Finding Twitterland

I’ll admit, I was once one of those people who thought twitter was just an excuse for self-obsessed losers to listen to themselves talk. I didn’t need a group of followers to feel validated. So I resisted. And resisted.

It wasn’t until I went to my first writer’s conference a few months ago that I changed my mind. If you’re a writer and you’ve never been to a conference, I suggest you fix that. Immediately. Not only were the panels and classes and critique sessions immensely helpful, but the people there… the other writers… never had I been somewhere surrounded by such a large group of people who got me. A group of people who understood staying up until three am to finish a scene, who spend 90% of their free time writing and the other 10% thinking about it. I found a community there that I never imagined existed. And after I came home, I missed that. You can talk to your friends and family about writing, and (hopefully) they’ll be interested and encouraging. But unless they write, they won’t understand.

            So I began searching for a way to stay in touch with that community. I visited blogs and websites, and one thing I found in common was that just about everyone was on twitter.

            In the back of my mind, I always knew I’d have to join eventually. It’s great for getting a following. But I guess I always figured it’d be when I found an agent or a publisher and they forced me to sign up to establish a platform.

            But the thing I didn’t realize was that there are so many advantages to signing up before all that. I’ve learned more about different agents and querying and the whole publishing process in general in these last few months on twitter than I had in all the research I’d done before. And I’d done a lot. I didn’t realize how out of the loop I was until I found the loop.

            Twitter connected me to a community. The feeling I felt at that conference isn’t gone. There’s such a strong, welcoming community of writers out there. *waves* I wish I’d signed up sooner.

            How has twitter helped you guys? Or is there something else that’s helped you on your journey?

A Good Use for Semicolons ;-)

Friends, followers, lurkers, lend me your ears… Okay so I thought I’d do a short rant – I mean, post, on grammar. The kind you might find on Twitter or on Facebook. Mostly Facebook, I guess, because you probably wouldn’t squander one of your 140 characters on an incorrect punctuation mark, or on any punctuation mark for that matter. No, I’m not talking about shortening you to u or a missed period. That’s fine. It’s social media. I’m talking about the people you may or may not be Friends with who go out of their way to try and make it look like they’re grammar experts. The ones that try so hard and fail so miserably. It’s not misspelled words. We all make mistakes. I’m talking about the posts that think they’re so clever with their 50 word sentences broken up with semicolons instead of commas and periods. Semicolons. Professionals find rare occasions for them in NOVELS. Do you really think you need five in one sentence? The sad thing is, these people must think they do. Otherwise, why use one at all? Basically, what I guess I’m trying to say is don’t use semicolons on Facebook or Twitter because it makes you look a like a jerk*. End rant - er - post.

*My apologies to anyone who has used one correctly. Please continue to do so.