3 Ways to Survive the Twitter Tidal Wave

Twitter repeats itself – like a parrot. This is a parrot. See what I did there?

Image © Elwood W. McKay III

As I’ve mentioned numerous times, Twitter is an amazing resource for writers. In fact, it’s an amazing resource for any creative, any professional, or indeed any creative professional. Never before has so much up-to-the-minute, field-specific information and advice been so readily available.

That said, Twitter does have at least one major flaw – sometimes it’s just overwhelmingly big. Where once we had to seek out the elusive stream of writerly knowledge, we’re now bombarded by a continuous tidal wave of information. It’s easy to be swept away.

If you’re not completely turned off by the information overload, you may be giving yourself an aneurism trying to keep up with it all. I’ve suffered from both in the past, so here are three strategies I’ve come up with to make sense of it all.

1) Don’t click on every link you see.

I’m an unpublished writer. If, like me, you follow hoards of other writers, journalists, agents, publishers, and so forth, then you’ll be receiving a steady stream of fascinating blog links every second of the day.

The question is, how much of that information is useful to you right now? While it may be tempting for me to read up on techniques for writing agent queries, the fact is I’ve still got the better part of a novel left to write! Writing tips are the only thing that have practical value to me at present.

My advice is to only check out links that might be of practical use to you right now, or in the very near future. People will still be tweeting the other stuff when you’re ready for it. It’s not going anywhere.

2) Don’t repeat yourself.

The nature of Twitter and the blog-o-globe means that there are at least 50 people posting essentially identical advice, at least 50 times a day. But there’s no need for you to read it more than once. The cunning blogger will find creative new ways of presenting old information, but don’t be fooled!

If you see a link that appears to cover a topic you already know about, don’t be tempted to click on it just for the sake of self-assurance. There’s some security and satisfaction in being told what you already know, but don’t give in to the instinct – it’s a time waster.

3) Know when to stop.

I used to have Tweetdeck loaded in the background all day every day. Every few seconds a notification would appear with a potentially interesting link, and I’d instinctively check it out, just in case I risked missing out on the most important piece of writerly advice ever. I didn’t get much work done.

The whole point of Twitter is that it’s a never-ending stream of information. It’s not going to turn itself off. You have to do it.

Sometimes it can be tempting to give in to paranoia, and think that you’re going to miss that crucial piece of advice or information, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few months, it’s that Twitter repeats itself.

Yes, you may miss that information, but the good stuff never goes away. People retweet. Others incorporate the information into their blog post, and tweet the link. Weeks later, completely different people stumble across the blog posts, and tweet the links again.

Limit your Twitter use, and have faith that the truly useful links will find you.

Do you have difficulty surviving the Twitter tidal wave? Were these suggestions useful to you? Do you have any other advice for dealing with the information overload? Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

3 Ways to Increase Your Writing Productivity

Coffee can increase productivity over short periods. It can also increase trips to the toilet.

Image © Idea go

So you want to increase your writing productivity, eh? Don’t we all! I’m not claiming to be an expert, but here are three tips and techniques that have helped me massively. Maybe they could help you too.

1) Get up at the crack of midnight.

Ok, maybe not midnight, but try to get up as early as you can manage without adversely affecting your sleep. Recently, I started going to bed around 9 or 10pm, and getting up at 5am. This gives me a few hours in the morning to do nothing but write, without worldly distractions.

For maximum effect, I recommend showering immediately to wake yourself up, and drinking copious amounts of coffee – but not a drop of caffeine from six-hours-to-bedtime onwards. You’ll need deep, perfect sleep to keep up the routine. And for those who have difficulty getting out of bed at the best of times, try putting your alarm on the other side of the room, so you have no choice but to leave the bed!

This is a harsh but rewarding regime.

2) Turn off Twitter!

So, you’ve cut out the distractions that you can’t normally control by writing in the middle of the night – what next? Well, that just leaves the distractions that you can control, mainly because they’re self-inflicted!

Twitter is the worst culprit here, but reading the news, checking up on your regular sites, anxiously clicking ‘refresh’ to view your latest blog traffic – these are all completely unnecessary activities that are not only eating into your writing time, but also putting you in entirely the wrong frame of mind.

And if you’re anything like me, then as soon as you start playing around in that browser window, you’re lost. Regardless of how much you struggle to focus on the writing, you will find some excuse to keep shifting back to the browser every few minutes. It’s a total productivity killer.

There’s only one solution – for those few hours that you’ve set aside to write, turn the clock back to 1989. No internet. Not one page. Not one tweet. You’ll thank yourself for it.

3) Do something you hate.

Well, maybe not something you hate – I wouldn’t necessarily try to force you into something horrendous! – but I genuinely believe it’s beneficial for any creative person to have something in their lives that they wish wasn’t. For you, it may be your menial job, the housework, or the weekly shop. For me, it’s my menial job, the housework, and the weekly shop.

