Brandiwyn🎶 v.2026, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
La Bene Vita
The (Tentative*) Topic Rotation Self Sundays: Personal blogging days about family, leisure, work, and health. May be boring.
Music Mondays: Commentary, articles, and links highlighting music, theory, and ed topics.
Writing Wednesdays: Discussion on the art and business of writing. "Invalid Item" Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.
Friday Reviews**: Every Friday, I will review a minimum of one short story on WDC.
* I reserve the right to change the topic of the day at any time, at least until I acquire a million followers and gain official "influencer" status, at which point I shall be more consistent in order to meet the expectations of my adoring public.
** I can only commit to one review per week. If you would like your short story to be in my reviewing queue, please send me a WDC review request. Checkout my public reviews toget a sense of what to expect.
One possibly issue among asking AI to quantify your verbs for flavor is that it is also trained on the internet, which is the worst of all possible bullies. Whimsy isn't necessarily a good thing to it. AI can be introduced to brain rot by reading twitter but they haven't figured out how to fix it afterward.
I saw a post on Twitter the other day (originally from a few years back) that said, "I'd much rather be 'too sensitive' than whatever the fuck has happened to half of humanity." Sadly, I think of that quote often these days...
Are there any gadgets, tools or toys popular now that might be a more currently relevant metaphor than diving into a pool full of thumbtacks or razor blades
Here are the suggestions. They're so delightful that I just had to share. Feel free to use them (see previous post "Can I Copyright My Work If I Use AI?" for more info.)
Diving into a pool of spam bots. Hitting the 'Like' button on every cringe post from 2012. Having your AirPods die right when the bass drops. Swiping through your entire camera roll in reverse. Stepping on a floor covered in Clickeez/Magna-Tiles. Doing a collab with a rogue Furby. Trying to solve a Rubik's Cube after someone switched the stickers.
I'm eagerly anticipating your 2025 "pool of tacks" updates.
"This second Part of the Copyright Office’s Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) addresses the copyrightability of outputs generated by AI systems. It analyzes the type and level of human contribution sufficient to bring these outputs within the scope of copyright protection in the United States." - United States Copyright Office*
*full document linked at the bottom
I've been using ChatGPT and Google Gemini during the creation of my November novel this year. Examples of my prompts just within the last 24 hours include:
- Can you please propose a gen z / alpha way to say flip or flip out
- How about a Gen z / alpha way to say, that was uncool of her
- how about "preach" or "you're preaching to the choir"
- Does this sentence make sense: It jives with your natural affinity for animals.
- Do Gen z / alpha still use text abbreviations like y instead of why and u instead of you
(is my Gen X showing yet??)
The last two don't worry me at all, because the bot is answering a question, not offering text that I might incorporate into my book. But what about the first three? Are they perfectly fine, toeing the line, or are they clean over it? For example, if I asked Gemini:
Can you recommend a gen z / alpha way to say "I really blew it"
These phrases emphasize the level of the failure, ranging from serious error to complete self-sabotage:
1. The Failure/Loss Focus (Most Common)
These use terminology related to losing or failing, often borrowed from gaming culture.
"I took a massive L." (L stands for 'Loss.') "I just fumbled that so hard." (Fumbled = messed up/dropped the ball, implying self-sabotage.) "I choked." (Classic sports term, meaning to fail under pressure.) "That was a complete fail." (Simple, but still very common.)
2. The Quality/Rating Focus
These use negative quality ratings to describe the mistake itself.
"That was dogwater." (Meaning the execution/result was extremely bad.) "My performance was mid (at best)." (Mid = average/mediocre, implying a disappointing effort.) "I ruined the vibe." (Focuses on the social or environmental fallout of the mistake.)
3. The Self-Deprecating Focus
These express a sense of shame or overwhelming cringe about the error.
"That's big yikes from me." (Yikes = expressing embarrassment, shock, or cringe.) "I'm cringing so hard at myself right now." "I'm about to de-live." (Dramatic exaggeration of wanting to vanish due to embarrassment.)
