A Spoonful of Sugar . . .
I remember well one of the first quotes I ever loved. I spotted it in a Power of Positive Thinking pamphlet my mother had (she had many). It went something like:
“Lord, please make my words tender and sweet for tomorrow I may have to eat them.”
I come before you today with my spoon in hand ready to swallow my words bit by bitter bit. I joined Twitter. I said that I wouldn’t here and here.
It started with a conversation I had with a friend of mine (Jesse, the guy in my book trailer) on Friday night. He said he reluctantly joined Twitter but feared being left out of the self-promotion loop (he’s a stand-up comedian). I presented him with the arguments from Slate magazine—that Twitter has no historical basis. E-mail = new way to send letters. Skype = new landline. Blogging = Pamphleteering. He grabbed the last one and said, “Okay blogging is the new pamphleteering and twitter is an 140-character blog.” Oh jeeze! Jesse said, “You might as well just join while SamaraOShea (the twitter URL) is still available.” I didn’t fear that all the other Samara O’Sheas in the world would snatch up my potential URL, but a few hours later another fear set in.
A little back story: I refused to have MySpace and Facebook pages for a very long time. I was proud of this. Proud of not jumping on the bandwagon. I remember the day it changed. The Summer 2007 Author’s Guild Newsletter arrived at my door with an article about how social networking sites can be good for book sales. Gulp. I didn’t think of it that way.
For myself, I can be an outcast. I have no problem being the odd girl out. For my books, however, they are my children, and I will do anything for them. Not to mention all parents have to be hypocrites at some point. It’s part of the job. When your offspring are clever enough to ask, “Did you smoke pot when you were my age?” And the parent responds, “Yes I did.”
Offspring, “Then I should be able to smoke pot, too!”
Parent, “Over my dead body!”
I won’t say that MySpace and Facebook have been necessarily good for book sales (that’s a hard thing to measure), but they have been wonderful for meeting readers. I have opened many a dialog with readers all over the country because they saw fit to get in touch with me through one of the two networks. In the end, I’m glad I joined.
Social Networks dangle a promise in front of you. It’s the promise of getting you and your brand in front of the one person who can send you on a skyrocket to ultimate success. They also present the promise of acceptance. Both promises are rarely met, I know, but it’s the fear of not trying that keeps you (er me) going after it again and again. God forbid you were the one parent who didn’t let your children watch Baby Einstein and now they’re way behind as a result. Again, it’s not the reality but the fear. I aspire to laugh at that fear someday. I’m not there quite yet.
Last November I joined a Twitter-like social Network called Pounce. I thought, What’s after Twitter? It looks like Pounce. I’ll just jump ahead one. I liked the idea of joining the lesser known group. My instincts, unfortunately, were way off. In mid-December I received an e-mail saying Pounce was closing. It hadn’t gained the momentum of Twitter.
And so I hope those of you on Twitter will join me, and the rest of you will pardon me. I will try to make my tweets (did I really just say that?!) insightful—posting classic quotes, political and pop-culture commentary, and thoughts, as always, on the written word. As with everything else I first feared and then enjoyed (MySpace, Facebook, and blogging), I will take this and try to make it my own.
I ate dinner at a great Philly restaurant called Pub and Kitchen Saturday night, and we were given little cards with quotes on them when the bill came. Mine prophetically said:
“Eating words has never given me indigestion.”
~ Winston Churchill
April 27th, 2009 at 3:44 am
I wondered if you would give in and join. I think I am going to soon, too. I don’t really get the arguments against Twitter so much as the arguments for it (self-promotion when you do have something to promote), but I also don’t understand the reason to tweet a million times a day. When/if I join it, I too will try to post more of the insightful rather than inane. And I’ll probably “follow” you there, too.
It’s interesting that you mention that joining Facebook and Myspace helped you connect with your readers — after I read For the Love of Letters (last summer?), I just found your blog and continued reading, rather than joining one of those sites. I guess other people think differently and go to Myspace or Facebook first.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Stephanie, You were right to wonder. With my MySpace/Facebook track record, I’m surprised I didn’t wonder more myself. I guess my biggest fear is being a slave to social networking. It’s not that I think these sites are inherently bad—they mean well—but they can take up so much time and cause unforeseen problems. These days, I rarely check my MySpace page. I suppose Twitter will replace that.
I agree with you 100% regarding those who tweet twenty times a day. I update my Facebook status when the mood strikes—in other words, when I have something to say. I’m not sure how it’ll go with Twitter since it’s the Facebook status without the rest of Facebook. If I only tweet when the mood strikes then whole days will go by with no postings from me. Perhaps I’ll aim for once a day.
Finally, I’m just like you in that I go right to the heart of the matter (the person’s Web site) when I want to know about them / follow them. But to each their own!
April 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Welcome to Twitter!
I’ve been on for a while with two accounts - one for personal use and one for my blog. Like any technology - you can make it what you want.
With my blog, I tend to tweet brief thoughts or links to articles that don’t really warrent a full blog post. While you may feel you’re jumping onto the bandwagon, the service is still new enough that you can play and create a new use out of it that works with your life. I’ve seen huge changes in the way people use Twitter since I joined a year ago, just like I’ve seen blogging change quite a bit since 2000.
(and btw, you can synch Facebook and Twitter)
The advantage you have is that people who’ve been around on Twitter for a while can give you advice about different uses without the lagtime of figuring it all out by yourself.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
You both covered my concerns beautifully, so I have little to add except, “I agree!”
I’ve been slow to put up my website (it’s still in development), reluctant to blog and twitter because of the perception that it takes up so much time, time I could spend writing. I have a FB page under a different name, and I don’t see much benefit from it. BUT, I keep reading about the need for today’s writers to self-promote and the e-world is the new forum. Maybe just as important as potentially connecting with readers, is showing publishers that you’re willing to do that self-promotion.
I’ll crawl into the 21st Century eventually.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Christina ~ I agree! The allure of anything like this is that you can take it and make it your own. Twitter is the vehicle but we are the drivers—choosing our own twists and turns. I also agree that everything technology related is in a state of never-ending evolution. Blogging has changed drastically over the past few years, as have Web sites in general.
Social networking is always changing and I firmly believe we’ll sit around the campfire someday and hear our grands kids talk about “petal pickers” or whatever the new thing is and we’ll say, “Oh that’s just like twitter. Remember twitter . . .?”
April 28th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Frankie, Let us know about your blog (should you choose to launch it). I look forward to reading it. Blogging, I’ve found, is really a genre of its own. I feel welcome here to be casual—as though I’m writing in my journal—but also informative, because there are people reading. In truth, I love it.
As for the other networks: They can take up as much or as little time as you want them to. I’ll just say it’s easy to become an addict.