Goebbels The Turkey

Reading Time: 4 mins

Ah Goebbels, my old friend.

Goebbels The Turkey was a blog idea I had back around April and May of 2013 and it was going to be the story of a turkey who has a friend go missing, conspicuously, around Thanksgiving. It was a bit of a lark at the time and the fact that I started writing a Thanksgiving story in April on a live blog, plus picking up steam writing Suddenly Normal again, meant that it was very short-lived.

But I kept the writing and discovered it again, serendipitously, in November of 2021 and decided to give it another go, purely as a writing prompt. Goebbels is this sweet and loving bird who sees the good in just about everything and everyone, but he can also be rather selfish and self-centred. These are things he is working on. He is character that I find very easy to write, so I started banging away every other day or so, using some of the material from 2013 and updating it where needed.

This was my solution to battling the blank page. This was before I started writing Stars and the Marlow Durand books.

Well, what started as a writing prompt has grown into a full story that I’ve decided to blog live-as-we-go between December of 2021 and November of 2022.

Goebbels is going to…

• learn about the outside world
• be loved by it
• be hurt by it
• become skeptical of others
• learn to trust again

… all while trying to control his own fate leading up to the third Thursday of November 2022.

While I have the story arc and one potential ending in my mind, what happens and how we get there is going to be a bit of a collaborative writing experiment, to which you are all invited.

Unlike in 2013 where he dwelt in relatively obscurity, some opportunities have come up for Goebbels to interact more with the bigger outside world.

For example, he not only has a blog where he writes at night when the farmer and his wife are asleep, he has a cell phone now and a twitter account (Update: Deactivated November 2024 for all the right reasons.) that lets him interact with his friends online during the day.

What he writes and when things happen is going to be influenced by these real world interactions.

Animal Twitter

I have already met some amazingly kind people on twitter who are sharing in his story and who have provided the inspiration to take this from writing exercise to a full blown manuscript. Hell, as of February 1st he almost had as many twitter followers as I do and I’m sure he will soon surpass me.

There is an entire community who are there for each other in the cute moments for their animals but also the serious ones, the trips to the vet, the emergencies, the losses. They have instantly made Goebbels feel welcome and this whole idea came about because of those early positive interactions.

I’ll be curating this story throughout 2022 with the following goal in mind:

To publish whatever we create via whatever method seems best and all of the profits of the book will go towards charities that benefit animals in some way.

Which charities? I don’t know yet, but I’m sure that will come to light throughout our collaboration as well. 🙂

Are you an animal, animal lover or animal owner on twitter? Please consider following along on the adventure and offering your friendship and perspective through tweets and blog comments.

#WritingCommunity

Are you part of the #writingcommunity on twitter and up for a bit of harmless fun for a good cause? You don’t need to have an animal account to care about what happens to one lone turkey. Please consider following along and contributing as well!

Goebbels’ story starts with his first blog post here.

He and I look forward to meeting you.