(MMCC1050 Week 1 Reading) Creative Writing & Multimodality – Chapter 4 Toolkit

Purpose: Present a systematic, replicable, yet flexible model enabling writers to build personalised multimodal practices for 21st-century publishing.
Audience: Practitioners, students, and teachers of Creative Writing.
Methodology feeding the model:
- Auto-practitioner study (author as subject).
- Interviews with published writers (e.g., Simon Armitage, Rhianna Pratchett, Michele Roberts, Jim Crace).
- In-class assignment pilots (later trialled as an assignment themselves).

Digital age demands rapid movement between genres and technologies.
Lack of pedagogical frameworks; need for approaches that handle Page’s "rich diversity" of multimodality.
Multimodality encompasses:
- Traditional tools (pen, paper, typewriters) ➔ digital (blogs, micro-blogging, websites) ➔ emergent (video games, VR, yet-to-be-invented tech).
Writerly experience = highly individualistic; creative processes differ across writers, across projects, and across time.

Coe: Writing day has “indeterminate duration” and “infinitely variable” texture.
Despite seeming chaos, commonalities surface across writers:
- Productive "noisy" locations (trains: Coe, Armitage, Pratchett).
- Attachment to personal "stuff" (Coe’s vinyl; Roberts’ drawings; Crace’s journalistic habits).
- Dependence on caffeine or atmospheric factors.
Illustrates the difficulty—and necessity—of modelling something fluid.

Robert Coover & Charlie Higson: multimodal instincts precede digital tech.
Palmeri ("Remixing Composition"):
- Page-based writing = translation of the multimodal mind to alphabetic symbols.
- Quoting Flower & Hayes: capturing a deer’s movement in words = translation effort.
Sensory memories central in writers’ development:
- Welty’s auditory & olfactory childhood memories.
- Bulgakov’s need for music; Hemingway’s café sensory palette (rum, rain, pencil shavings).
Conclusion: Multimodal practice is reclamation, not invention.

Page: physical labour of narrative processing involves both tools and bodily senses.
Wilson & Grant: Digital competence starts offline; "old" tech remains vital.
Baron: Pencil once “new technology”; computer = “better pencil.”
Bolter & Grusin’s "Remediation": new media refashion older media (print ➔ photography ➔ film ➔ web).
Cranny-Francis: Users "play" with mediation knowledge, mobilising earlier experiences.
Strategic use of familiar tools provides grounding, agency, and smoother transition to new media.

Writers report co-existing personalities during creation:
- Dorothea Brande’s triad: Practical, Artist-Self, Intuitive visionary.
- Fay Weldon’s split of "A" (draft) vs. "B" (edit) plus delinquent fragments.
- Gertrude Stein’s image of resisting habits.
- Deleuze & Guattari’s "rhizome": any point connects to any other ➔ multiplicity breeds creative possibility.
New media foregrounds this multiplicity (hypermediated or transmediated self: Bolter & Grusin; Rotman; Elwell).

Welty: Writers must "learn to trust themselves."
Coe: Recognising the right moment = key to time management.
Risks for beginners: trust feels elusive; rename "gut instinct" as "expert intuition" (Melrose).
Cognitive research (Cokely & Feltz): Experts’ intuitions are \text{highly accurate, well-calibrated}.
Role in multimodal practice: enables bold jumps (e.g., export character Clementina from novel to screenplay based on a flash insight).

Conscious capacity limited; we process 200,000:1 units of info beyond attention bottleneck (Hayles).
Rotman’s "para-self," Hurley’s "sub-personal loops": numerous unconscious feedback circuits.
"Inner Auteur" defined:
- Ghostly, pervasive puppet-master aligning writerly resources & personas.
- Captures expert intuition and keeps authentic voice coherent across shifting media.
- Analogy to auteur film director navigating cast, crew, budget.
Aim: Provide conditions (rituals, environments, tools) in which inner auteur thrives.

Writerly Resources
- Internal: sensations, moods, reflections, prior experiences.
- External: tools, locations, deadlines, audience.
- Dynamic; importance shifts with technology & project.
Writerly Personas
- Distinct moods/self-states for distinct tasks (e.g., "dogged finisher" vs. "gregarious community manager").
- Combination choice critical when switching media.
Expert Intuition
- Sudden, authoritative convictions guiding risky yet fruitful decisions.
- Requires cultivated self-trust to act decisively.
Inner Auteur
- Unconscious coordinator; rapidly assembles optimal mixes of resources & personas.
- Ensures authenticity and flow.
Creative Projects
- Range spans long-form (novel) to micro-texts (tweets, IG posts), across genres & platforms.
- Portfolio shifts continuously; model helps navigate concomitant transitions.

Visual (Fig 4.1) Synopsis

Diagram situates Writerly Resources feeding multiple Creative Projects via Writerly Personas; loops indicated ("may repeat").
Inner Auteur (implied centre) orchestrates flow; expert intuition represented by asterisked lightning bolts.

Develop personalised inventories of:
- Tools (both "old" and emerging tech) and their sensory affordances.
- Recurring productive environments (e.g., trains, cafés).
- Personas: name them, note triggers & strengths.
Pedagogy:
- Assignments should include cross-modal remediation—e.g., transfer a poem to a game narrative.
- Encourage reflective journaling to surface inner auteur patterns.
Sustainability: Focusing on transferable strategies, not tool-specific proficiencies, mitigates obsolescence.

Authorship & authenticity: When persona multiplicity is foregrounded, what counts as "the author"?
Agency: Recognising unconscious influence tempers hyper-individualist myths; invites collaborative humility.
Tech ecology: Keeping "old" media in play respects accessibility and reduces digital exclusion.

Builds on Chapter 3 interviews illustrating sensory practice & persona use.
Reinforces Ong’s and McLuhan’s media theories on external technologies shaping cognition.
Aligns with Extended Mind & Embodied Cognition frameworks: tools + body + environment = thinking system.

Coe: "It is nearly an insoluble pancake."
Palmeri: Writing is "an act of translation from the multimodal mind to the alphabetic page."
Deleuze & Guattari: "Any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other…".
Hayles: Unconscious as "perceptive capacity that catches the abundant overflow…"

Can you name & define the five components of the model?
Provide two examples of remediation (old ➔ new media) from the chapter.
Explain "inner auteur" using a personal experience or hypothetical scenario.
Outline ethical implications of techno-centrism vs. tool pluralism.
Recite one statistical or numerical reference (e.g., 200,000:1 information ratio).