Daily Archives: January 14, 2012

Reluctantly last year I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. Fundamentally an introvert, I wasn’t all that thrilled about sharing the minutia of mine or other people’s daily living. Didn’t really want such cluttering up my phone’s social media screen. Then I listened to accomplished authors and well known agents discuss how social media and “building a platform” was the 21st century shingle outside of the door. I followed a few friends. Got psyched about poetry and followed some poets. Noticed the ‘similar to you’ post Twitter puts up next to the feed and followed a few of those. Followed a few speakers and presenters from conferences. The end result? I’ve found avenues for submitting my work as call for submissions float across the feed. Learned scores of techniques and practices for improving the marketability of my work. Found a few good reads by following the breadcrumb of a link in a tweet, discovering a new literary magazine or a just coming out book by an emerging author. Found answers to some of my ‘how to’ questions via crowdsourcing an inquiry over twitter. Sure, there is some minutia coming in from a few personal, I actually know in real life, friends. There is also the funny, dramatic, touching, and all too human experience of complete and perfect strangers that regularly tweet who have become virtual friends whose tweets I look forward to reading because they add to my day one small moment at a time. Twitter is a great tool that is helping me negotiate  the shoals of self publishing and submission of the work and remind me that life must be balanced, as each small window into life flashes by 140 characters at a time.