Twitter for Writers
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Posted by Suzanne Pitner Sep 13, 2009 |
There is something powerful about collaborating in a writer’s group that lights the fires of creativity. Other writers in the group encourage, motivate, and inspire one another. One place to find other writers and join informal groups is Twitter. Twitter has several active communities of writers and editors.
This weekend, someone announced a #wordathon, and suggested we each keep track of our wordcounts and report them on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. to get a combined grand total of words written. Always ready for a challenge, I joined the #wordathon. (If you’re not familiar with Twitter, the # sign, or hashtag, is how to send and receive messages to a group.)
If you’ve ever been involved in a writing challenge, you may be familiar with the feeling that everyone else is writing more than you, writing faster than you, writing better than you. That’s exactly how I felt this weekend. My words spilled onto the computer screen, but they weren’t quite what I wanted, and they weren’t spilling fast enough. I forged ahead anyway, muttering to myself that I could revise and expand later.
Sunday at 6:00 p.m. I reported my word count with an apology, thinking it would be much lower than the other 70 or so writers reporting. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. My word count was about average for our group. A few writers had practically written novellas over the weekend, a few had barely completed one page, but together, we all produced well over 142,000 new words in our manuscripts. Fellow writers cheered and congratulated each other, and then we went back to our writing. It was encouraging to be a part of such a simple activity.
If you’d like to view or join some of the writing conversations at Twitter, here are a few popular hashtags to use. It’s a great way to get in touch with other fiction writers.
#amwriting
#writers
#writegoal
#kidlitchat
#yalitchat
#litchat
#wordathon
#FlashFriday
While you're there, check out Suite101 on Twitter. I'm there, too, using my fiction pen name, SuzanneLilly.