Join in Penguin's collaborative online novel

Penguin has launched an innovative online project for creative writing enthusiasts. While it's still too early to determine whether or not it will work, I think it's a great idea. And good on Penguin for taking a risk and doing something different.

A Millions Penguins (www.amillionpenguins.com) is basically is a collaborative wiki-based creative writing exercise. It's a collaborative novel that anyone can write, edit or read. So budding novelists should definitely take a look.

This experimental novel will be online for at least six weeks (it was launched last Thursday) and Penguin says it's the first "wiki novel" to be started from scratch by a major publishing house.

Of course, when you throw open the doors to the world to collaborate on a novel, you risk it becoming a dog's breakfast. However, there are of course rules and guidelines - and no doubt an ever-vigiliant community trying to ensure a good product results. Judging from the success of Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia written and edited by citizens of the world, the finished product could surprise us all.