Twitter, in addition to being the US President’s defacto choice of late-night communication, is rife with all manner of interesting information. Once you scrape past the people that all repost the exact same click-bait news stories (5 reasons why this post is awesome, you’ll never believe number 3!) and ass-random posts about how terrible the last Ghostbusters movie was, you’ll find a vibrant writing community.
I’m sure this is probably true of everything from programming to HR, but it’s the writers I tend to look to. In particular, I’ve started playing some of the Twitter writing games. There are scads of them out there, but I only follow a few of them because I like to at least attempt to do them justice.
Writing on Twitter isn’t always about getting the snappiest line together – although, choose a good one – it’s more about seeing what other people are writing. Each day I take a bit of time to find a few lines from whatever I’m writing and post it. Of course, lots of other people are doing the same thing, so it gives me a chance to see how other writers are putting things together. Think of it as an amuse-bouche for words.
Anyway, if you’d like to join up, it’s as simple as posting something with the appropriate hashtag and reading what others are doing. Beyond that, there aren’t any requirements. Other than don’t be a dick, but that kind of goes without saying.
Don’t expect a lot of feedback, but do expect to find some interesting new writers and see what they’re up to. Here’s my daily routine:
Sunday
- #SunWIP – Theme-based, coordinated by Judy L Mohr
Monday
- #MuseMon – Theme-based and hosted by Claribel Ortega.
- #MartialMonday – Theme-based, usually revolves around fights. Hosted by Ellis Logan
Tuesday
- #2bitTues – Usually themed, sometimes not. Hosted by Ang D’Onofrio
Wednesday
- #1LineWed – Themed. Hosted by Kiss of Death.
Thursday
- #ThruLineThurs – Optional Themed, Hosted by Madd Fictional, also has ThruLineThurs account.
- #Thurds – Themed. Hosted by (I think) A.B.Funkhauser.
Friday
- #FictFri – Optional themed, hosted by Gracie Mae DeLunac
- #FriDare – Usually themed, often involves captioning pictures or similar. This one is pretty fun. Hosted by Mica Scotti Kole
Saturday
- #SlapDashSat – No theme, just post and enjoy. Hosted by Madd Fictional, also has SlapDashSat account
Go forth and check these out; there are good times ahead and you’re likely to meet someone interesting. To play, all you have to do is either write something up or pull something from your work in progress, tweet it, and make sure to add the appropriate hashtag for the day. Then, kick back and see what everyone else has written. It’s great fun and it exposes you to writers you might not have come across before.
Got any other games you like? Leave ’em in the comments!
Eric Lahti 
I learn a lot form your use of Tweets. Granted, I don’t do it enough and I really need to get back into the habit. IMHO, I don’t think there is any real correlation between tweets and sales of books. I would guess there is probably a good case to made that it spreads the authors sense of familiarity with the audience and that likely breeds sales in the long run. I guess you can make an indirect argument.
You made an excellent point. You can’t have every tweet be a sales pitch. That is a terrible thing to do to your readers/fans. Someday, I am going to be better at Tweeting. Probably just about the time the Twitter dissapears from the mainstream of social media.
-B
I’m not sure I get much in the way of sales from Tweets, but it’s fun to do and it’s really cool to see what everyone else is doing. It’s really a by authors for authors kind of thing and I’m not sure how many readers out there even notice it’s all going on. I guess, at the very least, I’m producing some (hopefully) entertaining Tweets which is something I haven’t always been good at.
And, damn, I hope Twitter doesn’t disappear. Of course, I guess as long as Trump is using it, it’ll be around.