Can writing be collaborative?
“The buzz these days is all about the network, the small pieces loosely joined. About how the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. About how working together and joining the dots serves the greater good and benefits our collective endeavours.
This is undoubtedly true in many fields. Software is rarely written in a vacuum and indeed the “open source” movement is built on the premise that collaboration is the only way to get bugs spotted and move forward. Scientific research, too, is more often than not a collaborative activity - and peer review is key to checking and honing the development of scientific ideas.
However, is the same true in artistic fields? We are used to the romantic notion of the artist or the novelist working alone in an attic room, or in the shed at the bottom of the garden…” - “About the Project,” A Million Penguins
It’s true. We are used to the romantic notion that a writer writes by himself, writing is a solitary act. This is the notion we have all been accustomed to.
But let’s think about it. The project that De Montfort University in
I think it can be. Writing can be collaborative, and it has been, and continues to be. Look at all the writings done for the media industry, screenplays have been written by more than one people, and television shows have been writing by teams of people. Look at SNL, they have a team of writers every week coming up with new writings. The fact is that collaborative writing happens all the time out there, and it works. But I guess a better question is, the one that A Million Penguins brings up, is can a novel be written in this way? Can a group of writers sit down in a room, or come together online, to write a novel? Looking at this “wiki” style novel, where anyone can add anything at anytime, the end product is interesting. It’s quirky, strange, but it does produce a work of writing in the end. How does one say if it is successful or not? What makes it successful?
When it comes to collaboratively writing for a novel, it is an intriguing idea. And I think it holds a lot of potential. Sure it holds the potential to be tricky, as multiple people have different ideas on where the novel should go and that could conflict. But the potential to bring those two ideas together and somehow work creatively to merge them and conform them into something bigger and better is tremendous. Two brains are better than one they always say. So why not let them make a novel together?
Check out A Million Penguins project at: amillionpenguins.com
1 comment:
I think you raise interesting points about whether or not writing can be a successful collaborative process, and while I agree that some writing can be a collaborative process and still be successful, I still have some questions about writing collaboration and the Wiki novel. You cited certain collaborative writing - such as SNL, etc.- that is successful, but it makes me wonder if this is true of literature. Is the writing for a program like Saturday Night Live literature? Is the Wiki novel literature? I guess what I'm really wondering is this - is literature able to be written collaboratively?
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