I’m relatively new to Twitter. I’ve only posted ~200 tweets. This compared to three people I follow: @blakebutler who has posted over 3,000 tweets or @matthewjsimmons who has +6,000 or @sophierosenblum who has ~9,000.

While I got my twitter account a long time ago, I never used it because I couldn’t figure out my approach. I mean, I couldn’t figure out how to use it in a way that seemed interesting to me.  Also, I couldn’t understand the protocols, all that R/T and # and @ this and that.  Nor did I understand the etiquette.  How many times a day is it okay to tweet?  Are you supposed to follow everyone who follows you?  And so on.  I felt like an old man confronting his inability to adapt to technology.

So, because I’m a nerd, I studied Twitter for a while.  I began to pick up on the etiquette and protocol, and what I  noticed was that the individuals I found most interesting had some kind of a angle.  For instance:

@AdamWPeterson tweets funny one liners.

@Kate_Durbin retweets celebrity tweets.

@markleidner does a kind of aphorism thing.

@VanessaPlace seems to be tweeting the entirety of Gone with the Wind.

And so on.

After a bit of trial and error, I think I’ve figured out my approach (@higgschrishiggs): I like to use Twitter as a way of sharing stuff I find interesting, rather than trying to be funny (which I am no good at) or expressing personal information (which I’m uninterested in doing).  I spend an awful lot of time scrounging around the internet like a antique hunter looking for awesome stuff. Once I find things, I like to share them with people.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this translates to my approach to creative writing as well, since in my creative writing I tend to be less interested in communicating my ideas and more interested in showing people my word configurations — much the same way I like to show people the material I’ve discovered on the internet.  That’s a crude reduction, but I think there could be something to it.

Also makes me wonder…do others ponder their approach to Twitter?  And do others see a connection between their approach to Twitter and their approach to creative writing?

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