Tweet Faster! You're Not Tweeting Fast Enough!
I love Twitter. I do. But here's the thing: You have to be pithy to use it well. No, I don't have a lisp. Pithy I said, and pithy I mean. Pith, as we all know because we paid close attention in plant biology, is the central core of the stems of most flowering plants. So "pithy" means getting to the heart of the matter. Pithy tweets are the best.
Sure, you can post a series of tweets, and that's fine, when it's necessary. That's fine, when you're having a conversation with somebody. When you're just making an observation and throwing it out into the timeline for God and everybody to see (sure God tweets–if He's omnipresent, he has to be on all the social networks, doesn't He? All three of Him?), you want your whole thought intact in one tweet.
If you're a writer trying to drum up interest in your work, or any other type of snake oil salesman, you want your whole pitch in 140 characters, and you want most of those characters to be more than a link to additional information.
It isn't Friday, but I just rediscovered this post at The Blood-Red Pencil on this very subject, so I decided to share it today.
As for the title of this post, it comes courtesy of a high school friend of my #4 daughter. #4 and I love Ishtar. Ishtar has a bad rep, but we think it's one of the funniest movies ever made, though less funny now than it was before the Middle East really did become inflamed. At any rate, our heroes were crawling through the desert, and Friend suddenly shouts, "Die faster! You're not dying fast enough!" Apparently, Friend did not share our high opinion of the movie.
Others DO share our opinion. Here is a tribute to the film from another person who claims Ishtar as a family favorite.
And, if you're a writer and don't believe other people's creative process can be as messy as yours, this:
So now you know what kind of sense of humor I have.
WRITING PROMPT: Write a promo for a book, yours or someone else's, in 140 characters or fewer, including spaces, punctuation, and link.
MA
