The Lit Mag Goes Mobile: "Electric Literature" Debuts Short Fiction for Your iPhone

In lieu of a longer reflection today, I'd like to draw your attention to some big news for poetry and lit, the mobile web, and this blog: Electric Literature has announced the creation of a bi-monthly electronic literary magazine.

The big news is that Electric Literature will be the first lit mag to be published to the iPhone, but I think the real gem here is that the publication will cross a number of media: there will be print, e-book [with a Kindle version specifically as well], and iPhone versions, with different pricing to subscribe to different versions of the mag.

This kind of cross-platform innovation really captures the zeitgeist of the literary world right now, which is why they're able to attract big name authors like Michael Cunningham. They lay out their whole raison d'etre in the About section of their site. [This is where they also, unfortunately, assert that the project will only include short fiction, at least for now. Here at PT we'll keep our fingers crossed for a poetry equivalent to come along soon!]

The makers of Electric Literature seem pretty confident that this is the direction most publications will be moving in the future, and I tend to agree, especially since they include the [albeit, more expensive] option of a print version. What do you think? Is this a portent of a mobile lit movement to come? Sound off in the comments.

Microblogging a Novel: A Review of WriteSomething.net

Sometimes an everyday item just needs a little tweak to be turned into poetry. The folks over at Writesomething.net have done just such a tweak. They've taken a very familiar microblogging platform and turned into a novel collaborative writing tool.

When you arrive at the site, you see simply a stream of words and phrases in paragraph format with a box for input at the bottom, and a button that says publish. Type anything you want in the box and it will be added to the stream. Sounds like Twitter, Friendfeed, and Identi.ca, right?

Well, there's a twist. The posts at Writesomething.net are intended to be read as a continuous book, not as individual "tweets" or "comments." Anything that goes in the box, whether it be overtures of love to Johnny Depp, political commentary, everyday observations, or even spam, becomes part of this now 3,500 page book. What comes out is a strange but intriguing cacophony of ideas, bordering on the nonsensical.

Many writers describe their own process as merely throwing words down on a page to see what becomes of them. This is the same, but thousands of writers are participating rather than one. A simple chain e-mail or spam message becomes part of a longer commentary on culture. Teen fads are juxtaposed  with comments about what it must be like to be a cat.  In a postmodern landscape, a project like this points out how ridiculous a notion it is that writing should make sense, and its all-inclusive approach really makes us stop and think about what constitutes a "book" in the traditional sense.

In a world of real-time updates and constant back-and-forth, Write Something asks the question: What if this worldwide communication system isn't a conversation at all, what if it's one continuous story that we're all making together?

A Literary Peace Offering

Unfortunately, there’s just not the time today to do the kind of review of the Touch Poet app that I wanted. So as a consolation prize, here’s a great video about online publishing and some related links:

You can also literally register your interest in Author 2.0 here. And I recommend that you follow aptly-named Joanna Penn, the brain behind this operation, onTwitter.

I wish you all a great weekend, and keep writing!