The preceding discussion tells us a lot, of course, about one person’s multimedia writing process, and, at the moment, very little about multimedia composing processes in general.  But I think we can gather a few relatively germane observations from it: first, it tells not what my multimedia writing process is like, but also what I am like as a multimedia writer.  It shows, to varying degrees, elements of self-criticism, rhetorical awareness (at varying levels of sophistication), as well as something of my persona as a writer.  It shows a writer who is serious about creating “collages’, yet who is still largely tied to a long textual tradition.  It shows someone who is interested in visual rhetoric, but who is as yet more “street smart’ than formally tutored in visual rhetoric.  It shows an inveterate tinkerer interesting in “looks”; a multimediator who may need to invest more time and thought, perhaps, in the possibilities of what Elizabeth Daly asserts is the ability “the multimedia language of the screen” to [construct] complex meanings independent of text” (34).

 

It is temptingly easy to quote Murray once again when he wrote, in 1972: “All writing is experimental” (6) and then to echo that with “all writing processes are experimental.”  If we believe that a piece of writing, alphabetic or multimediated, stands as “finished” only in relation to the versions of it that came before, and is necessarily tentative in relation to those that (may) follow it,  i’d like to suggest that perhaps all representations of writing, particularly of the writing process, are experimental as well.  

 

In any case, as I hope is obvious, this model demands—as any process model should, and as Donald Murray’s model certainly generated--dialogue, refutation, complication, adaptation, renegotiation, and growth.  We need to observe and analyze the multimedia composing processes of a wide variety of individuals and more practiced newmediators of so-called “digital immigrants” and “digital natives” (Prensky 1-2).  We can broaden the inquiry beyond this nonscientific and admittedly idiosyncratic reflection toward more systematic and observable studies, and ask questions such as the following:

 

•    What are the multimedia composing strategies of so-called “digital natives” in comparison with “digital immigrants?”

•    What kinds of strategies do each of these groups employ?

•    To what extent, and for which groups, is the composition process governed primarily by text or by non-text media?

•    Do multimedia-composing processes differ by gender?  If so, how?

•    How are multimedia composing processes substantively altered by the tools and technologies used?

•    How do multimedia composing processes change according to specific academic or professional fields, assignments, and

•    How do teachers instruct students in multimedia composing processes (as compared to discrete techniques)?

•    How do different kinds of multimedia composers

•    Should (a) multimedia writing process model(s) be part of a writing pedagogy, and if so, what form(s) should it (they) take?  Indeed, how are teachers already employing multimedia-writing process in their own pedagogy?

 

Many of these questions are being explored already; more need to be generated.  In doing so, we push the model, as we should, beyond its boundaries, perhaps to new conceptions of new models, and in so doing gain a firmer understanding of just what it is that we actually do when we newmediate, and cast some light on still-tentative nature of ways of teaching writing that go beyond traditional text.