I spent last night using AI to transcribe hand written documents, lyrics, manuscripts, essays etc using AI. It started off well enough but I quickly discovered that just one word resembling another set the LLM off silently hallucinating the rest of the line/s. I almost missed it. How dangerous!

Happy birthday, John Berger, Pulitzer Prize winning author of ‘G’ and ‘Ways of Seeing’, born 5 November 1926 ‘Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.’ –John Berger #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Martin Cruz Smith, born 3 November 1942. ‘The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.’ –Martin Cruz Smith #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Odysseas Elytis, Nobel Prize–winning Greek poet, born 2 November 1911. ‘You’ll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth.’ – Odysseas Elytis #Poetry #Writers #Books #Greece #NobelPrize #Literature

Happy Birthday, Susanna Clarke, born 1 November 1959. ‘A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing’ –Susanna Clarke #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, John Keats, born 31 October 1795. ‘I want a brighter word than bright.’ –John Keats #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Ezra Pound, celebrated poet and critic, born 30 October 1885 ‘Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.’ –Ezra Pound #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Lee Child, best selling creator of Jack Reacher, born 29 October 1954. ‘It’s a kind of Zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?’ –Lee Child #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Evelyn Waugh, author of Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited and A Handful of Dust, born 28 October 1903 ‘Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgements.’ –Evelyn Waugh #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Sylvia Plath, born 27 October 1932 ‘Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.’ –Sylvia Plath #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate and author, born 26 October 1952. ‘Write for tomorrow, not for today.’ –Andrew Motion #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Anne Tyler, born 25 October 1941. ‘When I’m working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.’ –Anne Tyler #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Amor Towles, born 24 October 1964. ‘Early on in the writing, there is often a sentence that pins down a character for me.’ –Amor Towles #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Michael Crichton, born 23 October 1942. ‘Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten.’ –Michael Crichton #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Doris Lessing, born 22 October 1919. ‘In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.’ –Doris Lessing #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Ursula K. Le Guin, born 21 October 1929. ‘t helps to remember that the goal is not to write a masterpiece or a bestseller. The goal is to be able to look at your story and say, Yes. That’s as good as I can make it.’ –Ursula K. Le Guin #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Kate Mosse, born 20 October 1961. ‘Five minutes of writing a day is better than no minutes.’ –Kate Mosse #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, born 19 October 1946. ‘After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.’ –Philip Pullman #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist and critic, born 18 October 1865. ‘Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.’ –Logan Pearsall Smith #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Arthur Miller, Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist, born 17 October 1915. ‘Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.’ –Arthur Miller #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Oscar Wilde, born 16 October 1854. ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’ –Oscar Wilde #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, P. G. Wodehouse, born 15 October 1881 ‘It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.’ –P. G. Wodehouse #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Dalene Matthee, South African author best known for her Forest Novels, which were set in and around the Knysna forest, born 13 October 1938. ‘One always writes for that one person who knows more than you do.’ –Dalene Matthee #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, NoViolet Bulawayo, born 12 October 1981. ‘It’s your story: act like it and write it on your own terms.’ –NoViolet Bulawayo #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Elmore Leonard, born 11 October 1925. ‘The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.’ –Elmore Leonard #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter and director, born 10 October 1930. ‘Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you … at any time.’ –Harold Pinter #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, Guillermo del Toro, born 9 October 1964. ‘In the end, perfection is just a concept – an impossibility we use to torture ourselves and that contradicts nature.’ –Guillermo del Toro #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy Birthday, R.L. Stine, born 8 October 1943. ‘Before you write, tell your story out loud. Once you’ve told your story, you’ll have a lot less trouble “telling” it to the paper.’ –R.L. Stine #Readers #Writers #Books

Happy birthday, Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List, born 7 October 1935. ‘It’s the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.’ –Thomas Keneally #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit

Happy birthday, Caroline Gordon, award winning novelist and literary critic, born 6 October 1895. ‘A first book often has enough material in it for half a dozen.’ –Caroline Gordon #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting

Happy Birthday, Clive Barker, born 5 October 1952. ‘There’s something very healthy about horror fiction being always a little bit on the outside. It’s the wild-dog genre.’ –Clive Barker #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit #WritingCommunity

Happy birthday Anne Rice, best known for her Vampire Chronicles novels, born 4 October 1941. ‘If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.’ –Anne Rice #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books

Happy birthday, Gore Vidal, author of essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays, born 3 October 1925. ‘Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.’ –Gore Vidal #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky

Happy birthday, Graham Greene, born 2 October 1904. ‘One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.’ –Graham Greene #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit #WritingCommunity

Happy Birthday, Tim O’Brien, writer, born 1 October 1946. ‘Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.’ –Tim O’Brien #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit #WritingCommunity

Happy birthday, Truman Capote, born 30 September 1924. ‘That’s not writing, that’s typing.’ –Truman Capote #Readers #Books #Writers

Happy birthday, Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, born 29 September 1547 ‘Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within.’ —Miguel de Cervantes #BookTok #authorsoftiktok #writertok #writersoftiktok

Happy birthday, Rosario Ferré, writer, poet and essayist, born 28 September 1938 ‘Death is a woman, and for that reason she’s courageous and just, and never makes distinctions between mortals; she’ll crush the ignorant, the arrogant, and the wise alike under her icy foot’ –Rosario Ferré #writers

Happy birthday, Jim Thompson, author and screenwriter, known for his hard-boiled crime fiction, born 27 September 1906. ‘There are 32 ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.’ –Jim Thompson #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #Writers

Happy Birthday, Will Self, born 26 September 1961 ‘I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.’ –Will Self #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit #Writers

Happy birthday, William Faulkner, American writer and Nobel Prize laureate, born 25 September 1897. ‘Probably any story that can’t be told in one sentence or at least one paragraph is not worth writing.’ –William Faulkner #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit

Happy birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born 24 September 1896. ‘Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.’ —F. Scott Fitzgerald #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit #WritingCommunity

Happy Birthday, Wesley Chu, New York Times bestselling science fiction author, born 23 September 1976. ‘Set aside time to write and guard those precious minutes like fucking Smaug sitting on top of his piles of gold.’ –Wesley Chu #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #writers

Happy birthday, Fay Weldon, author, essayist and playwright, born 22 September 1931. ‘Novelists… fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.’ —Fay Weldon #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting #BlueskyLit

Happy Birthday, Stephen King, born 21 September 1947. ‘Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.’ –Stephen King #Writers #books

Happy Birthday, George R. R. Martin, born 20 September 1948. ‘Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.’ —George R. R. Martin #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting

Happy Birthday, William Golding, Booker and Nobel Prize winning author, born 19 September 1911 ‘Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.’ —William Golding #readers #writers

Happy birthday, Samuel Johnson, English poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer, born 18 September 1709 ‘I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read’ —Samuel Johnson #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting

Happy birthday, Ken Kesey, author of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, born 17 September 1935. ‘Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.’ —Ken Kesey #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #Writers

Happy birthday, Julia Donaldson, children’s author and creator of the Gruffalo, born 16 September 1948. ‘The hard part for me is not getting the idea, it is turning it into a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.’ —Julia Donaldson #Readers #BlueSkyBooks #Books #WritersOfBlueSky #SkyWriting