To Tweet or Not to Tweet, That Is the Question

I have a Facebook friend who wanted to try Twitter but found it too confusing. 

I completely understand. It can be confusing at first, particularly in the area of "Why do I need this?"

For him and anyone like him who would like to start Tweeting but finds it overwhelming, here's the easy guide that should get you tweeting like @NeilHimself in no time.

First, the Twitter website is one of the worst ways to use Twitter. It just throws you in and doesn't explain anything.

The welcome page for Twitter.com

However, I would recommend you start there to set up your avatar and the basic info about yourself.

These two things are important, because they let people know you're a real person (it's best if it's a picture or drawing of your face), not some sort of spam bot, and because they give people a reason to follow you back.

I usually follow writers or funny people (particularly funny writers) back. I also follow back people who love books. I don't follow back people who want to show me how to lose weight or make $10,000 a month, and I really don't follow back girls with avatars showing them crawling on all fours and making eyes at the camera. I also don't follow back twitter birds or eggs, which are the generic avatars that Twitter comes with. Spammers usually use these, because they want to create and abandon Twitter profiles quickly. As Doctor Seuss almost said, "I do not like green eggs and spam." The two often come together, so you should try to avoid them.

You can also upload a nice Twitter background, so that people visiting your Twitter page can see you've put a little effort into it. If you have a digital camera, a nice panorama or a picture of flowers or leaves will do. For a while, I just had a photo I took of one of my bookshelves. I think that's a good way to show my interest in books. Right now, I have a bunch of my illustrations from Toren the Teller's Tale.

My current Twitter background with my illustrations for Toren the Teller's Tale

This might also be a good time to start following some people.

You can ask your friends on Facebook (if you're already on Facebook) for their Twitter names and the names of people they recommend following. You can also look up interesting people in your industry.

Give yourself a Twitter name, avatar, and bio that make it clear who you are
and why someone might want to follow your tweets.

Feel free to follow me, @SheviStories: http://twitter.com/shevistories.

You can also click on the list of people I'm following to see if there are people there you'd like to follow: http://twitter.com/#!/SheviStories/following Feel free to follow whoever you like. While most of the people I follow are writers, illustrators, or people in publishing, you'll find all sorts. For example, I'm a big geek, and I love Mythbusters, so you'll find I'm following AppyGeek and Adam Savage.

Pretty soon people will start following you. Just know that it's good manners to follow people back, although you should, obviously, never follow back a spammer. Also, don't expect a celebrity to follow you back. And if you're a writer, don't expect agents to follow you back. They might, but they probably won't. Still, you should follow them if you want to see what they're tweeting about.

Look up people you're interested in. I like Neil Gaiman, so I follow @NeilHimself. Editor Elizabeth Law is a lot of fun, so I follow @EgmontGal. And Ellen Hopkins is great, so I follow @EllenHopkinsYA. Type in the names of any people you're interested in, and, with any luck, you'll find them on Twitter.

Okay, once you're done with that, you can forget about the Twitter.com website, because you won't need to look at it until the next time you want to change your avatar, your information, or your background. That's because what you will be using--what almost everyone on Twitter uses--is TweetDeck.

Go to http://www.TweetDeck.com and click the button marked "Download."

When it comes to Twitter, TweetDeck is your new best friend.

Open the TweetDeck app, and everything after that should be clear.

TweetDeck starts with a page that looks like this:

The TweetDeck welcome page

See how all the information is there for  you to click on? You can find out how to compose a message, add multiple Twitter accounts, manage Twitter lists, sort information into columns, and so on. If you'd rather figure things out yourself, you can just click "Get Started" at the bottom of the window.

Here's what my TweetDeck window looks like:

I've created columns for the various topics I'm interested in.

In Twitter, a topic is usually, but not always, a word or group of words with a pound sign in front of it. That's why they're called hashtags, because of that hash mark, #, in front of them.

I created columns with the following hashtags, which let me follow conversations of interest to writers: #litchat #amwriting #writegoal #WritersRoad #askagent #YALitChat #KidLitChat.

Play around with hashtags to see what people are talking about. For example, do a search for "poet" if you're a poet, and find out if there are hashtags that contain the word "poet" or hashtags poets use. Create columns with the hashtags as the search terms, and read past conversations in those groups. If you'd like to join the next conversation, ask someone from the group if there's a scheduled chat and when the next one will be. Not all groups have scheduled chats, but they are one of the best uses for Twitter. To participate in a chat, make sure to incorporate the group's hashtag in your tweets.

Hover your cursor over someone's avatar, and you'll see several options. You can follow the person, reply to the tweet, or forward it. Start a conversation with someone. Don't be shy. A good way to start is by forwarding great tweets and saying how great you think they are. The original tweeter usually appreciates that.

Take it slow, have fun, and you should get the hang of it in a week.

Oh, and in answer to the "Why do I need this?" question, you don't. It's fun, though, and it's a good way to connect with people, make friends, and stay in the loop when it comes to developments and opportunities in the industry.

Have questions for agents, for example? The quickest way to get an answer is by using the #askagent hashtag. Feel good about writing 1,000 words in a day and you want to tell the world? The #amwriting and #writegoal hashtags are good for that. Have questions about writing YA? Try #WritersRoad, #YALitChat or #KidLitChat. You can even include multiple tags on the same tweet, provided you keep it under 140 characters.

Twitter is just another way to connect with people who share your interests--all of your interests. I even have columns in TweetDeck for #Eureka, #DoctorWho, #Grimm, and #OnceUponATime because I love these shows, and it's fun to talk to other people who love them too.

I hope this helps.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Blog posts like this often have buttons you can click below them in order to share them with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. As a blogger, this makes it easier to share information that wouldn't fit into a 140-character tweet on Twitter. As a reader, this gives you an easy way to share helpful posts with other people. It's also a nice way to show your appreciation to whoever wrote that blog post, and most bloggers appreciate the recognition for their work.

I know I haven't included everything, not by a long shot, but I do hope it's enough to get you started without seeming too scary.

To tweet or not to tweet? I say give it a try! I look forward to reading your tweets.

How to Be an Original Writer

From the Memoirs of Edward R. Hound, Gloria Turkey: Biggest Bird on Broadway

Years ago on the SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) boards, the topic of edginess came up. Several writers were upset, because a few editors and agents at a SCBWI conference said they were interested in edgy books. 

“But how can I write edgy?” the writers cried. “I write picture books! I live in the Midwest. I can’t write young-adult novels about sex, violence and drugs. What’s wrong with sweet, cute picture books? Why can’t they like quiet books too?”  

My take on this was that their definition of edgy was wrong. In my opinion, edgy means different. Not in the center, not the mainstream, but on the cutting edge, something people haven’t seen before. And any writer can have that, as long as she is being true to who she is. Each of us has a unique perspective on the world. We’re each capable of telling unique stories. We’re each capable of looking at the world from our own unique edge of it. I think this was what those editors and agents meant too, which is why they’ve stopped asking for edgy and are now asking for something that will surprise them, something with a great and original voice. It’s the same thing, but it helps out those writers who thought they couldn’t write edgy unless they wrote issue books.

The problem with books that aren’t edgy by this definition is that they’ve already been written. If someone is looking for Winnie the Pooh, they’re going to buy Winnie the Pooh. They’re not going to buy a new book that’s like Winnie the Pooh. And that’s why it’s important for each writer to try to find his or her voice and write books that only he or she can write. Agents and editors want to be surprised, so surprise them. Show them something they’ve never seen before, something only you could have written. Show them your own unique take on the world in your own unique voice. 

If you think your life doesn’t have an edge and that you’re just like everyone else, you probably haven’t looked hard enough. Take another, deeper look. What do you see? 

What are you passionate about? 

What scares you?

