dilittante - one who dabbles in writing and art
digittante - one who dabbles in writing and art online
In 1998, before 'blogging' was invented, four friends with creative ideas (and less creative day-jobs) got together to explore ways they might support one another in pursuit of said ideas.
"A writing club perhaps?", one suggested. "Nah," said another, "I'm into drawing cartoons."
"A creative clubhouse where we meet weekly?" another suggested. "Won't work," said a skeptic. "We all live on different continents."
Since the skeptic had called them together in the first place, the group asked the skeptic what smarty-pants idea he had to offer.
"Let's launch a magazine for our friends, with each of us contributing a recurring column, series, or cartoon, which I'll convert into this new 'HTML' language and publish online. My hope is that will sustain our creativity enough that we can grow as artists and creators, and explore together how to express ourselves using this new web medium..."
He had made that up on the spot, but it sounded clever to the rest of the group, and so digittante was born.
Since then, digittante has helped sustain the creativity of about a dozen friends who've passed through the publication before launching themselves into more creative day-jobs singing, drawing, and writing. Or not. But at least they still doodle when the boss isn't looking.
The original skeptic behind it all remains, and realized he was more of a 'critical optimist' instead. You can find him on Mastodon.