Monday, April 23, 2012

T is for..........

T is for..........Twitter.

My I post for the Challenge was about information. I get most of my news and information from Twitter these days. News organizations tweet their headlines, with links to articles that make it easy to stay insanely current. Only if a story merits an actual visual do I need to turn on the TV. I like this system.

I'm not exactly sure why I joined Twitter, just kind of a joiner I guess. For a long time I didn't really do anything with Twitter. After a friend suggested I tweet when I have something new on the blog, that got me going.

Then I started to find some really interesting people, many of them writers. Hanging out on Twitter makes it feel like every person in the world is a writer. I've had some fun run-ins with well known authors on Twitter, which is really what I wanted to write about in this post.

I'll usually post something about the books I read. Last summer I read Half a Life by Darin Strauss, and I tweeted that it's an incredibly honest, moving memoir. Later that day, Strauss responded, thanking me for the kind words. That was pretty cool. Another time, I was lucky to catch Jonathan Tropper, one of my favorite authors, responding to tweets because his wife told him his Twitter etiquette needed work. I told him I was looking for a book to read, and he suggested Steve Martin's latest.

Those are just two examples, but they illustrate one of my favorite things about Twitter, the chance to interact with writers.

How 'bout you, any interesting Twitter encounters?

4 comments:

  1. I haven't had any interesting Twitter experiences yet, but I haven't lost hope

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  2. Occasionally I'll post things on Twitter that get picked up. For example I wrote something about a Brazilian poet and she picked it up leading to a load of hits. I find it's a short hit, though.

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  3. I really need to use Twitter more. I can't seem to get comfortable using it, but I need to try as I feel like I'm missing out. Very cool about the author encounters.

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  4. love Twitter. I have hashtags set for a number of topics in Tweetdeck, including #Mariners where I get all the baseball fix I need.

    I have had some great conversations with some of the Seattle sportswriters.

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