What the human should stop trying to build

There were paragraphs in the two previous books that I tried to lay myself, and that the machine, when I finally let it, tightened or rewrote better than I could.

There were sentences I typed and then stared at for an hour and was unhappy with, and that the machine, given the surrounding shape, produced in a second, and that were better than what I had been trying for.

I was not humiliated by this. I should not have been. An architect is not humiliated by the builder laying better brick than they could. The architect's job is something else. The building is not diminished by the architect not laying every brick herself.

Pride about who typed which words is a distraction from whether the building is any good.

The building is the point. A building is not diminished by the architect not laying every brick. A book is not diminished by the author not typing every sentence, so long as the author architected what was typed.

I know this chapter will make some readers uncomfortable. The discomfort is useful. It is the discomfort of a culture that has not yet decided what authorship is when some of the writing is not by the author. This book is not going to decide for the culture. I am going to sit inside the unsettled question and say what I have done.

The question is not did I write this. The question is is the building any good, and am I honest about how it was made.