What moves you? 

What are you insatiably curious about?

What’s the funniest thing you ever saw or heard about?

Your life is filled with stories that only you can tell. 

“Okay,” I hear you saying. “But I’m not writing books based on my real life. What if I write picture books? Or what if I write fantasy? How do I use my unique edge of the world to write picture books or fantasy?”

Everyone says that an aspiring writer has to do three things: read, read, and read some more.

An illustration from Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey by Shevi Arnold

Read classics in your genre of choice. Read current popular books in your genre to get a feel for what what’s already out there and what readers want. And read books on writing, editing, and publishing. 

That’s great advice, but it does, in my opinion, require a couple of clarifications. 

First, when it comes to reading fiction, a writer should learn to read like a writer, not only like a reader.

As a reader, you’re receptive to whatever the writer throws at you. There may be things that bug you, but you don’t dwell on them. You either make the choice to read it or you don’t, but you don’t try to get behind why the things that bug you bug you. There may also be things that excite or move you, or other things that make you laugh. You don’t try to get behind how these things work; you just enjoy that they do. 

As a writer, though, you need to figure out why books, or characters, or chapter breaks during tense scenes, or a specific wording affects you the way it does. You need to figure out how to avoid the things that bug you, and you need to figure out how to make the things that work for you a part of your own writing so that you can excite and move and make readers laugh too.

And that leads me to the second clarification, which is that you shouldn’t let what you read affect you so much that it drowns your own voice. If you are too influenced by another writer’s work, you will never be more than that writer’s shadow. Your aim should never be to become the next J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Stephanie Meyer, Terry Pratchett or even Amanda Hocking. They never aimed to be the next anybody else, and neither should you. Your aim should always be to become the writer that only you can become. 

Just find your unique edge in whatever genre or type of book you’d like to write.

For example, let’s say you like fantasy, and you have a passion for roses. (I’m just pulling this out of my hat. It could be anything.) Are there any fantasy stories with roses? I can think of two. There’s the rose in Beauty and the Beast, the one Beauty’s father takes from the Beast’s garden in the traditional tale. How could you shake that up? What if you told the story of Beauty and the Beast from the rose’s point of view? Or what if the rose is the only thing the Beast ever loved, and what if he willingly gives it to the Beauty near the end of the story? 

And then there are the Queen of Hearts’ roses in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. What if you wrote a story about the Queen of Hearts explaining why she needed the roses to be red? What if there’s a curse that says the roses will be red, and if they’re not, they’ll be painted with blood? Or what if the white roses remind her of Snow White, a child she vaguely remembers was hers before she died?

Or maybe you could write a story based on some facts about roses? Roses have thorns. Thorns are sharp. Sharp things can be weapons. Maybe in your story the rose will be used as a weapon by warring mice who don’t notice the rose’s beauty until a young squirrel captures it in a painting. 

Or maybe you could write a creation myth that explains why roses have thorns. 

You don’t have to stick to facts and old fantasy stories. You can be inspired by poems, songs, art, experiences, and more.  Look at both what the rose is and isn’t. Look at what’s missing in your genre of choice. If you like roses, you must like gardening. You know, I’ve never read a story about a magical gardener, have you? Maybe you could write it? Of you if you want to go science fiction, what if you wrote a story about a gardener who insists on growing roses on Mars, even though they can’t be eaten and have no use? Imagine that gardener explaining why he should be allowed to grow roses on Mars. What if he’s forbidden, but he grows them anyway in secret? Who is he doing this for? What will the gift of a single rose mean? It could be fascinating. 

Reading a lot gives you better idea of what’s already been done, but more importantly, it gives you an idea of what hasn’t been done. And if what hasn’t been done coincides with something that excites, scares, moves, intrigues, or just amuses you, you’ve found the seed of a story that will probably excite, scare, move, intrigue, or amuse others: a story only you can write. 

You’ve found out how—instead of writing like an original—you can be an original.