Recommendation:
The most common and effective phrases that capture "I really blew it" are:
"I took a massive L." (Concise and definitive.)
"I just fumbled that so hard." (Implies responsibility and a critical mistake.)
Does it render my work uncopyrightable if I use the exact phrase "I just fumbled that so hard" in my finished work? What if I just used the word "fumbled"?
I wanted to know, so I looked it up at the US Copyright Office website. Full disclosure: I skimmed the document to find relevant passages, so it's possible I missed something. However, my takeaway was that questions like this would be handled by courts on a case-by-case basis, and overall, the court will likely side in favor of the author. I based my finding on this passage:
“To be sure,” the Court further explained, “the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, ‘no matter how crude, humble or obvious’ it might be.”
Mostly, I just wanted this title as a callback to my previous blog post, but I guess it could foreshadow the plot of my current novel project. If you're worried about spoilers, you could plug your ears and shout, "La, la, laaaaaaaa!" while you read this post. But the truth is, I don't even know what all is going to happen in this novel (see my Notebook for all the havoc my characters are causing), so I can't possibly be revealing too much, here. If I do, I'll be as surprised as you, not to mention, after having the ending ruined for myself, I might quit the project altogether out of sheer boredom.
I do wish there were a more efficient, less tedious way to pluck these ideas out of my head and get them in print. Sprinting via the "Sprint Writers Competition" helps, but it also caused all of my unruly characters, and, inexplicably (j/k, it's entirely explicable: I'm typing faster than my brain can think), seems to reduce my vocabulary back to a toddler lever. Okay, maybe Kindergarten. I may have written [find a better phrase] or [OMG THIS SUCKS WHY AM I WRITING SO MUCH EXPOSITION] more than actual narrative and dialog.
But from a technical, structural perspective, I'm playing with unreliable narrators this year. It's definitely an experiment, because I have six - (points of view? perspectives? I've thought I had those straight for decades, but even Google can't agree with itself anymore, so now I'm questioning everything I ever thought I knew) - six characters whose heads my narrator is in (recounting in 3rd person) during various scenes throughout the story. And they're all unreliable. It's like Gone Girl on steroids: You never know whose truth is the unequivocal, impartial truth.
It's slowing down my word count, but it's fun crafting scenes such that I switch to another character's viewpoint just before possibly revealing something definitive to the reader. Must... leave... them... hanging!!!
Have you ever tried something like this? Do you think it's possible to pull off that many unreliable narrators?
I just stumbled across my 2018 "Dear Me" letter, and this jumped out at me:
"Every year, you pledge to do better, to do more, to be more efficient, to stop wasting time, to complete more tasks on the never-ending list. Every year, you find yourself more and more exhausted."
Hindsight is 20/20 (although my vision isn't and wasn't; I started needing readers 3 years earlier when I turned 40 in 2015.)
Here's what I know now, that I didn't know then: I had Parkinson's Disease. My first symptoms appeared in 2015, and I was (mis)diagnosed with Essential Tremor later in 2018. It wasn't until March of 2022 that I finally got the correct diagnosis (PD) and the miracle medication (carbidopa/levodopa) that gave me my functionality and my give-a-shit back.
I've always been an overachiever. I think I may also be a closet people-pleaser, which you can see in the letter. I think we're all people-pleasers of one type or another. Even narcissists and sociopaths need to convince other people to validate them, whether that's through adoration, vilification or or just to get others doing things for them (see also: minions).
I needed to see this letter today. I started revisiting the database project in 2024, and the website project earlier this year in 2025, and it's been weighing me down that I can't finish either one. This letter reminds me that, it doesn't matter. And I'm doing much better on the things that do matter. My relationships have improved dramatically since 2018.
So, Go Me? But also, more importantly, don't be so hard on yourself. You don't have to please everybody; only the people that matter. And if you're exhausted, listen to your body. You may not have PD, but exhaustion means you need to slow down.
Diving into a pool of spam bots.
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, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.
