Every morning, I wake up and check my Timehop, and every morning it makes me cringe. Not so much because of the old pictures of myself (although those are pretty bad too), but because of my old tweets. I've been on Twitter since 2008, and I joined before most people besides celebrities started to use it. I was tweeting to no one but for some reason it intrigued me. I liked being able to post my thoughts at any moment, which I could have done on Facebook, but Twitter was different. Twitter is like an alternate universe from Facebook. All of the quick, biting, and smart things get posted to Twitter. Everything else goes on Facebook.
Those who don't like Twitter just don't understand it. I am regularly asked, "What's the point of it?" The point is whatever you make of it. I use it to keep up with current events. When I'm at work I'll scroll through Twitter in my free time rather than check my CNN app because it just moves quicker. I use it to connect to others in the vegan, feminist, writing, and music communities. I use it to laugh at my favorite standup comedians and my favorite Twitter comedians (yeah, those exist).
But mostly, I use Twitter to preserve my ideas. My drafts are full of thoughts, jokes, and little quips about everyday life. I go back to them frequently to see what I can improve, and sometimes those drafts won't be posted for a few months, or ever. Later, I can go back and look through the tweets that I did post for inspiration for an article, story, or even a poem. Twitter is a free workshop, and the likes and retweets show how people respond to your work.
The best part of the site is the 140 character limit. It makes me so sad when there are petitions online to try to get Twitter to expand the limit. I sincerely hope they never do. Having to formulate my thoughts into 140 characters has greatly refined my writing skills. Tweeting has taught me how to get to the point as quickly as possible and not use unnecessary words.
Sometimes I take about eight minutes writing and rewriting a tweet. Each tweet is like a little game within my own mind. I ask myself, "What word can I use as a substitute for this longer word?" or "Is this sentence really clear?" I try my best to not totally disregard punctuation in attempts to meet the character limit, but when it's between proper punctuation and being grammatically correct, I always go with the latter. A missing apostrophe can be forgiven, but using the wrong contraction form of "you are" can not be.
Unfortunately, we are taught early in school, where quantity is often valued over quality, that "fluff" in an essay is good. The more words you use, the better. The bigger the words that you use are, the smarter you will sound. That is so, so wrong. Be precise and concise and more people will listen. One of the best comments I have ever received in a creative writing class was, "You don't use all these big, fancy words." I took it as a compliment. Save the big words for your scholarly journal, because it just isn't relatable. You can write in a conversational tone and still sound smart. You'll reach more people that way.
I don't have 1,000 followers, and not all of my tweets are worthy of going viral. But if it weren't for Twitter I wouldn't play with my words as much as I do. That shows throughout all of my writing. Every sentence I create has so much thought behind it. We should all be that way because words are so powerful.
