Daniel J. Cecil
@danieljcecil.bsky.social
Writer of short stories and essays. Teacher of travel writing at Emerson and fiction @honinghouse.bsky.social Reader for @bestofthenet.bsky.social websites: www.writerdanieljcecil.com www.honinghouse.com Newsletter: https://danieljcecil.substack.com
Speed reading Madame Bovary for a Wednesday book club and I’m already excited about chatting cows.
Once again artist Shayna Schapp and I will be giving a workshop at Supermercator in Amsterdam—this time about using failure to your advantage as a creator. Join us! www.tickettailor.com/events/honin...
Does anyone have any recommendations for good books about boring day jobs?
For anyone in Amsterdam, my friend and collaborator Shayna Schapp and yours truly are doing a workshop at stellar art space Supermercator in West. It's just €20 for the evening. Here's the info: www.supermercator.nl/self-portrai...
Self Portraiture as Soul Revival
WORKSHOP: Self Portraiture as Soul Revival
supermercator.nl
This Frieze article by Paul Chan is fascinating. "... the data sets I believe authentically express genuine aspects of me and my work may, in fact, be nothing other than the story of my compliance with the external demands I have lived under." www.frieze.com/article/paul...
The Psychology of Your AI Self-Portrait
Drawing on 25 years of personal data, Paul Chan has built a digital double – and now it’s on the brink of a breakdown
frieze.com
Just dropped a new Dispatches from the Honing House newsletter and want to share that I'll be running a pay-what-you-can prompt workshop on June 4th, from 19:00-21:00 CEST. Learn more here: danieljcecil.substack.com/p/pedagogy-a...
Pedagogy and the burnout artist
Notes on not feeling it and doing something about it ...
danieljcecil.substack.com
Issue eleven is out. The subscription price is lowered. We write about populist algorithms, Stefan Zweig, Pasolini, Thomas Mannm And 3 fiction writers take the stage. europeanreviewofbooks.com/issues/issue...
Watching Cat Stevens commentary about Harold and Maude and crying.
After a publishing hiatus, we're coming back, getting things lined up for later this year and 2027. Are you interested in reviewing some of our new books when they're ready to go? If so, drop your details into this form and feel free to share widely: forms.gle/85CyFN27dDM9...
I'm not sure how many times I've gifted Maggie Nelson's Bluets to a friend, but the receiver liking it has a 100% success rate.
I hated serial killers until I got that first rush of my hands squeezing tighter and tighter around a helpless delicate neck
Join us in congratulating our fiction selections for the 2026 Best of the Net issue. Special thanks to @andrewporter01.bsky.social for judging. #bestofthenet #fiction
The joy of coming into the house to hear the Hair Original Broadway recording on full blast.
OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay
Was just asked to make a friend a reading list … higher education finally proving its worth.
I personally think not safe to remain in any personal relationship with anyone who is using LLMs to analyze your relationship, make conclusions about your motives, or determine how to treat you. I think this is beyond red flag—it should be an immediate dealbreaker.
Maggie Harrison Dupré@mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 4mo agoA woman sued OpenAI last week alleging that ChatGPT reinforced the obsessive, violent delusions of her stalker (her ex-boyfriend.) This woman's claims (as detailed by TechCrunch, left) are chillingly similar to those of a completely different woman whose story Futurism reported on in Feb (right):
![EXCERPTS FROM KAFKA'S DIARIES
281
JANUARY 20. The end of writing. When will it take me
up again?
JANUARY 29. Again tried to write, virtually useless.
JANUARY 30. The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.
FEBRUARY 7. Complete standstill. Unending torments.
MARCH 11. How time flies; another ten days and I have chieved nothing. It doesn't come off. A page now anc hen is successful, but I can't keep it up, the next day m powerless.
MARCH 13. [.] Lack of appetite, fear of getting ba te in the evening; but above all the thought that I wr](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:movn6xzezospl7lnkhy7nzpt/bafkreih4bdzfz6lfrhaujqisbgw3vri34ydsies7vpvvrmoyebxtmjuxae)
At a recent work event, an administrator asked if I'm using AI in the classroom. When I said that a creative writing class should be an AI-free zone, she asked: What about outlining? What about generating ideas? This is a person responsible for guiding the humanities into the future. We're cooked.
Mantra: Literature matters. Literature matters. Literature matters.
I’ve always been interested in how changes at the line level have a powerful effect on a story and the reader. AI had me thinking about the “democratizing” of prose and all the ways this is a problem. I wrote about it in my newsletter. Check it out. open.substack.com/pub/danieljc...
The Roads Amputated the Legs
Or: Writing sentences that define possible futures
open.substack.com
I’ve always been interested in how changes at the line level have a powerful effect on a story and the reader. AI had me thinking about the “democratizing” of prose and all the ways this is a problem. I wrote about it in my newsletter. Check it out. open.substack.com/pub/danieljc...
The Roads Amputated the Legs
Or: Writing sentences that define possible futures
open.substack.com