I’m never more motivated to write than when there’s something unpleasant preventing me from doing it. That passion for not doing the hated activity can be translated into a passion for the writing.

For example, I’m paid not much more than minimum-wage – this means that my employer values a whole hour of my time at approximately the same level as the supermarket values a dead chicken.

My time is worth more than that. Your time is worth more than that. I’ll be writing as soon as I get home, in the impassioned knowledge that at least I am valuing my time appropriately.

Did you find these suggestions helpful? Have any of them worked for you? Got any better ideas?! Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

Writing Tips to Shame Your Mother

This mother has offered poor writing advice, and is rightly ashamed.

Image © Graur Razvan Ionut

Let me start by stating that no mothers will actually be shamed in the making of this post. I simply needed an arresting title, and recalled with amusement a menu I read recently, offering ‘Sunday Roasts to Shame Your Mother’. The title is nonsense – the advice that follows isn’t.

This compilation of excellent blog posts I’ve read since joining Twitter is loosely targeted at those who, like me, are near the beginning of their writing ‘career’. That said, there are things here that every writer should remind themselves of from time to time, and even general principles that can be adapted and applied to any creative enterprise.

This is where I shut up and let others more wisdomous than I do the talking:

Writer Reality Check – Kristen Lamb

Top Ten List of Advice for Aspiring Writers – Jody Hedlund

Six Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was Writing My First Novel – Krista Van Dolzer

A Litmus Test For Your Opening Scene – Roni Loren

Potential First Chapter Problems – Jody Hedlund

Hooking The Reader And Never Letting Go – Kristen Lamb

Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Fiction? - Suzannah Windsor Freeman

The Problem – and Reality – of Adding –LY – LuAnne Schindler

50 Rhetorical Devices for Rational Writing – Mark Nichol

Think of this as kind of a ‘Best Of’ list – I’ll be compiling more in the future, and the advice I take an interest in will probably reflect where I am on my personal writing ‘journey’. You know what, brief aside…

I detest the word ‘journey’, as applied to a string of related experiences when attempting to learn a new subject or skill. I’m not on a mystical quest for god’s sake. From now on, I’ll be using my own acronym – STring Of Related Experiences WHen Attempting To Learn A New Skill – STORE WHATLANS. Aside over…

I hope that these links have been helpful to you, and have assisted in furthering your own personal Store Whatlans.

Did you find these links useful? Do you agree with the advice, or do you think that some of it is open to argument? E-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk or leave a comment below.

Flash Fiction – 3 Sentence Template

 

Image © Ian Kahn

The great talent of Edgar Allan Poe has inspired me to work on some short stories of my own. It’s a welcome break from my novel, which is slowly but surely turning into a doubt-ridden grind. Also, there are lots of ways to get quality short stories in front of readers quickly, and it would be nice to receive some kind of feedback after nearly five months of going at this writing business in a serious way.

Since I’m essentially a dork, with an inherent love of systems and strategies, I quickly developed and implemented something I’m pompously calling the ‘3 Sentence Template’ for writing short stories and flash fiction. My theory is that I should be able to write three amazing sentences representing the beginning, middle and end of a story, then link them together as succinctly as possible, and hopefully end up with a quality piece of writing.

This is how it works:

Sentence 1 – Introduction

The very first sentence of the story should create an evocative setup that clearly indicates or implies the nature of the protagonist and setting, ideally in an unusual manner.

Example: Golden California sun crispened Eddy’s already dry skin, and warmed his blackened heart with the promise of hot, delicious, living brain.

Sentence 2 – Disaster

The second sentence, designed to appear somewhere in the middle of the story, should describe the most improbably gut-rending, heart-wrenching, hopeless scenario possible for the protagonist, again, as evocatively as possible.

Example: There was something almost restful about the hum of the motor, the purring of the blades gently displacing the air across his throat, and the joyful, expectant faces of the children.

Sentence 3 – Twist

This should be the very last sentence of the story. It should be punchy, ominous, and suitable for using as the punch-line to a shocking twist.

Example: Death was good.

Once I’ve written my three sentences, I proceed to fill in the gaps in whatever manner seems best. It’s a surprising amount of fun working out how you get from one to the next – sort of like a writing exercise, but you also get a finished piece of work at the end of it.

I’ve tried it with two stories so far, and I’m reasonably pleased with both. The first is called Two Heads Are Better Than One, and uses the example sentences above. The second is called The Good Boy, and actually has a complete, layered narrative, based on this method, using only three sentences!

As I’m hoping to get both stories featured on Every Day Fiction, I can’t publish them here just yet. I’ll have to wait to see whether they’re accepted but, one way or another, you’ll get to read them in the near future!

Do you write short stories or flash fiction? Do you have any quirky plotting techniques? Let the world know by leaving a comment below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk.