I’M a fan of having a laugh. I’m a fan of short stories and I’m a fan of Twitter.
Late last week I was gripped by an idea that brings the three together and it won’t go away.
Today, I’m back at my desk after a wonderful birthday weekend in Greenwich (influenced in parts by recommendations from the Twitter community – thanks everyone who told me where to go…) and I’m just going to have to get this off my chest.
Inspired by twitchhiker, I want to do something good through Twitter. Sounds simple doesn’t it? And I really hope this is a simple idea that can come off. I feel really nervous posting about it but just won't settle until this is ‘out there’.
So, here we go: Friday March 13 is Red Nose Day this year. I want to get a book of funny writing (I started out thinking short stories but reckon poems and prose could work well too) published to raise money for Comic Relief and would like this to be available before the big day.
Crucially, I want to gather the writing through Twitter.
I’ll tweet calls for submissions, link to this page on Twitter, ask people to help via Twitter, publicise the anthology through the many writers on Twitter and hope to choose the stories to be included with the help of people kind enough to offer their expertise and/or time, again through Twitter.
I’ll set up a blog and a Twitter feed and take it from there. This will follow in the coming days.
The collection of stories can be published on Lulu. When the blogger Troubled Diva did this a couple of years back, he reported that it could be done quickly and easily, with no costs up front.
I've had two ideas so far for the title of the book.
First came Twittershorts.
The second was Twittertitters.
I’ll welcome any better suggestions and have set up a poll below to help pick an attention-grabbing title that hopefully helps persuade people that the proposed book is a) worth publicising b) worth contributing to and c) erm, buying. If you vote for option c, please either leave a comment with your suggestion, email me or send me a tweet.
The journalist, author and editor Louise Bolotin has agreed that she will edit the text before publication. I would *love* to find an illustrator too – so if anyone knows anyone who’d like to help, then please do point them in our direction.
How can we do this? We need to:
1. Choose a name (see poll)
2. Contribute a story/ask others to contribute a story, piece of prose or poem. Help spread the word!
3. Help find an illustrator who’s willing to work on a jacket design and pictures to accompany the works included
4. Publicise the call for submissions (via Twitter, your blog, your media coverage of Comic Relief or Twitter, please?)
5. Choose the stories (I’d love it if anyone with experience or connections in publishing could help with this.) I think the whole thing will stand or fall on the quality of the writing. While it’s a little exciting to get caught up in the fact that hopefully it will be an interesting experiment of what we can achieve with Twitter, I believe the quality of the writing matters most. Please get in touch if you feel you can bring something to this role. I'd like there to be a small but perfectly formed 'expert panel'.
6. Encourage any possibility of celebrity backing. I’m following various celebrity tweeters. One is an absolute favourite of mine but I’m afraid I come over a bit star-struck and the thought of asking Mr Brydon if he could lend his support has me breaking out in a cold sweat.
Perhaps Mssrs Fry and Ross could even tip us a wink, who knows?
Other comic talents on Twitter are:
Simon Hickson from Trevor and Simon
* Please let me know who I've missed, I listed these very quickly. There must be lots more. Me, I'm waiting for Caroline Aherne and Peter Kay but I don't suppose that will happen, even if Geraldine made it for a while.
What level of celebrity ‘endorsement’ am I hoping for?
As I said before, this project’s success will stand or fall on the quality of its writing. And I really hope this can be *new* writing.
Still, these entertainers and writers are masters of their craft and in some cases are vocal and active supporters of Comic Relief. ( I loved Nessa and Bryn's Islands in the Stream on first to oh about 26th viewing.)
It would be wonderful if any 'celebs' could consider:
Contributing
Helping in the selection process
Writing a foreword
And if they don't have time for any of that, possibly supplying quotes about what a bloody marvellous thing the Twittertitters collection is and asking people to put their hands in their pockets to buy it.
7. Flag up anything you think I’ve missed that I should have explained here. Ask me any questions you need answering.
8. Help publicise this post via Digg, Stumbleupon, delicious etc and the resulting book so that it can raise as much money as possible.
Why am I doing this?
It’s been a bugbear of mine for a while that publishers are said to not be that keen on short stories. I’ve written a few myself, I love writing and I’ve had good feedback but have been at a complete loss about what the hell to do with them.
