Crap art gains on the Web

NEW YORK: After a month of writing and doing little else, Ryan Dunsmuire's wrists are sore and her back aches. But she's got something few would-be novelists can boast: a completed 50,000-word manuscript.

It's the fifth year of National Novel Writing Month and Dunsmuire, a 36-year-old graphic artist in New York, has participated every year. This year, 21,000 novelists from all over the world took part, agreeing to start with a blank screen on November 1 and upload no less than 50,000 words to the National Novel Writing Month Web site, http://www.nanowrimo.org/, by the end of the month.

"It's actually kind of fun, despite the fact it's torturous," Dunsmuire said, adding that the idea for her historical novel set in Scotland, "Dornsoch Firth Aye!" came to her as she stared at the label on a bottle of single malt whisky.

National Novel Writing Month, known as "NaNoWriMo" is one of the best-developed examples of the growing "instant art" or, less delicately, "crap art" movement gaining steam on the Web. The idea is that the greatest impediment to artistry is simply getting past the first word, note or brush stroke, and a host of sites help artists take that leap and develop a market for their work.

Not that selling a novel, painting or recording is the goal here.

Chris Bray, 30, founder of NaNoWriMo, helps keep it in perspective: "The real prize is you have this manuscript you can wave in the face of anyone who ever doubted you."

A natural outgrowth of the thousands of manuscripts generated every year is NaNoEdMo, or National Novel Editing Month at http://www.nanoedmo.com/. Founded by NaNo devotee and staffer Lauren Ayer, NaNoEdMo participants commit to completing 50 hours of "solid editing, revising or rewriting -- roughly enough time for one banzai edit of a 50,000 word novel," all in 31 days of March.

But instant art isn't just for would-be novelists. Instant visual artists also have their own enabler, support group and cheerleading section at http://www.artbytheinch.com. Like the NaNos, Art By The Inch gives one month as a timeframe and encourages artists to complete at least 10,000 inches (163,870 cm) of art in four short weeks.

But it gets more extreme.

Carnegie Mellon University graduate student Tom Murphy challenges musicians to write, record and mix an entire album in one 24-hour period "preferably with no sleep breaks in-between."

Murphy founded the Crap Art project at http://crapart.spacebar.org/add/ and is busy perfecting the movement's manifesto. But why 24 hours?

"The idea is to force constraints on the artist and to get away from the writer's block that you can be faced with when you try to create the perfect artifact," Murphy said. "It gives you a good kick in the pants to get something done rather than sitting around and agonising about it."

The album must be 20 minutes in length or 30 songs. The band must have multiple members, and no out-takes, covers or reinterpretations are allowed.

So far 78 completed albums have been registered including Spastic Moose's "Then Come The Chunks," Patrick Shaughnessey's "Funeral Songs of Happy Cloudland" and Tom 7's "Testify in Hockey."

Just as daunting, Scott McCloud, author of "Understanding Comics," urges comic-book artists to churn out a 24-page book in a 24-hour period at http://www.scottmccloud.com/. So far 300 books have been uploaded.

Instant art is, almost by definition, art only the creator would love, but there are exceptions. Several published novels have emerged from NaNoWriMo and book agents now trawl submissions for sparks of promise.

NaNoWriMo participant Lani Diane Rich says she wrote the "worst novel ever written" this year, but that's what she said last year when her novel, "Time Out for Good Behavior," about "sassy 30-something" heroine Wanda Lane, was optioned by Warner Books.

She credits NaNoWriMo with allowing her to write crap. Along the way, she said, "I ended up writing some of the better stuff I've ever written.

© Reuters