Ben Ladouceur: Writing shaped by coming out, and the damaged caused by generative AI

Author Ben Ladouceur

Author Ben Ladouceur

Ben Ladouceur is the author of the poetry collection Otter, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and a National Post best book of the year. His 2019 poetry collection, Mad Long Emotion, won the Archibald Lampman Award. He is a recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers and the National Magazine Award for Poetry. His short fiction has been featured in the Journey Prize Stories anthology and awarded the Thomas Morton Prize. His first novel, I Remember Lights, will be available in April and is published by Book*Hug Press. Ben lives in Ottawa.

On Creative Writing: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

The 'jarringly alien feeling' of coming out in 2001

Ben Ladouceur: I think I came out of the closet way too young (I was 13, the year was 2001) and basically all the writing I do is just me attempting to address the jarringly alien feeling that came to me one hour after telling my friend Ashley who I actually was.

I walked in the dark towards my house, where my family was watching television, same as they did most nights. I only remember walking, and do not remember going through the front door that evening. The missingness of that memory, of getting home and sitting with them, is so absolute that it is easier to believe that I’m still outside walking.

On Creative Writing: How did you find your first publisher?

Ben Ladouceur: I published my first book, a poetry collection called Otter, through Coach House Books, one of my very favourite publishers then and now. I had published a lot of poems in literary magazines, both online and print, over the course of several years, and several chapbooks too – some through other people’s chapbook presses, and some through In/Words Magazine while I was an editor there (so pretty much self-published). Through those publications and some submission-based contests, I had won or placed for a few poetry prizes too. So, when I submitted the manuscript to Coach House Books following the instructions on their site, I had lots of stuff on my Creative CV, and I imagine this helped the manuscript stick out and actually get read.

On Creative Writing: Do you see generative AI as a threat or benefit to writers?

Ben Ladouceur: Any kind of online writing gigs I managed to score in my twenties, when I was just desperate to accumulate any freelance writing experience – listicles, TV recaps, book reviews – those opportunities are really, really scant now, because so many websites clearly use LLM’s to heavily supplement or completely replace writers for that kind of work. A lot of these sites used to underpay writers; now they avoiding employing writers at all, as much as possible.

On generative AI and LLMs: A threat is what precedes the infliction of damage

The result is a worse Internet, which we can already see play out, and no opportunities for young writers to cut their teeth like I did. I’ve also seen my own published work used to train LLM systems, with no consent process or compensation, and that’s this horrible feeling. So not a benefit to my mind, and way more than a threat. A threat is what precedes the infliction of damage. The damage is being inflicted already – I’ve seen it and felt it.

On Creative Writing: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

Just getting the writing out

Ben Ladouceur: I don’t really start writing until I have some idea of what I want a given scene or poem to really say. Then, I try to get the writing done in an unembarrassed burst, full of typos and terrible phrasing. The typos are kind of on purpose – they’ll remind me, later, that the whole idea that time around was just to get it out. Then I’ll rewrite it entirely, often using the same phrasing and just as often reworking the language. Almost always, reducing it. If it’s something I’m aiming to publish, I will edit it over again, many times. If it’s part of a novel-in-progress, then many many times, and possibly it’ll get rearranged, deleted, consolidated, reworked.

On Creative Writing: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?

Ben Ladouceur: I write a lot about gay men. It seems I might not consider it worth writing if it isn’t about gay men and how they feel, maybe specifically how they feel about each other. I used to think, I’ll write my gay guy books and get that all done, and then I’ll be writing about other things. Like it might get out of my system. But if I think of the authors who I consider strongest in terms of style – poets like John Barton and Mark Doty, fiction authors like Edmund White and Andrew Holleran – well, they never really turn to face a different way. They find lots to say about humanity by talking about gay men and what they’re doing. When you read them, they convince you there’s nowhere else to look for that. So I don’t sweat it now.