Another million penguins

So, have you been to visit A Million Penguins, Penguin’s “collaborative, wiki-based creative writing exercise” yet? I highly recommend it, although they hardly need my linkages, because they’re getting up to 10 hits per second and 100 edits per hour, apparently. Which makes writing anything about their content (of which I’ve read a fair bit over the course of today) pretty pointless.

As you may know, I have a small interest in online fiction myself, and one which I’m developing further this year (of which project I will write more in the coming weeks), so I’m really interested in how it all develops at Penguin. I reckon it is really exciting, and it gives writers and readers a lot of new opportunities.

What is there to learn at this early stage? The experiment is grappling with a number of closely related issues. Its absolute enormity is one, and one which they probably talked about beforehand. I’m sure they knew it would be popular (tho they might not have imagined they’d get as many hits as some p0rn sites). I have often thought of asking one or two people to join my blogopera to keep it going, but a million…that really is a lot of people. When I called my blogopera ‘adelaide sprawls’ it was a way of acknowledging the potential for the structural sprawl of fiction, a sprawl which is of course magnified when there are so many authors. Can there be any hope for a cohesive narrative? Does it matter? Of course, that’s what they’re trying to find out.

If it is to be a story of some sort, then there is going to have be a bit of give and take by writers. You might need to surrender your own brilliant idea for the common good. I have no doubt this can be done (just call me Pollyanna), but I do wonder if it’s a bit of a problem having such an experiment conducted by a major publisher.

In one of his early blog posts on the project, Jon, the guy from Penguin providing the running commentary on the developing story says “the wikinovel experiment is not a place to prove to Penguin we should publish your book”. Is that gonna cut the mustard? There is still gonna be a lot of people more interested in showing their individual talents than their ability to collaborate on a wiki.

Still, enough people are taking it on in the right spirit (edit: perhaps that should be enough people want to take it on in the right spirit, there does seem to be a lot of argy-bargy going on), and even in these early days, I’ve read a couple of great posts and am greatly enjoying watching it all unfold – if you do go over there, don’t forget to look at the discussion. It is, I think (and as I’ve already said), an extremely interesting development for both writers and readers.

And if you do want to join the fun, don’t forget to read the terms and conditions, in particular “By posting your submission on the Wiki Novel and the Site, you grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, distribute and display any content you submit to us in any format now known or later developed. If you do not want to grant us these rights, please do not submit your content to us”. It will be the basis for an interesting law exam question in a few years I expect.

Australia Day meme

From Pavlov’s Cat
1) Which Australian poem are you most confident you could recite from memory?

Most of the poems I can recite from memory (and I reckon there would be about a dozen, but I’m not going to properly test myself right now) are in my brain because I studied them for exams. Tho now I think more carefully about it, the Judith Wright ones pop into my head more often than the others. Bruce Dawe wouldn’t take too much resurrecting I’m sure.

There are many children’s (picture) books which I could recite from memory, and a lot of them are poetry if not strictly speaking poems. I knew them long before I had children, by the way.

2) Which of the Seven Little Australians are you?

If I can’t be Judy I’m not playing.

3) Which is your favourite Patrick White novel?

Riders in the Chariot. Want to know why? It was one of those ones on my mother’s bookshelf (alongside Doris Lessing, Titus Groan…you get the picture I’m sure), and when I read it at uni, I thought it proved I was all grown up. Pity I didn’t pay more attention to the writing than I did to carrying it around cover out so that everyone could see just how grown up I was.

4) Which is the best Patrick White novel?

Isn’t it supposed to be The Aunt’s Story? I can’t answer this intelligently.

5) Which Australian fictional/dramatic/poetic character do you fancy most?

I fall in love with unattainables pretty easily. Also, I quite like scruffs and ne’er-do-wells. Most of those knockabout lads who went off to war took my fancy. My Brother Jack, 1915 and so on.
6) And which do you identify with most?

This is a bit trickier, isn’t it? When I read A Descant for Gossips I (somewhat melodramatically) imagined myself as Vinny. And of course, I wanted to be Miranda.

7) If you had to read five Australian poems to a heterogeneous unknown audience, which five would you choose?

I would read The Vigilant Heart by Catherine Bateson on the basis of the title alone. I know we are supposed to say poems, but that would mean I would have to go and do a bit of research, so I’m going to say some poets from whose work I would choose: Judith Wright (maybe ‘woman to man’), Les Murray and Henry Lawson. Would it be cheating to say Paul Kelly? His songs have been printed in a book haven’t they?