Then it struck me that because of the element of people having to write what they are up to in 140 characters or less I thought that in a way Twitter could be said to prove there is an appetite for short stories. We have short attention spans and both Twitter and short stories fit them nicely.
I’m not thinking that the stories should be 140 characters long. Perhaps 1,400 words would be a good limit to set.
I started off thinking that this would be a good way to get one of my own stories published and I may give it a go, but it will need work on my part to fit the word count. While feedback on my stories has been encouraging, it will be interesting to see how they compare with others and what the selectors think. If I do find the confidence to put my story forward, then I’ll do so anonymously. That book by Troubled Diva for example? I never made the cut.
The ‘small print’
Because it’s a UK charity, I’m a UK writer and frankly because the thought of making this a worldwide thing scares the pants off me, I’d like to keep this to UK entrants only please.
The deadline for submissions will be 4pm on Friday February 20. If in the event of nobody being interested/not enough submissions being received, I’ll announce then that the whole thing’s off. Hey at least I will have tried! Or okay, I’ll extend the deadline.
So how many pieces of writing are we looking for?
I'd say around 10. Until we know word length - which can be anything up to 1,400 - it's impossible to say.
What will happen to the ones which aren't selected?
The 'cream of the crop' can go online.
After that, I’m predicting that a week will be long enough to select the stories to be published. Again, if this proves to be unworkable then we can have a re-think.
As this is a charity project, nobody involved will be paid. All proceeds will go to Comic Relief.
The resulting collection will be published through self-publishers www.lulu.com.
I'm posting this before I have checked out the service in as much detail as I'll need to do to prepare fully, but I’m aware of other projects that have worked well so am confident enough that it will be okay and not too complicated.
Please send submissions to me via email as a Word document (lindaATpassionatemedia.co.uk) or send me a permalink to a blog or portfolio site where you have already uploaded your work. (Please note that you will retain copyright for any works submitted)
Aren't you cutting it a bit fine, time wise?
Well no, I don't think we are. One of the main points about Twitter for me is that it's excellent for busy people - the 'microblogging' aspect means you don't have to trawl through acres of text to get to grips with what someone is saying. I think the same principles apply here. We want short, funny, laugh out loud pieces of writing that stop us in our tracks - and we can hopefully spot them very quickly.
Who am I and why am I doing this on Twitter?
I’m the director of a small agency in the Midlands. I'm also a media trainer and author. We work on commercial copywriting work, mainly for not for profit organisations, publicly-funded bodies and trusted local businesses. Having trained as a journalist 20 years ago now, I still contribute as a freelance to various publications and blog about subjects close to my heart. I’ve written about Twitter quite a lot, notably here and here, but also daily for a time on the now defunct Shiny Media Twitterati blog. That was fun.
Aha – you see there’s that word – fun. Part of the reason I want to do this is because it will be fun – and I’d like to see more of that on Twitter.
None of this is set in stone, if anyone has ideas about how best this could work, I'd love to hear them. Thanks for reading, I hope we can make this happen.
Thanks – now it’s over to you!
http://tinyurl.com/aza329
I've blogged on this to spread the word.
Posted by: Louise Bolotin | February 09, 2009 at 08:10 PM
Great idea, Linda! I see that Twittertitters is the most popular name, and I'd go along with that. I would just suggest that you include a capital T after Twitter, so it becomes TwitterTitters (thus making the Twitter connection even clearer).
Good luck with the project. I'll be blogging about it later today.
Posted by: Nick Daws | February 10, 2009 at 04:48 PM
Thanks both - the new blog for this is at http://passionatemedia.typepad.com/twitter for now.
Posted by: Linda | February 10, 2009 at 09:58 PM
I follow a lot of comedy people on Twitter and honestly this guy is the most consistent for posting entertaining shit.
http://twitter.com/gabfrab
Example:
My breath tastes like Philippino rat cookies.
Posted by: Sal | February 24, 2009 at 08:21 AM
I really don't get what's so outstanding about those comic talents on Twitter since they don't post anything funny regularly... I prefer dedicated profiles like profiles giving us only short stories, and there is a number of them on twitter already e.g. @short__stories (http://twitter.com/short__stories)
Posted by: M | December 09, 2009 at 01:10 PM