Introduction: "What Is Creative Making As Creative Writing?"

This special issue of the Journal of Creative Writing Studies centers on how creative writing changes when writers actively engage computers as nonhuman collaborators in “creative making.” Using examples from McGurl’s The Program Era, Emily Dickinson, and the crowdsourced “translation” of Melville’s classic into Emoji Dick, Berens suggests that creative writing methods have long been procedural and technologic. There are many forms of creative making. This special issue features creative writers that • Write code to output novels • Redefine how we think of writing’s “container” • Demonstrate aspects of the digital-first, multimodal writing classroom • Modify or remix existing artworks Berens supplies three modes to preview the issue’s 11 essays: a word cloud of the 45 most frequently occurring words, thematic clusters, and narrative descriptions of each essay. These modes of reading prompt consideration of tradeoffs we make between speed and precision when we read in online environments. A note on open access publishing, and suggestions for further reading about the role of electronic literature in creative writing studies, conclude the essay