I had good intentions to give NaNoWriMo a try this year but didn’t get very far. Instead I gave OpenAI’s Creative Writing Coach GPT a try for a (very) short story I had in mind, inspired by my frustration trying to access closed-access research articles for a review article I’m preparing. I found it to be an excellent writing coach with specific advice for refining the role of the curators, expanding the perspective of the cultivators, deepening the emotional stakes, clarifying the catalyst for change, polishing the resolution, adding complexity, making the revolt more dramatic, and fine-tuning the language.
Image created with DALL-E. Voiceover with ElevenLabs.
In a world not so different from our own, there existed a fabled garden called the Enlightenment Conservatory. Here, ideas took root as seeds of thought, blooming into radiant flowers of discovery and wisdom. Each blossom held the promise of transformation - groundbreaking theories, profound insights, and untold wonders capable of reshaping the world. It was said that no other garden in existence could rival its beauty or its mystery.
The Conservatory was tended by a diverse group of dedicated cultivators. These scholars came from all corners of the world, driven by an insatiable curiosity and a passion for nurturing new ideas. They spent their days and nights planting seeds of thought, carefully tending to them, and watching in awe as their conceptual flowers blossomed into vibrant displays of intellectual beauty. Each bloom was unique, representing the culmination of the cultivators' hard work, creativity, and brilliance.
However, the Enlightenment Conservatory was not open to all. Surrounding it stood a tall, impenetrable wall, erected long ago by a powerful guild known as the Curators. Through a series of cunning maneuvers and ruthless acquisitions, the Curators had gained control over all the smaller intellectual gardens that once existed independently. Now, they ruled the Enlightenment Conservatory with an iron fist.
The Curators enforced one unyielding rule: entry to the Conservatory came at an outrageous price. Even the cultivators - those who had poured their hearts and minds into planting and nurturing each idea - were not spared. To gaze upon their own intellectual blooms, they too had to pay the Curators' steep toll. Many could only catch fleeting glimpses of their creations from outside the towering walls, denied the chance to savor the fruits of their labor. Their brilliance was trapped behind gates they could never afford to open.
The Enlightenment Conservatory was meant to be a place where people from all walks of life could come to marvel at the wonders of human thought and insight, where ideas could be shared freely and openly. But under the Curators' rule, it became a bastion of exclusivity. Only the wealthiest patrons and members of the most prestigious institutions could afford to enter and enjoy the intellectual bounty within. These privileged few would stroll through the Conservatory, plucking ideas at will, while the majority remained outside the walls, unable to access the knowledge and insights that had been so carefully cultivated.
The Curators defended their dominion by calling themselves the stewards of the Enlightenment Conservatory. They claimed their strict oversight was essential to protect the garden from mediocrity, ensuring only the most refined and worthy ideas took root. Without their watchful gaze, they warned, the Conservatory would drown in a sea of weeds, its beauty choked by chaos. But the cultivators saw through the façade. They knew the Curators tended nothing; they merely harvested the fruits of others’ labor while the true blooms of genius often went unnoticed, left to wither in the shadows.
They knew that the Curators did little to actually care for the Conservatory. The intellectual blooms within its walls were almost always unchanged from the moment they had been planted. The Curators did not prune, water, or tend to the flowers of thought; they simply collected fees and claimed ownership of every bloom. Worse still, they often overlooked some of the most extraordinary ideas, leaving them to wither and die, while promoting others simply because they had been paid to do so.
But for all the Curators' lofty claims, the Enlightenment Conservatory began to wither. Its once-thriving ecosystem of ideas grew barren, choked by exclusion. Young cultivators from distant lands - those with the boldest, freshest seeds of thought - were turned away, unable to pay the Curators' crushing fees. Some gave up entirely, their unplanted ideas fading like dreams forgotten at dawn. Others tried to nurture their seeds in secret, but without the support of the Conservatory, their efforts bore no fruit. The world would never know the brilliance that had been lost, and the cultivators could only watch as the garden they loved fell into quiet decline.
The cultivators' frustration grew into a quiet despair. They had poured their souls into planting seeds of thought, nurturing them with endless care, only to see their work imprisoned behind walls they could not afford to scale. What use was a garden of wisdom if it bloomed in the dark, unseen and unshared? They began to speak out, calling for change. They envisioned an Conservatory where all could enter freely, where the flowers of knowledge and insight could be shared by everyone, regardless of wealth or status. They dreamed of an intellectual paradise that truly reflected the diversity and richness of the world's ideas, unencumbered by the greed and control of the Curators.
As the cries for change swelled, a few bold cultivators decided they could wait no longer. They slipped beyond the Conservatory's walls and began planting their seeds of thought in the wild, in open fields where anyone - rich or poor, learned or curious - could come and marvel. These free gardens burst into dazzling bloom, spilling over with ideas as vibrant and diverse as the people who tended them. The movement spread like wildfire, and as more cultivators turned away from the Conservatory, the Curators panicked. They scrambled to suppress the rebellion, but it was too late. The walls that had stood for centuries began to crack.
In time, the Enlightenment Conservatory was no longer the sole sanctuary of wisdom. The walls that had once loomed so high crumbled to dust as people discovered they didn't need gates to access the beauty of knowledge. All around, new gardens flourished, each more diverse and vibrant than the last. The Conservatory itself, no longer shrouded in exclusivity, was reborn as a shared space for all. Its paths teemed with visitors, its flowers of insight blooming brighter than ever in the sunlight of collaboration and open exchange. At last, the cultivators' dream had come to life: a world where ideas could roam free, taking root wherever they were needed most.
And so, the Enlightenment Conservatory was transformed. No longer a place of exclusion, it became a symbol of what could be achieved when knowledge, discovery, and insight were shared freely and openly, for the benefit of all. The cultivators continued their work, more inspired than ever, knowing that their intellectual blooms would flourish in a world where everyone could enjoy them, without barriers, without walls.
