My Writerly Blog

I’ve been proselytizing this method for a while now, and have used it in a range of creative writing and publishing modules. It’s been wildly successful for me (though of course I’ll continue tweaking it), and enough people have asked about it that I thought I’d put it together into an overview/summary resource. It should probably be an actual paper one of these days, but that would require time and research and motivation. Natch. My teaching model is based on Linda Nilson’s Specifications Grading  (she’s also got a great intro article on Inside Higher Ed ), just so the original genius can get plenty of credit. My motivations are these: I came a hair’s breadth from burning out entirely. I went from teaching creative writing classes with 7-10 students on them to massive creative writing modules with 80+ students on them. Marking loads were insane, despite the fact that I have a pretty streamlined process with rubrics and QuickMarks and commonly used comments that I can cut and ...

Me, lately I spent my PhD years going to many, many  conferences. When you're in a small department in an isolated part of the world, they're kind of a necessity. You go to meet anyone - anyone  - who is doing similar stuff, and who won't stare at you blankly when you describe your research. You go to try out your ideas, to make sure the academic community you'll be pitching them to don't think you're an absolute waste of space ( imposter syndrome is for real). Also, you go just to go somewhere (though I think I went to Leicester far too often). In the last few years, as I've gained contacts and confidence, I've gone to fewer and fewer conferences. I know the ones that best suit me now, and where I'll get to meet and/or catch up with my peeps. I also know the ones, of course, where I've never made any headway at all. I was pleasantly surprised this week to be wrong about that last one. MIX Digital - Bath Spa University Let me back thi...

First of all, hello again, old blog. I haven't visited you, much less nourished you, in quite some time! What's that meme that goes around about the best friends being those that can go months or years between contact, and then just pick up right where they left off as if no time has passed at all? Let's go with that. Second, the impetus for this blog post is a new research project I'm (slowly but surely) launching. I've been interested in the overlap (or, frankly, entire lack thereof) between digital fiction and the publishing industry; specifically, I've been wondering if that overlap is ever going to actually happen. So I'm kinda trying to shove them together. There have been a few promising case studies emerging in the last few years that show audiences actually are interested in interactive storytelling: Ryan North's wild success with Shakespearean Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ; Zoe Quinn's rocky go of publishing Depression Quest through Steam...

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was strong with me this week. It's end of term, end of the academic year, and we're all caught up in the requesting (begging) of student feedback, along with its requisite trauma. An old friend of mine who is a nurse posted this article about patient satisfaction vs. patient health , and the sentiments strongly parallel what I hear from staff and out of my own mouth. My mom just wants it all to stop; with every purchase, site visit, and receipt, she gets a request for customer feedback, and let's face it: unless you're on one extreme of customer experience or another, you just can't dredge the energy to care. Student feedback is fertile ground for frustration. We're told we're not collecting enough feedback (the bean-counter kind): we can't get enough responses to officially administered feedback for statistically significant and/or representative feedback. On the other hand, we collect so much feedback that at times it f...

I've been thinking quite a lot lately about the use of "found" art, as in re-appropriating images, video, code, etc., in stories.  Obviously, in my case, that means digital fiction, though I don't really think it's tied to any one communication genre or medium.  After all, there are plenty of news stories I see that use stock images that either really enhance the piece, or freakishly contrast with it.  It affects the piece, one way or the other. I also think it's related, but a bit different, from palimpsest (as defined by Genette) .  I recently supervised a fantastic MA dissertation on how everything we create (specifically speaking about creative writers) is palimpsestical: re-envisioning our lives, what we've read, what we've written.  It may be done on purpose - those intertextual references we love to embed so much - and it may be done entirely subconsciously, but in the end, the idea boils down to that frustrating and yet liberating adage that ...

