Lost in ‘Austen for Twitter’
The Austen Project on Twitter, which began on 8th February 2011, is proving to be huge fun. It’s the brainchild of Austen enthusiasts Adam Spunberg and Lynn Shepherd, who is also one of my Austen Authors colleagues.
The wonderful story line, A Ball at Pemberley, was selected from a number of suggestions submitted by Austen fans around the world. The list of characters contains not just the perennial favourites from Pride & Prejudice, but also heroes, heroines and ‘wastes of flesh’ (thank you, Jack Caldwell!) from the other novels.
Every Tuesday, we continue the story in pre-allocated 15-minute slots. Challenge #1 was to remember my Twitter login details - because, until now, I’ve hardly ever tweeted. Challenge #2? Catching up with the story so far - my slot is usually evening UK time, 10 hours or so into the tweeting session. Bit tricky to read everything between getting home after a day’s work and sitting at the PC ready to tweet. Which contributes to Challenge #3 - Not Losing the Plot …
In the very first week, knowing that Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby were on the cast list, I tweeted Marianne’s thoughts about meeting up with Willoughby again - blithely unaware that a previous tweet had implied that Willoughby was a stranger to all those gathering at Pemberley for the ball.
Hmmm. Fortunately, my friend Jane Odiwe tied up this loose thread the following week!
Anyone can join in with this fantastic collaborative project - all the information you need is here. It currently involves over 50 contributors across 14 countries and several time zones.
Media interest is growing, and who knows what direction the story will take now that Richard Armitage, ‘King’ Colin Firth and Hugh Grant have put in an appearance?
