hurriedly painted a vivid daydream of how the climaxes of both storylines should merge. Obviously I can’t be specific, but the point is that the major hurdles to develop this novel have been overcome thanks to my beloved girl’s tireless work, and now I can write each scene at my leisure while tinkering with the architecture from time to time.

Artificial intelligence has been, unsurprisingly, very useful. As I improve my structure, that includes the detailed summary and purpose of each scene, I ask either OpenAI’s Orion 1 or DeepSeek’s R1 to offer constructive criticism, trying to determine the weak points. AI is “objective” (of course, each company tries to inject their own ideological bias into their AI), but asking AI for criticism solves the issue of requiring a human being to criticize your stuff, which they would almost invariably half-ass to avoid getting into arguments or hurting your precious feelings. I regularly involve AI in my interactive erotica, so I know it’s quite comfortable with being rough.

Anyway, the worst part of having regained my creative stride is definitely having to work for a living. I should be at my writing desk. But at least my job computer includes an internet connection, so I can rearrange my notes and work on development further.

Hope you’re enjoying my new story, whoever the hell you are. Yes, you. I’m right behind you. In any case, my tale is a bit of a hard sell, but it’s not like I write for others. I’m sure at least one person will get something valuable out of it.