Is the Mobile App the New Writer’s Blog?
From WordPress to Tumblr, Blogger to Squarespace, writers are using blogs to engage their readers. Aryn Kyle shares anecdotes from her recent West Coast book tour at www.arynkyle.tumblr.com, while on Blogspot, Dedra Johnson meditates about the challenge of immersing herself in a character while dealing with life’s day-to-day details. If part of the literary project is to build connections and invite people in, the willing writer might want to experiment with an emerging form of digital storytelling — the cross-platform mobile app. Browser bookmarking site Read it Later examined its users’ screen-based reading habits and found that …of …
Continue >
A Writerly Kind of Social Media: Michael Siedlecki on Neovella
The blank page is the great adversary of many working writers. Turn on your computer, open a Word document, begin. With what? What are you supposed to write? Michael Siedlecki’s collaborative writing tool, Neovella, offers an answer. This online application lets you work with friends to collaboratively compose a novella. One writer begins the story, one adds a plot twist, one turns that plot upside down; gradually the paragraphs accumulate, building toward a full-length piece. In the tradition of James Joyce’s The Dead and Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King, the novella is part short story, part …
Continue >
Code Meets Storytelling in iPhone App Machine #69
What do you do if you can’t finish your novel? Make an iPhone app. Writer Mark Wernham, author of the mystery novel-in-progress, Jefferson Greenspan Saves the World? partnered with chip tune musician Matthew C. Applegate (Pixelh8) to develop Machine #69, a collaborative story app that features photos by the author, narration by voiceover artist Dan Russell, and music by Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh. There’s even an “old” radio interview with the author. Mark Wernham plunges you into the middle of the action, introducing a time-traveling salesman, Jefferson Greenspan – who’s on …
Continue >
Inspiration Journal
Ah, letterpress… You transfix me.
With the Guggenheim's new digital archive, hours of free e-reading abounds.
Who wants a letter, via snail mail, every month from a favorite author? The Rumpus says, “We do.” For $5/month, you can get one too. ~CMW
More from the Notebook
