Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Aside from novels being presented via blogging software (such as Alex Golub's and my own, there are actually a number of projects using the blog format as their basis. Some are listed here, and there's also Plan B.

The best blognovels though (whether a blog can actually be a 'novel' or is necessarily a different form... I'll leave that question alone for now) might be the ones that don't reveal themselves as such, I think.

Steve, thanks. I replied back in the main body of my blog.

Bridget Jones' Diary probably could have been (should have been ??) a blog. Some of it is sorta like low-wattage RageBoy from a female point of view ?

Of course there is Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross' new venture where they are collaborating publicly through a blog in order to write a short story. Not a novel, but at least it's something.

Something that I'm working on is a blog written by a person living in the first settlement on Mars. Still a brand new project, I haven't gotten into the flow of it yet. Also I have never before written fiction, and I'm not a wonderful writer in any case. But I thought the idea would be interesting so I'm pursuing it.

I'd actually rather read Tom Sawyer's blog. I somehow suspect that he'd let a lot of secrets slip over time...that we'd see a side of Tom that Twain never wanted to us to know about. :-)

Ah, I misunderstood what you meant, David. I'm surprised, too, that we haven't seen more blogs like that. Halley actually had a really interesting idea for a project like that--has she told you about it? I started one, but it was less than successful. The spontaneity of the blog and the planned qualities of fiction felt very much at odds for me, but I've been trying to find a story that better leant itself to the form.

Dear Owen was really innovative, I thought, in the way it sought (seeks? it seems to be finished) to combine characters and an overarching storyline with current daily linking. I haven't seen anyone else do quite that yet.

I think the best would be dual blogs from Jeeves & Wooster.

That would be great, Michael. Also, archy & Mehitabel were born to blog.

Who are 'archy & Mehitabel' ?

Werther would have made a good blogger. It's not like anyone ever answered his letters anyway.

archy was a cockroach who borrowed writer Don Marquis' typewriter at night to hop out his own stories, all lowercase since he couldn't manage the shift key. Mehitabel was a cat, and his best friend. Their stories ran first as a column in the New York Evening Sun, then were collected into some very funny books.

Funny,
I just discussed this with some other danish bloggers, as an off topic topic, when we were talking about blogging in danish or in english.
I'm currently working on a novel, and I am considering doing it "in the open", but I havn't found the right format.
I could write a fictional blog.
I could build a (number of) webpage(s) as the fictional "world".
I could put the novel online and open a "workshop".
The thing is that I feel more comfortable writing in danish, and my current blog is nonfictional and in english (well - sort of).
I don't really have the perfect solution.

But I'm quite sure that new art forms will spring from blogging - and especially from collaborative social software. I use Drupal as my software, which provides me with a "collaborative book" module. I'm still considering a good use for that.

I think Emily Dickinson would make a great blogger

-- she wouldn't ramble
-- she never left her room anyway
-- she'd have one helluvan interesting blogroll

But could she muster enough words for a novel? That's a tough one...

Epistolary novels are nearly blogs already. Richardson's _Pamela_ (1741), for instance, is a live, updated, to-the-moment account.

We have one example already out there, too, in the Pepysblog: http://www.pepysdiary.com/ .

Friends, I've got a literary blog. It's about my life, but it's more episodic tales than a diary, Viewer discretion is advised.

I'm surprised there aren't more of these things around. I recently started a blog novel, www.sparrowsfart.blogspot.com, and I've got a couple of others (3 so far) listed on the site. I'm yet to come across one that lasts, I suspect people don't get the readers as quickly as they would like and chuck it in.