7/ The online book community is very motivated & incredibly supportive of new & established talent. Reading and writing are solitary activities. Twitter brings in a social element regardless of location or physical mobility.- Do you have any experience of this?
- Do you know of good research about this?
- How do you feel about this?
- How can 'Word Nerds' help on a local/National/International scale?
- How can we use the internet to help?
- What do we know that could help governments to deal with this issue?
I have many "friends" who I have made thanks to Twitter. It is a great chance to connect with others out there, especially when I am feeling alone and isolated in my own little writer world. But beware, it can also be a tremendous time waster, take in from a master procrastinator.
ReplyDeleteTrue. The great thing about twitter though is being able to get info straight from the horse's mouth. If I want to know how a publisher feels about something, I ask them. Back in the day the whole industry seemed to have a giant razor-wire fence around it. Isn't it great that we can all talk now? Love it!
ReplyDeleteI would not restrict this to just twitter. Blogger is a wonderful place to meet people and connect. Writing can develop into an isolated place for a writer and these social networks are invaluable for getting out of that situation with peers and friends who understand and can motivate you.
ReplyDeleteI certainly have experience of attending academic conferences and afterwards following people on Twitter and Facebook who delivered interesting papers or who I got chatting with. It is a great way of informally staying in touch without the need to exchange email messages. I've also met people locally through Twitter who are interested in working together.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite things about Twitter is that it is like being at a huge ongoing conference where people can chip in at any moment and add to the richness of a discussion (without filling up my inbox - I choose when to engage).
I think there is on the flip side a danger of too much tweeting or talking and not enough writing and doing. Writing is of necessity fairly solitary. Related to this I am currently following a debate about poetry workshops on the JISC mailing list for British and Irish Poets in which there are many, as you can imagine, divergent opinions.