The Pros and Cons of twitter - as a writer and a regular human!

The Pros and Cons of Twitter

(as a writer and a regular human)

As I try to finish my latest story, ‘The Wish Factory’ (the third of four ‘Beastly Bullies’ children's book collection stories to be released on Amazon Kindle) which will hopefully be out later this month, I've spent the last couple of days fiddling around on twitter during my writing breaks.

Doctor Gremlin of the 'Beastly Bullies' collection

I’ve never really 'used' it before but have found it to be quite involving, especially as you can choose who to ‘follow’ on it and find all kinds of interesting information, ideas and opinions.

This has also led to me becoming further distracted by the upcoming UK general election, as a lot of the content on twitter is focusing on that.
I would never ever include politics in any of my stories, as I believe children should be free of the worries of the adult world as they get on with the busy and confusing job of growing up, going to school, doing homework, making and breaking friendships, living with their family or whomever, and taking on all kinds of different hobbies, facing various personal challenges, etc etc etc!

Twitter: a good but time-consuming way to follow events?

I can’t really say that I have my ‘finger on the pulse’ at all – as following the news can take up a lot of time and I try to avoid spending too long staring at screens. However, twitter seems a potentially empowering forum for some without a voice to ‘speak up’, if you can separate the more interesting or insightful tweets from countless other random (and sometimes inappropriate) daily ones!

If you have a moment, why not visit my twitter feed to see who I’m following and find out what some of them have to say:

There’s all kinds of cool science feeds like ‘Physics World’ and 'Science Weekly', links to masterful documentary makers such as Simon Schama, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Louis Theroux, amazing images from Earth Pics, the insights of characters ranging from Ekhart Tolle to Kurzgesagt, and regular updates from great children’s authors including JK Rowling, Michael Rosen and Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

JK Rowling's twitter feed could be worth following

I suspect you either have to be famous or ‘time rich’ to manage get a lot of followers – something I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with anyway!

I aim to use my own twitter feed to 'retweet' or 'favourite' anything I think might appeal to any like-minded souls, while perhaps adding a few comments and observations of my own along the way if ever the mood takes me - so feel free to follow:

Feel free to follow me on twitter!

As for any aspiring authors reading this and pondering the use of such social media, I suppose it can't do any harm to try - although I’m not sure I’d recommend putting too much time into it when you're supposed to be writing...

Anyway, from a writer's point of view, twitter seems potentially useful for:

• Announcing new releases
• Keeping readers up to date with potential new developments in your stories, the evolution of your characters, new cover designs, etc
• Interacting with your readers
• Increasing your 'exposure'
• Giving updates on any readings, signings, talks, etc that you might be doing
• Interacting with other authors
• Announcing any new posts on your Blog or Facebook page

However, as great as all of this sounds, it's not all wonderful, as twitter can still be:

• Very time consuming to keep up with everyone’s tweets and respond when necessary
• Difficult when trying to separate ‘the wheat from the chaff’
• Open to abuse – are you ready for the possibility of negative comments on social media?
• No guarantee of increased book sales

twitter can be a good way to interact with readers

If you do decide to start 'tweeting', you might find these online guides useful:

Mashable twitter guide book

How to get more twitter followers

And for teachers, ways to us twitter in the classroom

You can also learn how to 'embed' your twitter feed into your blog page here (it's very simple, even I managed at the first attempt - see the right-hand side of this page)

Do you have a twitter feed already? Which are your favourite feeds? Can you recommend any interesting ones for young readers or children’s authors? Please share them...