I seem to only do my blog writing on trains lately.  Must see to that... I presented at the Great Writing new-and-improved-London-edition conference this weekend, a talk that focused on one of the finer points of my current research: how writing with the intent to mediate a story in multiple media changes the fundamental aspects of the story itself (character, structure, perspective), as well as how it affects the writer's (my) composition process. The talk consisted of several readings, sections drawn from my prose fiction in chronological order, from my MFA novel (2005) to my most recent compositions for the PhD work (November 2011 - rough draft).  The progression from straightforward, MFA-mill produced fiction (i.e., literary, navel-gazing) to postmodern, multiple narrator, layered, rhizomatically structured fiction was dramatic, and I was pleased that my audience saw the same things in the work that I did.  What was even more rad was that they were actually interested in it. I...

I'm on the long train(s) ride home from Kent after a one-day digital fiction workshop with Andy Campbell ( Dreaming Methods ).  It's the first time I've met Andy IRL - great to put a face to the name & works. The workshop itself was set up by Peggy at East Kent Live Lit , funded by the Kent Arts Council, and she was graceful enough to let a non-Kent-resident such as me sit in.  Most of the attendees were not necessarily new to digital fiction, but new to building it.  They were writers, musicians, installation artists, and sometimes a combination of the above.  Almost everyone save me and one other had been able to make the Friday evening session, which was an overview of digital fiction and some of Andy's background. The morning session covered a few examples of dig-fic (from the Poole Literary Festival New Media Prize ), recommended software (more on this in a minute), and resources for media files (more...).  The afternoon session was more hands-on building of di...

First, a note: This blog is moving away from the specifics of my PhD research and experiences.  If anyone was interested in those, well...sorry.  The work is progressing, and it's a delicate balance!  Best to keep it on the DL till it's finished.  :) I do continue to have thoughts, however, about the nature of e-lit, e-publishing, digital narratives, tools. Tools.  Nick Montfort (et al) just released Curveship , which integrates interactive fiction and interactive narrating.  Which is motto-speak for "it does cool stuff to allow linear storytelling or interactive nonlinear storytelling at the reader's preference".  I think.  I just downloaded it, and I probably won't have time to play intensely (and intently) with it for another week or two, but I've been excited about this for a while. The blogs and mags and news-rags seem to be filling more and more with blurbs on the "new wave" of storytelling.  The New Yorker's Book Bench blog was all ove...

I spent yesterday at the Teaching Digital Writing day at the Phoenix Digital Square in Leicester (yes, again - I seem to spend more time in Leicester than anywhere else, which is probably because Sue Thomas is a gravitational force in digital lit). I had a small role in it, in that I contributed in a teensy way, via my students, to Astrid Ensslin and Alice Bell et al's poster on teaching digital writing. Other than that, I pretty much came to network and soak in the discussions on digital writing in the classroom. The day started off with Tim Wright and Kate Pullinger demonstrating their recent projects, Kidmapped! and Lifelines (available only to schools), respectively. I hadn't seen Tim's work before, but I'm determined to explore it, as it pulls in nonfiction, classic fiction, as well as ideas of trespass, transgression, and participation. Kate's Lifelines, as a collaborative storytelling teaching project, would be a great thing to look at for me in my coll...

My supervisor brought to my attention today that she actually does read this thing (if anyone wonders, my supervisor is rad and awesome and the best ever. Ahem.), and that it's very interesting for her to read my post-supervisory meeting posts.  And I er, have not had a moment to post anything after our semesterly meeting last week. Sorry.  Here goes. I am becoming less nervous about these meetings, though I think I need to be watchful that I don't lull myself into thinking I'm safe.  If I want to finish this PhD before my funding runs out, I'm really going to have to get on top of things. At any rate, I find it always helps my mental state of being to compile a list of what I've actually been doing, so it doesn't look like I've done nothing. The list helps me see I'm not a total slacker. I brought in a preliminary outline of my critical thesis, and she promptly noted that each of my chapter titles contained an entire thesis.  Oops.  Narrowing in y...

Fresh off mid-semester vacation, our New Media Research Circle had a mini-poster session today.  I threw together mine based on the method I'm using to take my stories from print to digital, pompously titled "From Pen to Screen: Remediating Stories from Print to Digital Media."  It's a process in development, as that 4th step you see in the image there only emerged a couple of weeks ago.  It will be a major portion of my PhD writeup, far too much to go into here.  The abstract gives the basic gist: Ubiquitous and mobile applications such as SmartPhones and Tablets are attracting growing numbers of readers to digital stories. Many experienced print writers may see this trend as an opportunity to direct their storytelling skills toward an emerging genre, but lack the skills and knowledge needed to remediate their own print stories into digital form; they may also prefer a remediation methodology that begins in their comfort zone (print), and moves step-by-step tow...

