2028 + a million penguins

after blogging about those 100 things to do, i thought i might just pick this up, and actually blog about some of the main projects that buzz my desk these days.

one of it is: the group novel '2028', a joined project of 7 writers from around the world. we started the project about the time penguin started the million penguins - an open wiki novel project. and no surprise, we faced the same questions: "Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door?" (penguins-page)

while going through 2028 again, (and while playing with the idea of starting an open collaborate project in a writing forum), i now revisited the penguin page, and came across the accompanying blog with some noteworthy thoughts on collaborate writing and web events:

"A novel is linear, whereas the essential nature of a wiki is non-linear (you could almost say anti-linear)."

"Collaborative writing projects often work better with smaller, more cohesive groups. This may well be true, but could it also be that the right kind of social creative production environment to facilitate narrative collaboration on this scale hasn't been developed yet?"

"And on the party note, the party went on a little bit too long. But, it's the nature of the web. Somebody down the road was having another party with better booze and everyones gone there."

"I sometimes think we are all being too tender because it's some kind of social experiment. Why not simply apply some of the methods tried and tested that work in other areas of life. A wiki isn't made of fairy dust and the people behind vandalism are simply driven by the same engine that drives the grafitti-ist and the attention seeking child."
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