A Million Penguins - The More the Merrier

So a couple of months ago I mentioned in this post a secret project, and now launch day is finally here! 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. But with collaboration, crowdsourcing and the 'wisdom of the crowds' being buzz words du jour, we thought we might as well see if these new trends can be applied to a less obvious sphere than, say, software development.

So we've got a team of MA students in to kick things off and seed a community, a Penguin editor is on hand to write regular reading reports on the novel in progress (which we will publish here) and now all we're waiting for is you, dear readers, to fire up those creative juices, leave your egos at the door and get stuck in.

Can a community write a novel? Let's find out.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

Comments

[Jennifer Jeffrey]

Oh, dear. This sounds like barely-controlled mayhem to me. Would a hundred cooks in a kitchen be able to create an edible meal? Not bloody likely.

But we shall see, won't we?

[Anna @ Penguin]

I love this idea but I'm concerned about what it reveals about my own mental state. You see, I am just itching to edit the text into the worst kind of pulp fiction melodrama, interjecting things like 'and then he laughed, manically, at the sink'. But I won't I promise.

Don't know what's come over me.

[Jamie]

Didn't I read somewhere that the Internet disproves the idea that a hundred chimpanzees on a hundred typewriters working for a hundred years could reproduce the works of Shakespeare?

Of course, after twenty years, you're going to have a lot of dead chimps, so perhaps this is a moot point.

[writer]

http://glypho.com has been doing this for a while now. The format is different from wiki, in fact it specifically caters novel writers with its character and plot tools. Will be interesting to see how this experiment goes.

[Raquel]

A Million Penguins… it sounds like a million words marching toward me, like an avalanche of paragraphs full of undisciplined letters, commas, bullets, hyphens, periods and exclamation dots!
Somebody, help me!

[Dave]

This is a great idea! Who cares if the end result isn't perfect - it's a cool way for writers to get together and collaborative.

Shame on the naysayers!

[Dave]

collaborate, not collaborative.

Note to self: read comments before posting.

[facial anomaly]

Check out my new fictional blog journal at

facialanomaly.blogspot.com

let me know what you think

[WILFRED JOHN]

There's lots of things with which I'm blessed,
my problems have been few, but of all, this one's the best.
To have a friend like you. In times of trouble
friends will say, 'Just ask, I'll help you through it.'

But you don't wait for me to ask; you just get up and do it!
And I can think of nothing more
that I could wisely do, than know a friend,
and be a friend, and have a friend like you .

[Saulat Pervez]

Well, I've done this but in a non-electronic style. Over the past two years I've mentored six teenagers in the collaborative writing of a murder mystery in Karachi, Pakistan. Check out our website-in-progress: www.shadesofprey.com. The book will be available through Amazon in February.

[Brian Taugus]

Never give up on wikinovels. It can work. A new one just popped up. http://www.theautobiographyofpain.com