8) Which five Australian books would you take to a desert island?

The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers and Selected Stories by Delia Falconer, because I haven’t read it yet. I bought it a few weeks ago, and am waiting for just the right moment to start – it is very hard starting new books when your only real chance for reading is just before bed. I think it will be something I will re-read, but don’t know for sure, so in that sense I guess it’s a bit of a risk.

As I said the last time I did a book meme, I would also take some kind of survival book. Also, a book on the local flora and fauna would be very useful and help to pass the time.

PC’s Come In Spinner idea is a very good one, and I have actually been flicking through my copy since I read her blog this morning. Goodness me Rebecca Gibney and Kerry Armstrong have lovely skin, don’t they?

Finally, a really thick biography about a very interesting person. I just finished re-reading The Diaries of Barbara Hanrahan (I read it the less common way – from front to back – rather than by flicking back and forth from the index looking for the juicy bits). Perhaps I would take that.

9) If you were a guest at Don’s Party, would you be
(a) naked in the pool
(b) upstairs having sex
(c) outside having sex
(d) sulking with a headache
(e) huddled round the TV
(f) crying
(g) more than one of the above (please specify)
(h) other (please specify)

I get drunk and cry on election nights. Not sure that I would have been invited to Don’s Party.

10) Tim Winton or Christos Tsiolkas?

Not sure I can do an either/or on these. I have read (I think) everything that Christos Tsiolkas has written – tho probably there are short stories or articles that I haven’t seen. I really enjoyed Cloud Street and Winton’s Lochie Leonard series was good.

11) Banjo Paterson or Henry Lawson?

Henry Lawson.

12) Henry Lawson or Barbara Baynton?

Barbara Baynton.

13) What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen at a writers’ festival?

The prices on the sandwiches and glasses of wine.

Back to school

‘You look tired,’ the mister said. ‘Very tired. And kind of sad.’

Like he could talk, having just returned from a few hours on the tennis court honestly believing that he could put some of Federer’s shots into his repetoire.

But I am very tired. And kind of sad. Not, you know, depths of your soul can’t get off the couch sad. More a slightly self-indulgent woe is me and well, better get over it there’s dishes to be done kind of sad.

It is post-holidays, back-to-school blues.

One thing about school is that I have to start getting up at half past seven again. I am not a morning person. Have I told you that? Nor am I a hot weather person. Such nots do leave only small windows of opportunity for greatness. As the mister asks ‘so what exactly are you – a mid-winter, mid-afternoon person?’ Whatever. Getting up at half past seven tires me out.

I did enjoy the school holidays. For all the usual reasons – the beach, the movies, the baker’s clay and while I do not like playing Connect 4 with an over-competitive 6 year old, mostly I do enjoy the company of my children. Plus, I discovered something I had not anticipated (this being my first school holidays as a parent). For people like me, who work from home the holidays are quite convenient, because during the holidays you are, very often, at home. So is everyone else of course, which does bring difficulties (I’m quite sure Virginia Woolf was not describing a wardrobe when she conceived of a room of one’s own, but I’m here to tell you it can, in fact, work quite well, particularly if the people who lived in the house before you had the foresight to convert a hall cupboard into a large-ish walk in wardrobe). But, if you are able to block out the noise and the mess – as I very often, but not always can – then it is an opportunity to do a tiny bit more work than at other times (yes, yes, putting aside that last undignified moment on Australia Day, the culmination of a full week of martyrdom, I’m sure I’ve apologised for it and anyway it wasn’t totally unjustified and we got a very ordered laundry cupboard out of it didn’t we).

With a return to school, time is much choppier. One of my children is at kindy (or preschool or whatever name you give to that which four year olds do for about three hours a day – can anyone explain to me what is so revolutionary about this thing The Rudder announced yesterday, because be buggered if I can see any difference between it and that which has been going on at least since I was four) and the other is at school. This means that I drop them off at 9, pick one of them up at 11.30, then pick the other up at sometime between 3 and 3.30 (I never have worked out when exactly school finishes).

So, while the kindy year is a golden one in many ways, I’m sure you can see that in terms of me getting any of my work done, this is a HOPELESS arrangement. As I said to the mister some days it makes my heart sing, and on others groan. That’s how life is.

Plus, I am about to turn 38, and I have not made any real plans for this year so I’m feeling a bit floundering and what’s the point and what am I doing with my time/life – but that is a post for another time. Right now, I have to go and catch the bus so I’m not late for kindy pick-up.