How to Compose like a Digital Writer

What it means to infomate

To be a digital writer, you must infomate.

Okay, that’s a weird word.

“Don’t you mean informate?” Wait, that’s weird, too.

No, I meant infomate … one of the most useful words I’ve found to describe the digital writing process. Back in the 1990’s, writing scholars saw the potential for hypertext to revolutionize how we think about the digital writing process, but only if we see text in new ways.

Johnson-Eilola and Selber (1996), two well-known writing scholars, identified two ways of treating text.

Automating relies on conservative ideas about text based on print metaphors. Automating tools and processes collect, index, and organize content hierarchically. This is a static and linear model of composing.

Infomating involves the construction and deconstruction of content or information, often using network and remix metaphors for understanding text. This is a fluid and cyclic model of composing.

Jeff Rice (2007), another writing scholar, describes it in this way:

For me, these definitions of how information comes together and breaks apart, of how information works with other information in order to transform, displace, or move along ideas, aptly describe the new media experience of composing. (p. 307)

Of course, we need both forms of writing, but to be a digital writer, you must be comfortable with infomating. This means:

• being comfortable breaking apart texts.

• relishing incomplete thoughts and texts.

• understanding how pieces of text can be fit together in different ways.

• not always knowing the answer, or even the topic, before sitting down to write.

• being open to new ideas or new directions as you write.

• being playful with language, text, and content.

It’s tempting to stay in our automating mode. After all, that is how we are taught write. It feels safe and comfortable. But if you’re going to be a digital writer, you’ll need to learn how to play with text … you’ll need to infomate.

Also see:

3 Ways Roam Research is Postmodern
lancecummings.medium.com

A Postmodern View of Journaling
lancecummings.medium.com

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