I first want to start off this post with sincere, heartfelt thanks to everyone who has and participated in this Field Gulls Fanpost Contest, including those who sent in their submissions via email before their FG account was even activated. We have had well over a dozen entries spanning various types of writing styles and interesting angles, almost all of them dedicated to Seahawks legends Kam Chancellor and Doug Baldwin.
Throughout the week we will be front-paging the top. You get to read all of them. We’re linking to every fanpost (author credited) and you can help us choose the best ones by pressing the rec button at the bottom of the comments section. If you don’t know where that is, here’s a screenshot that should help.
We strongly encourage you to read as many of them as possible, and we will be front paging the top ones. You can also vote on your favorite ones in the comments section — please use them just to vote on the ones you like, not to put down fanposts you didn’t like.
Example: “The unlikely career of Doug Baldwin - Tyler Alsin” is my favorite fanpost.
Kenneth note: Thank you to all who have opted to make a post or reached out wanting to be considered. As you can see in the last two days with a major influx of fanpost in the final hours, there are plenty of folks on or on the periphery of Field Gulls who are clearly capable of putting words down and have interest in doing so. But please keep in this mind regardless of what happens next or who the next Field Gulls front page writer(s) is/are:
Writers are not hired.
Writers are not chosen.
Writers don’t win contests.
Writers write.
If you want to be a Field Gulls writer, an NFL writer, a Seahawks writer, then I would expect that person to continue to write on a regular basis either way. As I wrote in my article earlier this week about the contest, I wrote fanposts for years with zero expectations of a front page position. If you didn’t get chosen, and you really wanted it, then I would assume you would continue to write fanposts. That’s the type of person who should be chosen anyway, in my opinion. Validation from one person or a small group of people is unnecessary, because writers write.
To this day, I write a daily Seahawks newsletter — every day — for no money. Because I want to. I have been a full-time writer for five years and I still write some stuff pro bono or very little money at all — not that it’s ideal, but sometimes I just gotta write. If you’ve been on Twitter in the last six months then you’re familiar with @cablethanos_. There’s a 23-year-old college graduate who went from nobody on Twitter knowing who he was to playing Super Smash Bros. live in person with Russell Wilson and DJ Fluker last week. He didn’t ask for anything. He didn’t start making videos because he thought it would get him in a room with Wilson. That would be crazy. But sometimes crazy becomes reality when you follow your passion without expectation or needing validation.
Thank you for being here and for wanting to be a part of Field Gulls. I hope that this past week has sparked a renewed interest and vigor in writing fanposts and participating as a writer to the site no matter what — and that’s still where I’ll pull future writers for the front page. That’s not something that’s going to ever change. Onto the entries so far — but if you read this and still want to participate, or if you’ve already written an entry, then please don’t stop. Make a fanpost this week.
Don’t stop writing, writer.
The Fanposts Thus Far: