I was sittin' at home today, mindin' my own dern business, when Bill and Bob ( Environmental reporters for the Everett Hairball newspaper; 'news the Herald wont print') came up to my front door. Rolling my eyes, I was thinking 'now what is it!' as I answered the door.
The guys barged right in, as usual - they seemed pretty excited.
"Hey Boss", Bob said, " do we got some news for you! Folks are putting up Wanted posters with your name on 'em, all over!"
The notion of Wanted posters with me on 'em made me immediately nervous. "What the heck are you talking about!", I asked. "All over where, exactly?"
"Don't worry too much Boss" Bill reassured me, " they're" not really posters, just post's - you know, on Tweeters. I guess some folks on there want something from you. Guess you posted 'em something they liked and now they want more of it- even just re-runs."
"Oh great, more work", I sighed.
"Now don't get all whiny there, lazy pants" Bob said. " You were askin' for attention, and now you got some. Besides some of those folks said they'd pay money to read your stuff."
"Money?" I replied, perking up considerably, "How much?"
"Hey, how would I know! Don't start gettin' greedy now" Bob say's, "and besides, me and Bill are just here to help, 'cause there seems to be a growing posse looking for you. We think you should just turn yourself in before it's too late. In fact we'll stand right here while you send the email".
So here we all are, as I turn myself in to interested Tweeters. First, I'd like to thank all the folks who have been supportive of my writing over the years -it is nice to have an audience, after years of writing to myself. To answer the questions, which various folks have asked over the years:, no I never have been published, nor do I have a blog of my own, my only current outlet is pretty much tweeters. So far I've avoided getting in any trouble, as far as I know.
Why tweeters? Because tweeters is interesting, and easy. Because I think of my posts as simple emails , I am freed of the constraints of writing to publication standards, which you perfessional writers and readers would notice that I don't quite meet, with my sometimes fractured sentences, and funky punctuation. Etc. All that perfessional stuff takes time of course, so I write my stuff in a straight- through- all- at once manner, hoping for general clarity of thought and image- then I hit the send button and discover the mistakes later. So my stuff needs a bit of tweaking, and some I'd like to rewrite if published. Wouldn't be too hard.
I've had a number of requests that I publish my posts somehow, which is a great general idea, the specifics and options of how to I'm pretty ignorant of. Could it be done online somehow? Or somehow cheaply - I think of my old copy of Wahl and Paulson's A Guide to Bird -finding In Washington, mimeographed, in a cheap three hole binder. I've had mine since 1972 and it's doing just fine. Cheap is good because i'm broke.
Got any ideas? Thanks for offers to help with this idea, and particularly the recently formed 'posse' for herding my thoughts in this direction. Thanks to Debbie, Mary, Dianna, Barb and Carol especially. If anyone has any more ideas or questions contact me directly offsite . Thanks!
Jeff Gibsonamateur writer, naturalist, etc.Everett Wa