Coming up short in the relay

Having seen the adverts in the paper over the weekend it finally seemed like a good idea to log on and see what the collective efforts of writers contributing to the Guardian's relay story has produced.
So far there have been four writers, out of a total of ten which will contribute, and at the rate they are going it is going to be one of the shortest books ever written even before you get into the content. It reminds me of something we did at school and some people only contributed one sentence not for fear of developing plot and character in a way that could not be picked up by someone else but because simply they could not be bothered. Which of those is the driving motivation in this case is hard to say.