Once again, Penguin Books UK is being innovative and grabbing some publicity in the process. Here's the latest from Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher, on the Penguin blog:
"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."
You can find out more about the project here. I don't think it'll result in a work of great literature (and because people can edit each other's contributions it's sure to cause some frustration and feuding), but it can be fun, and for some people a way to ease into writing and build their confidence so they can get started on their own projects.
