#DigiWriMo: Turning Spam into Stories

The Spam King

Whenever Terry Elliott comes a-knockin’ on the blog and finds something worth commenting on, I get a special treat: He takes whatever the spam filter spits out (words to make sure you are human, human) and turns it into a little story or fake explanation or sentence or something.

It occurred to me that what Terry is doing is telling stories in a way thatĀ could only happen in a digital space where you arrive only a visitor (I am logged into Edublogs so I never see the spam filter when commenting on other Edublogs spaces). In effort to honor Terry as spam writer, I gathered up some of his more recent “stories” and published them in Notegraphy.

Read the Collection of Spam Stories as left by Terry Elliott at my blog.

I suspect Terry doesn’t even remember most of these, as they were written not just “in the moment” but in the brief interlude after writing another comment on another topic altogether. Here, too, is an element of digital writing: if we are not collecting and curating our writing, how does it exist beyond the moment it is written and posted?

And, would we honor this kind of writing in our classrooms? Would we “see it as writing”? I highly doubt it. But outside the school? Definitely. So, how do we resolve this expanding definition of what writing really is? In many ways, this is the underlying essence of Digital Writing Month, right? What does it mean to write digitally and how do we honor the unexpected writing that emerges from writing with technology?

Meanwhile, Terry has cordoned off a space at the Digital Writing Month site for experimenting and riffing off various ways to use media to write. He’s “talking through” his process of writing and making digitally. Check out what he is working on. Get inspired. Write and Connect.

Peace (and thanks to Terry),
Kevin

One Comment
  1. You are so prolific I missed this completely. I have moved toward story in these nano-texts to you. I think I started out just trying to be a smart ass. Interestingly I ran into this as I begin a hackpad on a #Digiwrimo Manifesto which was inspired by a Maha Bali post. Here is the Hackpad if you wanna add some digitality to it: https://hackpad.com/A-DigiWriMo-Manifesto-shsym1mvT2b

    Antispamimanifesti: After his second wife died, Mr. Premiere decided that she would simply go by the name, “Mrs. 3d”. Whe she died he decided that his next wife would be called “the 2d Mrs 3d” and so one. The last Mrs 3d made it her goal in life to make him the “Mr Ultimate Last Premiere”.

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