Living
Digital media

This book came together in many places and through my modes. At my office at York University. At coffee shops in midtown and the suburbs of the Toronto area. On a subway train. During many hours at home, in a notebook when I could manage it while my son was finishing online kindergarten.

Composing a digital project is always an emplaced endeavor and rarely without feelings that bubble up, pop, and drift away. The mist of emotion, as Lulu Miller (2015) once put it, is something that surrounds and saturates writing and rhetorical practices, whether we are composing alone or collaboratively with fellow creators. A theory of rhetorical-affective practices underscores the aforementioned idea, stressing that feelings flow between practices and bodies as they (unfold) over months and years—or from invention to delivery and beyond. Through stories, in other words, this book stresses that feelings and bodies of practice are porous and circulatory. As I close this book, then, I want to acknowledge that a theory of rhetorical-affective practices is also porous, with gaps that future scholars might address and/or choose to fill. More simply, these gaps are limitations, which I discuss here and frame under collaboration, revision, and delivery.

This book has fleshed out a theory of rhetorical-affective practices that animate forms of interpersonal circulation in a production cycle. In the main chapters of Living Digital Media, creators speak at length about feelings in relation to collaboration, revision, and delivery—practices that cross physical and digital spaces. Entwining stories of webtexts and game development is a means to shedding light on the common ground and productive differences between two fields of creators. Each chapter ends with conclusions and recommendations for writing studies, and each also includes ephemera about my own practices and feelings. Many practices. Many feelings. Many forms of what I have been framing as circulation before circulation—the circulation that is effable yet often rendered to the background in writing studies and related scholarship.

At this point of Living Digital Media, I turn to future possibilities for deepening and complicating a theory of rhetorical-affective practices through research. Such a theory of rhetorical-affective practices is not definitive. It’s invitational, like much of the work I put forward in our field. With this acknowledgement in mind, I focus here on the limitations of this current project. Because this project underscores rhetorical-affective practices and relationships that animate interpersonal circulation, humans are the focal point.

I have two brief disclaimers:

• The recommendations I offer below may already be in motion by the time this book circulates in the world. This book is a product of working and living in the present moment as a digital creator and editor. My plan all along has been to enact what I research and later write about in some capacity.
• This conclusion does not focus on institutional changes or pedagogical possiblities. The myriad stories of creators' practices as well as those of my own were designed to be practical even as I advanced a theory of rhetorical-affective practivces. Future practitioners and teachers are encouraged to adapt and remix any and all practices featured in the book. They might even consider using this book as a justification for bringing in games and interdisciplinary practitioners to a writing program.

Study Collaboration in Situ

Chapter Two’s stories raise future questions about myriad collaborative arrangements between creators. What do webtext and games development practices feel like in real time? The stories of this chapter are retrospectives on recently published work, shedding light on living delivery. In part due to the pandemic, I simply couldn’t travel to conduct research among and alongside game developers. Developers were situated all over the world, and travel was precarious. As of writing this conclusion, however, pandemic restrictions have been lifted, and travel has been a bit easier. A closer investigation of collaborative webtexts and/or game development seems in order.

I see an opportunity, for example, to revisit Margaret Syverson’s (1994) research method of recording conversations between collaborators over several work sessions, and then drawing conclusions about practices and feelings that stemmed from those sessions. Writing studies and allied fields have developed such methods to study collaborators, but feelings have not been addressed fully. An in situ study of collaborators could reveal “how data and technologies that seem critical can actually put groups into social peril,” as indicated in Nathan Johnson and Meredith Johnson’s (2022) study of affective data technologies at an educational resource company (p. 379). Imagine what we as scholars could learn if we could study the many work sessions of Tim Lockridge and Derek Van Ittersum’s (2020) Writing Workflows. In which ways did their rhetorical-affective practices overlap and collide as a result of interpersonal circulation? I ask the same about Jeremy Tirrell’s and Nathaniel Rivers' ongoing Mechanical Turks, a collaborative project that is on public display yet documented retrospectively.

Following my own reflections about the limitations of Living Digital Media, I note here that a colleague Beth Caravella and I, as of spring 2022, have begun writing collaboratively in virtual reality to explore the affordances and challenges of the virtual for writers. As we do this project, we are recording each session and occasionally streaming our work on Twitch—in essence, inviting publics and fellow writers to discover what goes on in our collaborative space. The following video features an excerpt from a 2022 session, in which our ideas for an essay are interrupted by faulty controllers and user (read: Rich’s) typos, thanks to a lack of a keyboard.

Figure 33
Writing in Virtual Reality

If anything the aforementioned excerpt demonstrates the potential for writers and researchers to document their collaborations in real time. Let me say it more plainly: With many accessible digital tools at our disposal, let’s do a better job of accounting for our crucial collaborations. We can write about these retrospectively, but we can document them in the present moment. These efforts can support future authors who are curious about collaborations and the feelings that persist through interpersonal circulation.

