Tit for tat: what digitization means to the writing process

This post is among several recently that have questioned what changes in media formats mean for the writing process. How will writers contend with e-books and vooks? Do they change the writing process?

The implication is often that new forms will facilitate a poor quality of writing. Me, I'm not so certain that the digital formats are a threat to quality writing, but I understand the concern. Digital formats seem to be occurring in a less organic way than we're used to. Typically new formats evolved as writers push and stretch standard forms until someone breaks the barriers alla "The Wasteland" or "Ulysses." Certainly, in the cases of vooks or kindle, the experiment seems to have come before the experimenter. But this was also the case with the Gutenburg press.

Do writers who create in the new formats suffer a creative crippling because of e-structures? The writing process has always and will always take form into account. A writer does not approach an essay in the same way a novella. Structure carries its own set of restrictions and opportunities that influence the final product. Kindles and blogs are no different.

Perhaps what unnerves us is the sudden onslaught of so many new types of final products, so many new considerations. But I have faith in our literary craftsmen. A new format will not change a writer's intention. Regardless of available formats, a writer choices to produce lead or gold. Perhaps because big publishing houses are transitioning with best-sellers and pulp-style writing, we get the impression that this type of writing will set standard. Well, that's their standard for the old formats, too.

But the steps between a writer or (an indie publisher) vastly decrease with the new formats. Costs shrink, and visibility rises in a way that begging a corporate bookstore for shelf time never accomplished. So perhaps, ebooks and kindles can encourage unestablished writers. Whether or not they strike it big, their literary children can enter a world that was previously an impossibility.