“Twitter is for kids, it’s only a trend, it won’t last”. These are all things that WONKweb hears almost daily and, who knows, they might be true. Whatever the case (or fate) might be for Twitter, we at WONKweb think that, while it’s still around, Twitter offers a forum for some truly collaborative writing to happen within. As with most things “WONK”, we don’t have a completely clear (any) idea of where this might go, but we do have a reasonably clear idea of where it might start. At least in this manifestation of the collaborative twitter project, WONK envisions a twitter based poem formed completely from the tweets (directed at WONK’s twitter site) that readers/contributors like yourselves write. While twitter itself limits submissions to 140 characters (their guidelines, not ours), there is every reason that a single contributor should tweet multiple times as they are inspired by those who tweet before and after them. In this way, the twitter poem can be thought of as the project of some strange little writing group except that, instead of simply collaborating to improve our own writing, we are also trying to create something that is distinctly ours out of the process as well. Here’s how such a project might work:
- Sign up to follow WONK on twitter http://twitter.com/yourwonk . This is where the action will happen.
- Once you have signed up to follow WONK, start tweeting to us your section/s of the poem (who will be brave enough to go first?). This can be done by putting “@yourwonk” (without quotes) in front of your tweet, by using the “mention” option to start your tweet or by simply replying to one of yourwonk’s tweets.
- WONK will re-tweet your portion of the poem so that everyone who follows “yourwonk” on twitter will get to see it (this seems more complicated than it is).
- Check back often to see how the poem is coming. If you are further inspired by someone else’s writing, add more to the poem; if not, either sit and fume at the direction the poem is taking or get in there and set it straight!
- Once the tweets are in, WONKweb will compile and publish the poem in its entirety, right here on yourwonk.com . Barring the incredibly offensive or threatening, the poem will receive very little editorial massaging and anyone who contributed can feel free to tell their friends about the poem they recently had published on WONKweb.
Given that this is an experimental project, we will cap the number of entries to about thirty or so tweets for this first attempt (or the next available natural break in the poem). Provided this first attempt goes well, WONKweb would like to take the experiment a little further and have a handful of poets (particularly those who contribute to the poem) use the same tweets to create entirely different poems through the artful and nuanced rearrangement of the original components (tweets). If there are any of you out there who think this might be something you’d like to be a part of, please let us know.
Obviously, twitter is not for everybody. In fact, WONK isn’t even entirely sure if twitter is for us. Truth be told, WONKweb is a bit fickle: if our readers-cum-contributors take to this project, we’ll probably love twitter. If they do not, it’s very possible that WONK will completely disavow any connection with twitter, tweeting, or birds in general. So for the good of our feathered friends, get tweeting soon.
WONK