This article utilizes the term "digital authoring" in order to explore the ways in which children create multi-modal, digital media texts. Drawing on the notion of "emergent literacy" we share vignettes from different pedagogical and research contexts where children use media to tell stories in different forms with different technologies. These accounts demonstrate the value to children of opportunities to make volitional choices about the mode, media, and form of their own texts. We reflect on moments of authoring in our vignettes which provide insights into the intrinsic pedagogic affordances of cultural practices such as vlogging and video diaries situated as they are, in wider socio-cultural practices. In doing so, we draw on the notion of "playful tinkering" as a key pedagogical approach which recognizes the value of children's volitional engagements with digital media, to their emerging skills and dispositions as authors of digital media texts.