February 1st, 2007
Q: How many people does it take to write a novel?
A: Thousands, perhaps. At least according to a new initiative by Penguin called A Million Penguins.
“Penguin is launching its first wiki and in a project called A Million Penguins we’ve created a space where anyone can contribute to the writing of a novel and anyone can edit anyone else’s writing. Over the next six weeks we want to see whether a community can really get together, put creative differences aside (or sort them out through discussion) and produce a novel. We honestly don’t know how this is going to turn out - it’s an experiment. Some disciplines rely completely on collaboration, while others - the writing of a novel, for example - have traditionally been the work of an individual working in isolation.
Organised chaos or inspired communal project? You decide.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I love wikis for my work and I love Wikipedia for the breadth of information but it looks like Penguin haven’t learned the lessons of Wikipedia.
I predict it’ll degenerate into edit->change->change_back wars just like on Wikipedia on the controversial pages where they eventually had to lock them down.
Imagine you’ve spent four weeks writing a masterpiece chapter for the wiki-novel and then Cecilia Ahern comes along and chick-lits it on you.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I don’t know how to do any of that edit->change->change_back stuff but if I did I’d take ‘it’ out of that last sentence there and cliam the coinage of a new bit of rhyming slang. ‘Celia Chick-Lits on you’ could start a whole wave of exploitation movies.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Conor, I agree, I can see it being a free-for-all bloodbath, but I’m so curious to see how it all turns out.
I think Conor’s really onto something there, but I like Colin’s edited version. To ‘chick-lit’ on something, well, there could be some rhyming slang in there.
February 6th, 2007 at 8:29 am
They could do the resulting book like those teenager ones in the early 80’s where you had multiple different routes through the book. Or maybe not.
I can’t get Samuel L Jackson out of my head “Ahm gonna chick-lit yo ass mofo”.
Or even Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness “Klaaatu baraada chick-lit”.