Share your story on Winehiker Witiculture

On occasion, a story comes to my ears that I think I should share with the readers of Winehiker Witiculture. It’s pretty common to hear a good story being told when I’m out hiking with friends and guests; certainly some of the better stories occur during those times when the wine is flowing. Often, the storyteller is not a blogger, nor has a mechanism for publishing his or her story online or in print. Yet the story is often compelling enough to be shared with a wider audience. If I could just compel myself to remember all of the salient details….

Thus, the blog.

If you have a good story, why not consider posting it here? I can tell you as the author of this blog that getting feedback on my posts, whether positive, critical, or otherwise, can be immensely gratifying, as well as affirm my desire to keep doing what I’m doing. And I’m willing to share that kind of excitement with you.

Good stories â€” and good content â€” are worth their weight in gold. Therefore, what I never want to do is present a hack job to my readers. That’s why I’ll never stoop to being a wholesale content aggregator or use some content-generating tool that cannot possibly filter out the off-topic (and the outright crapola) from the truly worthwhile.

Plus: I think what you have to say is worthwhile. Quite possibly you wouldn’t be here reading this post today if that was not true!

Thus, the story.

So, back to this great story you have. (Because everyone has a great story to tell, right?) Yes, whether it’s a tale from the hiking trail, why the fabulous wine you drank is one that others should try, or the trials and tribulations of going from crush to bottling, you have only to share your story with me, and I’ll in turn share it with your fellow community of people who read this wine and hiking blog. I’ll even create a new category on my blog that I’m willing to let you name yourself. (I’ll willingly entertain all input I receive on this naming idea in the comments area for this post, “Join the Discussion”, below.)

So, if you have a story that you’d like me to publish in Winehiker Witiculture, I welcome your enthusiasm! You may submit your story by following the six requirements below:

Be on topic. Your story must be relevant to your fellow blog readers, and therefore must be about at least one of the following three topics: hiking, wine, or California. Your story can be about, though not necessarily be limited to, trends in the active travel industry, the wine industry, or any experience you may have had with me personally.
Your story must be no longer than 1000 words.
If you are a blogger, you are ineligible to submit a story unless the story you submit is off-topic for your own blog; please provide valid reasoning to support your submittal.
Please write your story in a plain-text application such as Notepad, then copy it and paste it into a new email (or just write it directly into an email, but use your email client’s Save Draft feature often). Submissions copied from Microsoft Word or other word processing software that include extra characters or truncated sentence fragments may be cause for rejection. If you’re using Word, you might want to turn off any Rich Text or HTML editing features first.
If your story includes hyperlinks to other publicly-available information on the Internet, please verify and include your links. If you wish to link to an online profile about yourself on myspace or elsewhere, feel free to include it.
Submit your story via email to winehiker [at] californiawinehikes [dot] com. You must include “WW Story Submittal: ” in the Subject line followed by the official title of your story.
You consent to your story being edited for clarity prior to being posted to Winehiker Witiculture.
You consent to your story being available publicly under a Creative Commons License.
All submissions are considered to be in final form; post-publication editing just ain’t gonna happen.
Include your full name; I’ll include your byline upon posting and provide a link to your story when it’s posted so that you can forward it to your friends, family, boss, or whomever you wish.

Thus, a new story unfolds.

I’ll continue to post my usual wine reviews, group tasting notes, and “grape squeezins”. But blogs, unlike television, magazines, and newspapers, are not just a one-way street â€” they represent a great way for authors and readers to engage in interaction. I hope you agree and that you want to see your story published here.

Often, the beauty of a story told is that it prompts the telling of another. Together, let’s encourage and engage each other in the age-old storytelling tradition! I thank you barrelsful in advance, dear reader, for your contribution.

~winehiker

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 5:27 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.