the internet is like like life - one big 'mashup'

Or maybe that's just my brain when I am feeling really creative and inspired. It was one of those nights where it seems my brain is flooded with ideas and creativity. So when I woke up, I stayed up. And I did a little video and thought about my novel. Blogs have changed the way we read - we expect a rich multimedia experience, and digital publishing is going to revolutionize the way we consume literature not to mention it is turning the the publishing industry on its head. We expect to consume information in a non-linear way. This is fascinating to me because I am trying to organize my book using a Proustian memory model. I am trying to change my book from a linear format to non-linear because that is how memory works. With digital publishing I can do this and...not to mention integrating different media.
My mentor Tom Spanbauer is a purist, and he believes in the words on the page. They should stand on their own. I think he sees pictures as a crutch or that using anything but language can dilute the experience. When I used email in my story and displayed it in email form on the page, he questioned that. Zadie Smith did the same thing in "On Beauty" I pointed that out, and Tom reconsidered. He is a wonderful teacher, and as he says, he learns from his students too.

Will books go away? I wonder what it will look like 5 or 10 years from now. More likely they will become more valuable or fetishistic just as vinyl is favored by audiophiles because as one told me "it is much warmer".

What inspired me? Reading the NY Times and thinking about digital publishing....check this out it is a prototype for digital library that opens November 20th. It is SO cool.
Europeana