Confessions or #IheartTwitter

Dear Twitter,

I feel like I owe you a big apology. You see, when I first heard of you I thought you were the stupidest thing ever invented–and that’s saying a lot since there are all those really dumb inventions that you can find on late night infomercials to compare you to. I remember hearing about Tweeting and thinking, “Seriously? We already have Facebook. What more do we need?”

Then I started writing again for real. And Emily and I started Luminous Creatures Press.  Like a good self-publisher, I read all the stuff about how to get word of your books out to the world. Twitter suddenly seemed a very important part of being a writer. I thought, “Oh, great. I fucking hate Twitter and now I have to join it? Ugh. All right.” Actually, it came down to either Emily or me joining Twitter. Since I am inherently more social, I volunteered. But I didn’t like it, and I did precisely what I wasn’t supposed to do: I tweeted pretty much only about our books.

As you can imagine, I didn’t get much out of you, Twitter, by just tweeting about our books, my disdain for the whole enterprise leaking into my tweets. But I didn’t believe all those blog posts that said that Twitter is a great place for finding a community of writers. All I saw were other writers like me selling their books and telling me to like their Facebook pages. And posting links to five-star reviews of their books. For such a crowded and noisy place, Twitter seemed so desolate.

Then you told me to follow Jessica Grey, which led me to discover Indie Jane. And a strange thing happened. I started having conversations with people. At first awkward and tentative, but conversations nonetheless. From there Jessica reviewed my book, and I read hers (which I liked a lot.) Around this time I also learned that the Jane Austen community is enormous. Who knew? Well, Twitter did.

I started taking more of your advice about whom to follow and that’s how I ended up following Kristen, Allie, Cedrix, Jason, and Clive. (And Willow and Tess and Charlotte…) That’s how I learned about Friday Phrases, which is an awesome game that provides a real feeling of writerly community, and about flash fiction contests on The Angry Hourglass and Flash! Friday. I even met Diane who lives around the corner from me.

When I finally embraced Twitter, I discovered my people, a community of writers and readers whose interest and support I can feel even though we are scattered around the world. Last spring even Emily joined Twitter.

So, what I’m getting at here is that I’m sorry I called you stupid, Twitter, and I’m sorry I hated you. Actually, it turns out that I love you.

Sincerely yours,

Beth

p.s. I also love that I can follow the entire cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Watching them interact warms my geeky little heart.