My Writerly Blog

 According to my iMac widget dictionary (reliable source?  who knows...), the verb 'transgress' means: to infringe or go beyond the bounds of (a moral principle or other established standard of behavior) I'm putting together an abstract for a conference on transgressions in literature, even though my initial reaction to this conference's CFP was 'none of this applies to me - I don't do any sort of transgression.'  I create stories.  Okay, sure, I'm trying to create them in various media, which is sort of new.  But it's not infringing .  Perhaps it can be seen as crossing boundaries...and I guess that's where it enters the realm of transgression. But as I brainstorm the paper, I keep thinking my colleague SH is correct: How can there possibly be transgressions in literature, in art?  Isn't the entire purpose of creating something worthwhile to transgress what has come before? Note I say 'something worthwhile'.  I'm a PhD stude...

Saying straight lines are bad isn't going to suit well with Amy, my very OCD friend and colleague. But when it comes to stories told in digital environments, I'm discovering it's true. Those of us from more traditional writing backgrounds - stories, novels - tend to think of stories in terms of plot and character development. Go figure. But people exploring stories online or in mobile or locative displays often aren't thinking of them as linear stories at all. They're exploring, as they'd explore a playground or theme park. We're doing them - and ourselves - a disservice if we either A) force them along a linear path, or B) create a linear path and then break it up, offering it to them out of order and in pieces. This discussion came up during the Transliteracy conference in Leicester last week, through the various presentations and discussions over the course of the day. Gareth Howell discussed McCloud's concept of closure (readers making na...

This is the presentation Amy Chambers and I gave at the Transliteracy Conference, complete with annotations for those who weren't there to hear us rush through the topic in our short allotted time. Visualizing the Story from Text to Screen on Prezi

One - The Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre is the epitome of a British location, in that you are only capable of getting there if you already know how to get there. Next time I come, I'm helicoptering in. Two - It's a nice digital center, as far as I can see. Nicely sized multi-purpose screening rooms. And the building's green, which always gives it plus points in my mind. Three - The conference . Which is the thing, isn't it? Themes I picked up on: Transliteracy is transdisciplinary. We started with an ethnographer, followed by a geographer... Ongoing Twitter feeds (#transliteracy) and live blog posts - Although I've done some live blogging myself, I don't really know how much these add to the overall experience. It's almost distracting, and the Twitter feeds are generally scattered, surfacey, and lacking in true discourse. It's mostly the pretense of discourse in byte-size format. Highly interested in Gareth Howell 's talk, look...