Focus on the Reviewer’s Perspective

The scope of my entire project has been the creator’s perspective, a scope similar to Jim Ridolfo’s (2012) focus on ”practitioner stories.” Interviews with creators revealed much about the rhetorical-affective practices in circulation. However, this project is an exigence for a study of reviewers and their approaches to feedback that later circulates back to editors and creators. How do reviewers engage with a text before or as they write comments? What revisions do they prioritize? I admit that my project overshadowed the work of reviewers and editors because I did not collect screen recordings and multimodal data on the latter. These perspectives are much needed to further illuminate the interpersonal circulation animated by rhetorical-affective practices. Thus, a longitudinal study of webtexts or games that aims to interview all three parties seems in order.

I realize this potential study presents a big ask for writing studies. A study of reviewer comments and editorial board conversations presents ethical challenges and permissions for at least three parties: authors, reviewers, and editors. Editors can simulate those review sessions by inviting recently published authors to participate in roundtables. In the game development world, this ethical challenge is answered by developers who livestream playthroughs of recently finished games and works in progress. Chapters Two and Three shed light, for example, on the developers who stream playthroughs and reviews of games finished during the annual Toronto Game Jam. The conversations that ensue during their playthroughs come off as conversations—lively reviews that circulate immediately between creators and reviewers. Reviewers and those whose works are reviewed know the arrangement. It’s almost as if open house editorial meetings by journals need to parlay into public ”playthroughs” of webtexts and articles. Even if it’s performative insofar as editors are a bit more careful in how they discuss texts with public audiences who are present, such public work would do more than hint at how feedback circulates and revision takes shape before publication.

Tell More Stories of Digital Media and with Writers

My decision to focus on scholars and game developers means I’m eliding numerous areas of digital media production and related delivery methods. Elsewhere, I have written, co-authored, and edited work on digital comics creators (Shivener, 2019; Bahl and Shivener, 2020; Bahl, Figueiredo & Shivener, 2020). Digital comics creation is another rich area of study as well as a robust content area for streamers on Twitch and YouTube. But for the field of writing studies, I recommend that future scholarship turns to writers who stream regularly on these platforms. How do writers across genres and modes feel about streaming, about constantly putting their work and bodies in public? Chapter Three answers this question in relation to game developers, but there are numerous streamers, including myself, who stream and write under categories such as ”Writers” on Twitch and "AuthorTube” on YouTube. In fact, in June 2022, I was invited to participate in WritersCONduit, a free series of panels and talks by writers who livestream on Twitch. Streamers such as WriterGreg, WoeNellyMedia, and SailingOcelot presented on topics such as writing springs, tools, and visual novels, respectively (Writers CONduit, 2022). For me, this event was special because it helped me connect with writers who have much more experience on this platform. The following video features an excerpt from my stream, ”Valuing Slow Writing,” held on June 26, 2022 during the convention.

Figure 34
A Writing Event on Twitch

The rhetorical-affective practices of writers who stream remains a viable research inquiry. And as I’ve noted in this book and elsewhere, Twitch is a dream for writing studies because participants on the platform place their work on public display (Shivener et al., 2022). It’s an expectation of the community. Our field has an appetite for this research because we’re already practicing in this community—and I’m not talking about myself! Writing studies scholars who run the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative are livestreaming their editing practices on Twitch. In July 2022, the initiative’s Twitch channel had less than 20 followers, but their willingness to display how editing works—for and by our field—ought to be celebrated as a public service (WP_Writing). The same goes for Twitch livestreamers such as the Council on Play and Games Studies (CPGSatCCCC) and ScholarsPlay (ScholarsPlay), whose channels apply scholarly lenses to games through play. Participating in or studying these kinds of channels might address the new normal of co-working. It’s as if Twitch is the new coffeeshop for writers.

Final Thoughts

Ellen Nold’s (1975) article ”Fear and Trembling: The Humanist Approaches the Computer” implores teachers of writing to give digital media a chance. It’s not a stretch to claim that many authors are still hesitant about engaging in digital media production cycles, and they might be even more so as they read this book. But consider what scholars told me when they reflected on their practices:

Tim Lockridge: One of the driving factors in why I like this kind of work and why I want to encourage others to do it and make space for others to do it: Because it feels really good when you solve a problem and you make this thing that reflects how you’re thinking about the mediated potential of the message. And that to me is just tremendously satisfying.

Eric (anonymous author): Most of the time revisions are what I despise the most out of a publication process. It’s just the hardest thing to do, but I felt like in many ways this [digital media project] wasn’t that challenging, and I think it was because I could bounce ideas off [my co-author] and she could bounce ideas off me. I think our plan really meshed and worked out in the end.

I still fear and tremble when I edit and compose webtexts, but now I know dwelling in those feelings are commonplace as practices circulate between creators and audiences. They might be barriers to a final draft, but they might also reveal turns and gateways to supportive peers, mentors, tools, and good feelings.