If you love the idea of NaNoWrMo (write a novel in a month) you might want to sign up for the NOVEL project. Three authors will be locked into transparent cubicles for a month with no contact with the world (well, a phone call to a friend and a public reading each Saturday and dinner with each other each evening) but with the world peering in at them. At the end of the month they’re supposed to present a novel of at least 125 pages. What a horrible idea.
5 thoughts on “NOVEL”
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torill
This is almost as thrilling as my big brother idea: collect a group of scholars, give them limited access to resources such as computers, paper and reading material in order to make them earn it, and then reward them with food, wine and different excesses for the best papers produced at intervals during the 100 days locked up in the bunker. Wouldn’t that be nasty and paranoid?
Jill
Wouldn’t this be a satisfying way of teaching, though? You would be QUITE SURE that the students weren’t wasting their time having fun or working for pay instead of writing their papers. You could walk past the cage every day or two to smile and wave, and yes, little rewards and some healthy competition for food, computer time and so on a la Survivor.
I know some MA students I might do this to if they’re not careful 😉
Elin
You know…. I’d do it! Wouldn’t it be liberating to have nothing but ONE thing to do – and at the end – you’d have your novel! And the dinner each night…it would be social?
Jill
Well, uh, but I’D GO MAD! I mean, yes, I like and need time alone but if I spend more than two days at home working with no adults and nothing but a phone call I get cabin fever. I dunno that a dinner a night would be enough.
I think you should volunteer!
Norman
Sadly we see this theatrical trivialisation of writing occurring at the same time that society moves increasingly to education systems which operate on the opposite approach. We encourage/permit/turn a blind eye to students who use others’ work and effort to gain “qualifications”. I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about an author’s work not being his own; but I do worry about the long term implications for Western Society, of large scale “legitimised cheating”.