I’ve fallen into a project where I’m making doo-wop fantasy albums inspired by different Diablo/World of Warcraft classes. The first three—demon hunter, warlock, & druid—came to me so easily that it felt like I was hardly doing anything at all. But then I hit a wall with mage…
When you hit a wall creatively, often times, more than half of the problem is just figuring out the nature of that wall.
What are you stuck on? Why here?
Once you know the nature of the wall, it gets a lot easier to find a way around, over, or through.
With my doo-wop fantasy albums, I got stuck because the emotional arcs for the first three albums were so obvious to me that I hadn’t even realized the first step was laying out a character arc with a strong emotional core.
Warlocks are about becoming attached to your demons.
Druids are about finding yourself amidst all your new forms.
And demon hunter… well, that album was about becoming the demon you’ve been hunting.
But mages… for me, they were about dying over and over again until I gave up and switched classes.
I actually have played every class in World of Warcraft to the level cap (as of Dragonflight) and all the way through their class specific plot lines in Legion.
But I’ve spent 20 years loving my warlock best and living with someone who adores his druid. That’s a different level.
Once I figured out the core problem though, I was able to step back from the songs that weren’t working, refocus on planning out the emotional arc for the album, and then start making real progress.
But to do that, I had to give myself credit for all the work I’d already done.
By buying into the propaganda about how working with AI means you aren’t really doing anything at all, I was devaluing the very real work that’s necessary to do these albums well. They don’t just happen. They require my perspective, my opinions, and my feelings to become real.
Claude isn’t going to write a doo-wop fantasy album if I don’t ask it to, and it isn’t going to write a good one if I don’t guide its metaphorical pen.
And if you don’t acknowledge the importance of your own perspective in working with AI, you undercut the ability to do it well.
It’s easy to burn out while working with AI, because it lets you work so fast and so smoothly that you don’t recognize how hard you’re working. Hard work (in affected fields) doesn’t look the same as it used to look.
But that doesn’t mean the human element isn’t essential.
P.S. If you want to check out Doo-Wop Demon Hunter, it basically exists to answer the musical question: what if the experience of playing Diablo 1 was a 60s-style novelty album that took those world mechanics 100% seriously.