A Million Snowflakes
There are two reasons for the title of this post. The first has to do with why my weekly blog entry is late: your tireless editor has been doing some serious intercontinental travel in the past couple of days and now finds himself in an intensely snowy part of the world - at, no less, the snowiest time of the year. It’s also freezing (-18 c with wind-chill), so I’m keeping myself sane by drinking tea by the log fire and snuggling up with my laptop reading amillionpenguins.
I don’t know how much you know about snow, but it’s said that no two snowflakes are alike. The same, no doubt, can be said about people - and perhaps (judging from the randomness of the prose) in particular you writers of the wikinovel. I was duly dressed down by a couple of well intentioned critics last week for slagging off the lack of plot in the text to date. And while I thought at first that they were just being a bit plaintive, I know see how right they were - and how right, moreover, people were to suggest that traditional ideas of “plot” weren’t wholly useful when it came a project like this. Jeremy, Penguin’s resident Oppenheimer (obviously this experiment is similar in many ways to the Manhattan project), and I were told at one point in Leicester that we were thinking in too linear terms about the possibilities of wikifiction. On our journey back to the Strand (i.e. Los Alamos) we kind of dismissed this as wishful avant-gardism.
But, now that we’re half way in, I’d say that they were right and we were…well, wrong. Do not attempt to read this as a traditional novel. Swim around in it a little, see what you like, read until you get bored. I find I can read in about 10 minute stints, which I reckon is pretty good considering what it’s like. But then again, I can’t sit down and read a lot of well known experimental writing for much more than that anyway.
So forget what I said before. Scribble away my millionritalincases, because it’s very cold and I need cheering up.
Jon
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February 18th, 2007 at 1:30 am
User “Save” made this contribution today (Sunday).
“As a permanently ex-contributor to this project, I just want to express total disappointment and lack of confidence in it. It’s just a big wall of virtual graffiti… I wish this thing would just go away now, instead of encouraging idiocy.”
One wonders how many other contributors have become disenchanted with the site. I can’t understand why the obvious vandals are still allowed to sign in. “The Team” obviously spend alot of time cleaning up the mess left behind by Carlgriffiths. I’m tired of the vandalism sprees of CowardlyBentFruit (I refuse to type ‘that word’) and others.
Here’s a suggestion. Can our educated, literary Penguin Masters create a “Best Of..” link where they place read-only copies of sections that they consider worthy? (They’ll have to debate the meaning of “worthy”.) This can exist along side the esoteric potpourri that we aspiring contributors have come to love and hate.
Penguin CEO: “We can save money. We don’t need editors.”
Jon: “Oh yes we do, just have a look at this!”
February 18th, 2007 at 4:40 am
It is many things. I sense in your post that your are sad about how it has gone and that is sad to read. It is an ambitious experiment and I know from personal experience that forging off into new territory is usually tricky and cohesion comes later after the waters first were tested. I invented a type of experimental narrative and in certain circles have done pretty well as a writer (not wishing to disclose here as I one of many in this thing as was your idea).
Don’t be disheartened. There will be other versions and variations. The juvenile writing is irritating and the glee in defacing by some is inane as can be, but still this is a fascinating experiment. The community aspect and open aspect have not been compromised (be proud of that). The test is underway (pat yourselves on the proverbial back for that ambition and the rare event where a grand experiment gets off the ground at all. Many great minds have had amazing ideas that far eclipsed their known works that just never got their window, their due. This is classic avant garde. And many of us thank you for this.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Jon, I like your suggestion to ‘Swim around in it a little’ in the text. I think that’s a very good way to approach this. I’m curious to know, though, whether you think this is still a novel, or has it become something else?
ps - my colleague posted this Youtube video, which I heartily recommend for anyone trying to grasp the difference between print and digital. It’s very entertaining!
http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/blogs/part/2007/02/the_long_history_of_transliter.html
February 18th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
It was cold. It was snowing. Big Tony sat down and wondered why his name kept changing from Tony to James to Ballooey Benji. He suspected that he was going crazy in the unreality of the life he was choosing to lead. In fact, he could feel the threads of his life unravelling before him. As if he was being erased from the history that he knew, thought, he had. As if he was becoming something altogether less than he had been and yet more at the same time.He wondered about his friend Carlo; or was that his enemy Carlo ? The way Carlo walked, or did he wheel around in his chair unable to use his legs; and was he still called Carlo?