A friend posted this short, collaborative film on Facebook the other day. It was cute, and included an actor I like, so I was amused. At first. After exploring the hitRECord site a bit, however, I was amazed. While the short film was written and filmed the way many are - as a collaboration of the few - its final(?) iteration is the product of crowdsourcing, via members of hitRECord. Happily for my purposes, a kind user on the site mapped out a timeline of its production . Now, this is a site created and sponsored by a pretty well-known guy. He has connections. He can fund project entry into Sundance, and he's the one who ultimately decides what gets a big-boy push and what doesn't. Not all of us can do this to this level of success. But... It's still an amazing example of this new sort of creativity that the Web 2.0, along with the open licensing concept, is facilitating. Some artists are letting go of this evanescent concept of copyright, letting it go ...

I've finally done it. I have entered nerdhood, via the rather embarrassing route of sustaining a significant injury from too much time spent in front of a computer screen. My osteopath was beside herself. It was time well spent, however, as I managed to update my entire website, form the platform for my work in the next few years, and gain a lot more knowledge about the software I'll be using to create my digital stories. But the truly interesting thing I learned by using new software and rebuilding my site from the ground up was this: I need better pencils. As it turns out, I'm rather crap at designing unless I have a pencil (not a pen) and paper. I couldn't even begin putting the pages together until I had thumbnail sketches and hastily drawn scribbles and lists in a notebook in front of me. My sole mechanical pencil broke one evening, and I found myself unable to continue working. In a related episode, I attended a lecture this week that was not up ...

I spent 3 days in London this weekend, and almost all of it can be classed research. Amazing. Friday was spent entirely on the Underground - no joke, I saw sky only when the trains emerged aboveground - taking photographs to use (likely much altered) in my digital fiction project. I know, I know, there are a ton of subway station and train photos available on Flickr, etc., but as a train system is the foundation for my work I really wanted the experience of taking the photos myself. Particularly as it's one discipline in creating digital stories that I do have experience with (learning all the coding, web building, and networking has been humbling). So I dusted off my old film camera (yes, film is still better for art photog, in my mind), and trolled the Underground. I don't have the film back yet, but I do want to note the experience of that portion of the process. For one, I got tired. I spent 5 hours taking pictures, and I don't recall ever being so sick of a s...

 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...

I have "Blog Entry" on my To-Do List today, among other things. It seems I have not been very good about posting in the past couple of weeks, in addition to not having been very good at lots of other things. The issue really is that I was awarded a teaching assistantship at the very last minute before classes started, and I've spent the first month of term getting up to speed, as well as getting all my little freelance gigs out the door (still working on some of those). So I haven't done much actual research (read: writing) lately. That ends today, as I have several paragraphs down now on the first story of my PhD, and I've started outlining the next paper I've got planning (on applying cinematic adaptation of visual narrative to digital fiction - it makes sense in my head). The story started forming at 5 a.m. this morning, which made for a rather restless sleep as I plunked a sentence or two every so often into my iPhone. The character is growing. Other no...

The portion of the blogosphere devoted to digital/new media writing and e-publishing is filled with concerns, despairing, and a truckload of theories about how this emerging (emerged?) literary genre is to be organized, recognized, distributed, and brought into the canon of literature. The importance of creating/accepting a canon for any given genre has been discussed much , as has the difficulty of establishing a central depository for works that often have no physical form. The technology is evolving quickly - works that are considered part of the canon are often just old enough that modern machines can't run the files, like a collection of the world's greatest films on Beta tapes. Concerns have also flown about who exactly is to do this deciding. In the past, we (humans in general) have left canon-building to the scholars. Not even film or novels, so closely tied as they are to box office numbers and bestseller lists, derive their canons from public opinion. Blade Runner was...