Thursday, April 1, 2010

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Stephanie Thornton asked Tuesday for my opinion on the positives and negatives of Twitter. So did Susan Quinn, so I figured it's a valid question because two of the three people who asked me questions wanted to know about it.

The positives of Twitter far outweigh the negatives, in my opinion. Several positives are the ease of networking with writers, agents, and editors; the instant feedback you can get from your Tweets; and the general camaraderie you can experience by having a community of writers on there sending 140 character messages back and forth to each other.

Using Twitter has helped me connect with writers all over the country and the world, and also some published authors who I would've otherwise not connected with. I occasionally tweet with Gail Carriger (she of Soulless fame), and the Tweets of Generalissimo Stan Lee are always entertaining (but that's because Stan Lee is effing amazing, so nothing more need be said).

I've also been able to tap into the wealth of resources that other writers can provide. A recent conversation I had on there involved determining a name for what I used to call "bionics" in CALLARION AT NIGHT. After consultation with Twitter (and the fabu L.T. Host), I decided to use the word Mecho instead -- which would be short for Fabricated Mechanical Organism (and yes, Bane will be happy to know that a few people on there did misread the word Organism the same way he did awhile back).

Short version is that while Twitter can suck several hours down the drain, the usefulness of it far outweighs the downside. That and there's sometimes very entertaining conversations revolving around wagels, pork loin, and shoving Jeeps into the Mississippi River (those are the subjects of two different conversations, by the way).

But Twitter's not for everyone. I adore it, but you may not. It's really up to you guys. If you do decide to join, or have already, feel free to follow me on there. I sometimes say interesting things. Sometimes.

5 comments:

Elisabeth Black said...

What's this twit thing you're talking about?

Matthew Delman said...

Beth --

You hush, missy. Everyone, please say Hi to Elisabeth Black, who happens to be one of my newfound Twitter-friends.

And the purveyor of a good deal of sass to the Eastern Seaboard.

L. T. Host said...

Hi Elizabeth!

Also: you have some good points. That, coupled with an agent blog recently saying that authors not willing to expand onto Twitter and Facebook and the like are only hurting themselves, is slowly driving me towards it.

Very, very slowly.

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

I'm fully immersed in FB and the blogosphere, but I've been hesitant to embrace Twitter. Partly because my phone is twitchy and I don't like paying for texts. Hence, I twitter (when I twitter, which is about once every 3 weeks, mostly in stalking mode) on my laptop.

Matthew - do you,uh, twit on your phone? Or your computer?

Thanks!

dolorah said...

My son created a twitter account on my old e-mail, and the little bit I saw confused the hell of me. Even FB is hard for me to get it to work right. When I do update, as soon as I leave the page, I can't find it again - even when others comment.

But as addicted as I've become to blogging, if I figured out twitter, I'd probably get fired from my day job.

........dhole