WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THAT?

Sometimes twitter signs me out.

I don't know why.

Maybe it's cleaning house and sees me zoned out and thinks I'm some hairless dust bunny, or maybe there's a quota for mentioning coffee too many times in a week (I don't sleep well, twitter, please learn sympathy!).

Anyway, when I get the boot I lose all ability to reason. I refresh the sign-in page a few times, like maybe my browser will decide to start refreshing to a page with a page from the past. And then, when I go to sign in, I enter my username as "twitter", but without the quotation marks. Because in my small, reptilian brain, all I have to do is type "twitter" and I'm flooded with tweets. Mostly about coffee and self-promotion, but about ten percent are awesome and that's more than I can say about things people say to me in real life.

DO NOT enter your username as twitter, by the way. The program gets an attitude, and is like "oh, nuh-uh, you did not even".

...

Actually, I may have just discovered why twitter sometime signs me out. Also, I think it stuck a "pin me" stickynote to my butt. A Pinterest joke, twitter, really?

EPIPHANY

I recently discovered an author who makes me laugh to the point of tears no matter what mood I was in when I opened her books. This is a rare and beautiful thing. And, better yet, she has released lots of books. Under two names, no less!

I hoped to find her on twitter, thinking her feed would at least occasionally make me spew my beverage of choice on surfaces of convenience. I couldn't find her by a simple name search, so I went to her website, where I discovered that she did not tweet. I was astounded! How could this prolific author not be on twitter?

Lightbulb.

Actually, the revelation wasn't mine. I believe she explained that she's not on twitter or other social media because she's busy, you know, producing the books that threaten to make me pee myself - in a good way. Or, in the good way, because hilarity is the only good cause I can think of for spontaneous incontinence.

But I digress. I love twitter. I love it the way other people love bacon-wrapped scallops or Glee or facebook.

I reduce my usage when I'm writing toward a deadline, whether for a submission or when responding to edits from my agent or editor. But I've gotten to the point where I don't think I can let it go. I don't want to, for one thing. I've cultivated a wonderful list to follow. I learn a ton from it. I get news before it breaks through the regular media. I am inspired and touched by these tiny little feeds throughout the day.

But it does take time away from my writing, as does cruising forums, blogging and following blogs, checking stats and sales, and researching both subjects and craft.

What about you guys? What's your online kryptonite?

EVEN LITTLE THINGS CAN BE BROKEN

I always wished I could be a visual artist. I have tried, sometimes devoting up to several months to master a medium. I can't draw, or paint. My best sculptures were fundamentally rubbish (literally, in one case) that I manipulated into interesting rubbish. Like the wire spine and ribcage encased in melted and then solidified Paraffin wax. Or the multi-level river delta on rusty metal. That was actually quite lovely, though slightly tetanus-inducing. (Please note links are to other websites. That's not my work.)

What my efforts and consistent failures in the realm of visual arts has taught me is a massive appreciation of people who do it well and/or differently. So, because I cannot share any of my own with with you, I present to you artist Lori Nix. I discovered her tiny, meticulous created photographs via a link on twitter, and find them delightful. And a little sad. But mostly delightful.

Twitter Speak

An odd tendency has slipped into my spoken communication lately: the desire to add a punchline in the form of a hashtag. For those of you who don’t use/don’t pay attention to/hate with a burning passion all things Twitter, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

A hashtag is this: # (the sign formerly known as “pound”). It’s a way to unite tweets in the twitterverse. For instance, the hashtag #followfriday (or #FF) is a way for people (on Fridays) to suggest that other tweeps follow the same people they follow. #moviesinmypants was a trending topic in which people could take movie titles, add the phrase “in my pants” to it, and laugh until they peed themselves. I think the movie Shaft (in my pants) was the frontrunner, but personally I preferred my entry Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (in my pants).

The hashtag has evolved, though, into a way for individuals to punch up a joke or reveal irony in their tweets. Remember you’ve only got 140 characters, and sometimes you have to condense your thoughts to convey them in a single tweet. A couple examples:

@NicolePeeler (Author of the awesome Jane True series from @orbitbooks)

I feel like my sex scene lacks rhythm #whitegirlscanthump

@michaelianblack (Comedian and author of several acclaimed children’s books, including A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea)

I have no cash on me so I stole one of my daughter's dollars to put under her pillow after she lost a tooth last night. #true #shithead

So now I find myself in conversations where I have something funny to say, but it will only be really funny with a hashtag ending. However, unlike “air quotes”, hashtags don’t yet have an off-the-page equivalent. At least, nothing that doesn’t resemble throwing out gang signs, which are frowned upon at our office.

I assume that, somewhere out there, a university is in the process of applying for a grant to study this phenomenon (the etymology of hashtag humor, not my ignorant and probably offensive use of gang signs). I look forward to the results of the study.

For the time being, I will clasp my hands firmly in front of me while speaking, and work on my comic timing.