It was all confusing. Where order existed in parts of his mind, there seemed a sounder structure; and no less psychotically unique and semi-random that the larger part of his mind. And yet. Yet he could feel strands being pulled together, as if as quickly as he was unravelling he was being knitted together again.
Like a million hands and minds unpicking a flawed sewing pattern, each with an opinion of how the end result should look. Some content to be part of the machine; others not happy unless the end product bore their name - still others not caring so long as “Elmo was here” could be splashed liberally across the entire product. To those looking in. The psychologists. analyisers, editors and innocents; the whole thing was a mess. As if everything you could be, would be, should be had been exploded Jackson Pollock style. Leaving threads to interpret and onlookers wondering just what exactly is going on. Where does it start? Where does it end? Is it meant to make sense?
And yet Big Tony thought that he kind of liked the whole thing. The energy. The excitement. The freedom and crazyness. All part and parcel of the whole. Even if it ceased making sense more often than any creative simile he could think of in comparison. It was what it was. It was going where it was. Whether he would be there still when judgement came down didn’t really matter. It was what it was. It was entertaining.
February 18th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I would just like to say thanks to all the contributors and organisers of this experiment. It is the first time I have written with the intention of other people ever reading my words. I have learnt a lot over the past couple of weeks. I watched as peoples ideas were gripped, tugged, warped, expanded and sometimes destroyed. I laughed as bananas sprouted throughout the main page and fell on the pallete of my imagination.
For me this whole experience (Im going home.) has been like the first time I took good MDMA. At first my fingers tingled and my mind raced a million miles an hour, i could see a world of possibility like never before and realised it was perfectly acceptable for me to hug my male friends as brothers in public. But reality has a way of finding it’s way back to us like a lost dog. You go to the toilet and can hardly piss, your dick looks like a two year old’s and some agro drunks arrive at the party. That girl whose mouth tasted like strawberries and cinnimon has long since left and what goes up must come down.
So here I sit coming down from amillionpenguins.
It has been a great experience for me, I have even let a few of my friends have a look into my scribble pads and have asked for constructive criticism in the last few days. I dont think i would have done that without first being able to do it here. so thanks.
February 19th, 2007 at 3:03 am
I suppose sadness is only a reaction if one has preconceived expectations about what one wanted the result to be.
February 19th, 2007 at 3:16 am
ps, this may sound terribly arrogant, and sorry if it does, but I share this because in an experiment it is important to look at all data…. but given the nature of the experiment, noting that some have said they have gone off in disgust or disappointment with the way the project has gone, I cannot quite shake the feeling that if this is a microcosm of swirling primordial creativity, that perhaps a process of natural selection is occuring. Those who could not adapt to the necessity of letting go of control, or having the story ‘go their way’ have fallen off the perch…. those who keep hanging in there and can adapt to the ever changing nature of the environment are still here…. those random (vandals) are either hardy viruses or (positively looking) the free radicals of variety that any healthy system needs to prevent replicating itself and losing adaptability…. is this the survival of the fittest… or are we who remain the survival of the craziest.. just a thought
February 19th, 2007 at 4:55 am
dear ConstructionDestruction - you sound stressed.. I know it can be hard to relax.. but I often find that eating a BANANA helps me relax!
February 19th, 2007 at 10:16 am
I think the important thing to remember here is that A Million Penguins is an experiment. It is new. It is different. It is occuring in unfamiliar territory with not one but many distinct voices. It is raising some interesting questions (what makes good literature?) in an unconventional (vis-a-vis “novels”) medium. Whatever happens, A Million Penguins will certainly be a step on the ladder of new media literacy.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Nicht nur die Geschichten, auch die Erzaehlweisen muessen sich veraendern. Book in form of a ball.
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Jess makes a good point.
March 29th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
[…] I know I said this in one of my earlier posts but the whole thing about us thinking it would be a linear book and everyone else telling us that it wouldn’t be, then us secretly getting all high and mighty about it, then realizing we were wrong, is actually pretty important. In fact, what was most successful about this project was its use of the wiki format as a space for a jointly authored text – though the writing isn’t half bad in places. When Jeremy first told me about what he had in mind, I was like, “OK, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You need to find someone smarter.†And to be completely honest I don’t think I really understood what the project was about until about half way through, and even then – or now, for that matter – I may not completely get it. […]