A number of years ago now, I graduated from The Humber School For Writers correspondent’s program working on my first novel “Lessons In Breathing Under Water”.
The two mentors I worked with, (Olive Senior and Richard Scrimger)both guided me to try to say more with less. Apparently, my natural instinct is to over complicate and over write where ever possible (I know - readers to this blog must be shocked ;).
Funny thing, while using Twitter, my initial posts are always (and i mean always) over the 140-character mark. Twitter, my new writer mentor, continues to tell me to pair it down and find simpler ways to say the same thing.
I have no idea what the longer-term effects for me might be. But I have even been considering taking the first 10 pages of my new novel "The Obituary Writer" and putting it into Twitter sentence by sentence to improve my writing style. For now, let me just say this:
Twitter Lesson #1: Be less convoluted.
Friday, 11 April 2008
Lessons From Twitter: #1
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8 comments:
this post was totally over 140 characters.
Damn you Jeremy....
The 140-character limit is one of the things I enjoy most about using Twitter. It forces me to say things concisely.
At first, I found it frustrating. But after a while, couldn't agree with you more :)
Great thought! Although it has a negative (as well as positive) effect for me, in that it sometimes forces me to miss out words, or letters. Thus causing my written English to deteriorate even further :-)
Lessons from Twitter: #1
Be concise.
Still, your insight didn't come until the "reveal" at the end of your post. I wonder how your post would have read, had you lead with your new Twitter lesson?
lol. Your so right Dee. Still learning (obviously) :)
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