Twitter and the NaNoWriMo Experience

It was a lovely October evening when I casually asked my brother, "Do you think I should get Twitter?" To which he replied, "You're so high-tech, so yes." Don't ask me how that actually makes sense, but at any rate I started a Twitter account. As it turns out, it was just in time for NaNoWriMo.

First of all, what's NaNoWriMo, you may ask? It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and while not national at all - it's gone international - it really is a month (in November) where crazy people from around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel (or at least part of one) within 30 days.

Now Twitter, as I'm sure all of you know, is another one of those social networking sites that lets you collect friends, family, and other miscellaneous people while you post (or tweet) short 140-character messages for all the world to see.

So what's writing a novel got to do with Twitter? You see, early during my foray into the Twitterverse, I stumbled onto an article titled "Twitter Chats For Writers" by Debbie Ridpath Ohi (last accessed 28 Dec 09), which initiated me into the wonderful world of twitter chats (hashtags and twitter searches, if you will). Starting off with merely monitoring the #amwriting (short for "I am writing") chat, I slowly got drawn into following and posting in that and several other notable chats, such as #writegoal and, of course, #nanowrimo.

However, the chat that really added bursts of colour to my day (and bursts of creativity to my writing) was the #amwritingparty. Fact: I downloaded Tweetdeck to (almost) exclusively keep track of the conversations! Fine, the almost is there because it was also a pain to keep refreshing Twitter when I had better things to do, like write. Originally peopled by some wonderful writers such as L.K. Gardner -Griffie (author of Misfit McCabe), Sara McClung, Carol Valdez Miller and Simon C. Larter, their encouragement helped spur me to write even through the more brain-dead times. (There are many more wonderful writers involved, but sad to say, I'm anti-social enough to not talk to all of them! My fault, sorry.) Some of this year's better writing days were done through word wars, shameless begging for encouragement and word pledges. And what do you know? I actually made the 50,000 words within 27 days!

The chat itself has now expanded to uncountable numbers of participants as well as spawned off a new chat, #wipfire, where writers share lines from their current works in progress (wip). So if you ever need help - or even just some inspiration - to get some writing done, don't forget to check out the #amwritingparty!

See also: Writer's Guide to Twitter and #amwriting FAQ.