Testing possibilities: on negotiating writing practices in a ‘postdigital’ age (tools and methods)

ABSTRACT

The exponential growth of new media technologies presents opportunities and challenges for writers. Fast-paced change – featuring what can seem like perpetual updates of hardware and software – undermines the possibility of growing attached to particular tools and practices. Collaboration is key to social media and many of the new technologies, and not something that sits easily with the traditional image of the writer as someone working alone. This article considers how writers can negotiate the demands of a ‘postdigital age’. Adopting a teacher-practitioner stance, it proposes that the remediation of a writer’s own practice is key. As well as considering how a writer can work to remediate his or her own practice, whereby – as new challenges and opportunities arise – a writer looks to existing skills and prior experience and adapts or applies them in new contexts as part of a process of, in effect, collaborating with him or herself, this article begins to explore whether such remediation can be taught. An aim is to reach a new theoretical position on how individuals can approach the creative potential of writing in the twenty-first century and more effectively embrace existing and emerging opportunities provided by interactive digital technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative writing
• pedagogy
• creative practice
• new media technologies
• remediation
• digital literacy

Acknowledgements

Early versions of this article were presented at the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) annual conference, Bath Spa University's Mix 0.3 Digital conference and Middlesex University's The Creative Industries and Collaborative Production symposium (2014, 2015, 2016). The author would like to thank the organisers of the events for useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Josie Barnard is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing with Journalism at Middlesex University. Her academic research interests centre on the multimodal writer with specialist areas in employability and social media, subjects on which she has published including in the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing and the National Association of Writers in Education journal Writing in Education. She is the author of five Virago books, including the Betty Trask award-winning novel Poker Face and the creative non-fiction The Book of Friendship. Her print and broadcast journalism includes features and programmes for outlets such as the Guardian, the Independent, the Times Literary Supplement and BBC Radio 4.

ORCID

Josie Barnard http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3616-6945