Twooshes On My Mind

I like to make twooshes. A Twoosh is a combination of "tweet" and "swoosh" and it means a tweet that is exactly 140 characters.

My current novel-in-progress is on its third draft. When I was writing the first draft of it, back in 2003, I got very neurotic about how it looked on the page. Paragraphs had to be mathematically precise. If I deleted a word, I had to add a word. Hours were spent deliberating over the choice of a preposition. In the whole draft, there was not one line of dialogue, because it looked weird to me, physically. I couldn't let it into my manuscript. Eventually I scrapped that attempt and forced myself to write it as a screenplay, to get over my twitching. It worked -- I mostly scrapped the screenplay too, but I can now write the book with dialogue and it doesn't bother me too much.

Other authors have said that they like the 140 character limit on Twitter because it forces them to think about word choice and be thrifty about language. I like that too. I also like hitting that 140 character limit exactly -- it's like ringing a bell. It satisfies my need to be picky-picky with words without ruining my manuscript. I like twooshing for this reason. I've done it 330 times.

This is my Twitter cloud for the last five years, in alphabetical order (generated by Tweet Stats -- they can also tell you how many times you've twooshed). My Twitter handle is @lostcheerio. Should we really be following each other?

#fb #litchat #nanowrimo actually @andreakinnear author away awesome bad bed benny best better big bike blog book books @campcreek @celeritycycling chapter check child children come coming cool dan day @deadwhiteguys dear did didnt does doesnt dog doing eating @emilygatlin favorite feel finished getting girl glad going @gonavy1994 good great guy happy hard having head heh hes hey home hope hot house @hubcitybookshop husband @iamsusannah idea @joshilynjackson kids kind know @lbardugo let life liked list little long look looking looks @lostcheerio lot love lydia make makes making maybe mean minutes mom morning movie need new night novel oh okay old people person post pretty race read reading real really @rebeccaschinsky review right rt sadie said say shine song stop story sure tell thank thanks thats theres theyre thing things think thought time times today tomorrow tonight @tossedinmylap trying tweet twitter use violin virginia wait want watch watching way week whats @wileycash win word words work world wow write writing wrong www yay yeah year yes youre