Chris Morris - Writer

02/01/2025

Delighted to kick off 2025 with a place on the latest Writing Magazine contest shortlist. Here's a little excerpt from the piece that earned its place.

Happy new year!

28/12/2024

As 2024 draws to a close, I'm reflecting on the year in writing I've had. I recently completed my first two children's books, and while they didn't place in the contest they were written for, I now have the opportunity to send these out to publishers and agents, which I have already started doing!

But the big standout in my writing journey this year has to be travelling to Dublin to speak at the Blue Marble Storytellers conference. Brilliant city, lovely people, and just a great time!

Here's to everything 2025 brings.

Blue Marble Storytellers - Writers Conference. Held at the James Joyce Writers Centre, Dublin Ireland on the 10th August 2024.

06/12/2024

Delighted to be published in this anthology alongside some friends from the Blue Marble community. I have a few little pieces in here, including "Halloween Decorations", which won Globe Soup's monthly microfiction contest, and "One Million Silenced Voices", a piece I'm incredibly proud of - it placed 4th in the final of NYC Midnight's 100-word contest in 2023.

There should also be an ebook version on the way, but for now it's available in paperback, with profits going towards Doctors without Borders.

Marbles: An Anthology of Micro and Flash Fiction

01/11/2024

This week, I submitted two books to Writing Magazine's Writing for Children contests. And to save me from scanning over the manuscripts and beating myself up for all the things I think I could have done better, I'm excited about a new idea I have for a psychological thriller that I hope to start working on immediately!

Will update when I have more.

30/09/2024

Happy to have contributed a small piece for this guide to self publishing by Writing Magazine. Should be a great resource for writers thinking about self publishing!

The Self Publishing Guide Offer Media Issue Meta Data Issue Number: 1 Digital Edition: £5.99 Print Edition: £11.99 (plus postage) Offer Summary Is it your dream to publish your own book? And make money from it? If that’s the case, The Self Publishing Guide is a must-read! It contains all the i...

20/09/2024

This week I asked AI to rewrite my 4th placed entry in NYC Midnight's 100-word final. The results were horrifying (my poor story!)

Last year, I came 4th in the final round of NYC Midnight's 100-word Microfiction Challenge. I'm still a little bit in disbelief (especially since I ended up getting the boot in the first round this year... we don't talk about that) but I feel happier and more proud of this result than any other, and...

09/09/2024

This week in AI Generated nonsense, ChatGPT tries to win Writing Battle for me, and I deconstruct its story with a sentence-by-sentence analysis.

The results, as always, are interesting!

I thought it was high time I wrote an anti-AI blog that's not mostly, erm, written by AI. For the last three weeks, I've engaged in some "experiments" with ChatGPT to show how the bot:1. Does not understand writing2. Cannot assist writers3. Is as unethical as a snake oil salesman.If you've missed pr...

08/09/2024

Tomorrow, I'll be sharing an analysis I did of ChatGPT's attempt to write me a winning entry for a contest. The results are fascinating. In the meantime, here's a little preview.

DISCLAIMER: I would never actually send any AI-generated nonsense to a writing contest.

03/09/2024

When you have to resort to labelling the other side of a debate with some pretty nasty terms, you know you've lost the argument. Unfortunately, NaNoWriMo lost the debate about AI before they even began arguing with this statement.

To claim those of us opposed to AI in writing are classist and ableist is shocking from an organisation that until very recently was highly regarded in the writing community.

Shouting down the genuine concerns of writers trying to navigate their way through the already tricky world of writing to please your big corporate sponsors is not supportive of those you claim to defend. I'll continue to respectfully argue that there's no place for AI in writing, and unfortunately will not be visiting NaNo's website again any time soon.

NaNoWriMo does not explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it explicitly condemn any approach, including the use of AI. NaNoWriMo's mission is to "provide the structure, commu...

02/09/2024

We all know AI isn't capable of writing fiction that wins contests. But what if it was?

In this week's AI experiment, ChatGPT "wins" a contest for me, lectures me on honesty and integrity, then writes to the contest organisers to insist AI wasn't used.

For my first two experiments with ChatGPT, I've attempted to show why using the bot for writing isn't helping you to become a better writer. An AI proofreader is much less useful than a human one, even if that human is not a seasoned writer. A human will always understand human things, whereas an AI...

26/08/2024

Another of my experiments with ChatGPT to prove that writers who use it are only hindering themselves. This week, ChatGPT recommends a terrible piece of writing for the Booker Prize.

After such interest and some great conversations with other writers in response to last week's blog post, I thought more were in order. AI is a huge topic (and concern) for many writers at the moment, and I'm certainly in camp "Avoid". Last week, I wanted to explore how ChatGPT just cannot get its d...

19/08/2024

In an effort to highlight the flaws of using AI for writing, I conducted a little experiment with ChatGPT. The mission: to solve the easiest mystery ever written (written by me).

Needless to say, the AI fails impressively.

Read below!

https://www.chrisamorris.com/post/solving-the-world-s-easiest-mystery-with-chatgpt

11/08/2024

It was an absolute pleasure to speak at the Blue Marble Storytellers Writing Conference at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin yesterday. You can watch my talk here, and I'd enthusiastically encourage you to check out the others speakers on the Blue Marble YouTube page. It was a great day and I heard some really inspiring talks!

Blue Marble Storytellers - Writers Conference. Held at the James Joyce Writers Centre, Dublin Ireland on the 10th August 2024.

01/08/2024

--Big Project Update!--

For the last few months, I've been working away, planning and writing a new book (first time in a while!). I had been wanting to write a novel for a while, but was struggling with the "right" idea. I tried a couple of different things that I intend to go back to in the future, but I was writing myself in circles and not really getting very inspired by any of it.

Last year, I was reading about an annual contest for writers of children's literature, and I read some fantastic excerpts from winning entries. As is probably quite usual for any writer, I began thinking about different ways I might approach such a contest, and the ideas wouldn't leave me alone.

So, I'm pleased to say that I'm only two chapters away from completing my first draft of my first ever children's chapter book! It's a direction I never thought I would go in, but as someone who was inspired by Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and R.L. Stine as a child, and as a father who has read many chapter books to his daughter, I'm kind of surprised I never considered this type of writing before.

I can't reveal much about the plot of my chapter book at the moment, because of the rules of writing contests which rightly stipulate that entries must be anonymous, but I will say that I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this book, and I'm looking forward to a couple of months of intensive re-writes and polishing in preparation for submission. Big shout out to my daughter who has also helped me with various plot details! Should it not fare well in the contest, I do plan on trying to find a publisher anyway, and I'll certainly reveal more details about it then.

Writing this book has taught me a lot about writing for children. What seemed like a fairly easy project at first (15,000 words maximum - that's just like a long short story with nice, simple language, isn't it?) has turned into a lesson on creating a plot and characters that feels big enough for a whole book, but is told in such a tight word count. It's been a thrill!

But most importantly, it's gotten me right back into the swing of writing longer fiction. I'm still really enjoying writing short stories and trying to improve my skills that way, but once this book is properly finished, I feel ready to tackle a big, adult project next.

Anyway, watch this space for more updates!

31/07/2024

Very pleased to have made it to the finalist page again this month for Globe Soup's monthly microfiction contest! This month the theme was "Space".

Here is "The First, The Last, The Forever":