How To Suck A Little Less At Twitter

Have timeline, will bitch.

I'm hardly a social media expert, but I'm nothing if not a social media addict. There's plenty of advice out there on how to be great at twitter - be funny, be interesting, be a good curator, blah blah blah. But I've got a few pet peeves that I haven't seen mentioned on any of these lists.

Protip. (source)

This is by no means a definitive list on how to behave on twitter. The average user (myself included) probably does a few of these now and then, because we all sorta suck, right?

My mission is a small and achievable one: to suck a little less at twitter. Here are some fun tips to make that happen:

Stop detailing your bodily functions. If all you tweet is I’m so hungry! or I’m so full! then you may as well just name your account after your stomach. Same goes with I’m soooo cold. Following accounts from both hemispheres, I’ve constantly got someone whinging about being cold in my timeline. It’s dull. You’re giving me nothing. I want insight. I want a new perspective. I want frostbitten spirit-fingers!

Quit the TMI app. Specifically, abusing the TMI feature by making every tweet ridiculously long and drawn out. The joy of twitter is that it’s a series of short, readily available, self-contained messages. Usually I only click through if you’ve offered a particularly interesting comment on something you’ve retweeted, and I want to see the whole retweet. But if you start with ‘You know what’s wrong with the world…’ then I am so not clicking through.

Stop tweeting inane decontextualized song lyrics. Maybe you’re listening to this amazing song and it’s bringing your soul to delicious musical orgasm, but twitter is a text-based experience and all I see on my screen is ‘baby baby baby oh baby baby baby no’ - and I just don’t give a duck.

Limit the text speak. Perfectly acceptable for your average tweeter with three bots following them. But what blows my mind is when self-proclaimed writers use text speak when it's not necessary (we've all had to make sacrifices to save that -1 character.) But dude, you’re trying to sell me a book you wrote? You better damn well show me that you know how English works.

Quit being didactic or overly philosophical. Thinking out loud isn't always equivalent to making other people think. Being high-minded now and then is refreshing, but if every tweet is an abstract attempt at being deep, you're probably coming off pretentious (at best.)

For the love of pie, quit with the ever-so-unique nicknames for people in your life. You can’t just say my husband or Dave (if your husband’s name happens to be Dave), oh no! It has to be The Man, The S.O., Mister BetterHalfington, and all that shit. And kids become The Princess or Little Winner. You’re not being cute and creative. You’re being that married person or parent who makes all the other married people or parents look like lame, kitschy dorks.

Now that I've alienated everybody ever, here are some things other people say to stop doing, that I say keep doing on twitter:

Swearing. Apparently not many people like swearing on twitter, but I think if that's part of your personality, don't censor yourself to appeal to the masses. Fuckbuckets.

Drunktweets. Yup, it's an art, and completely depends on what kind of drunk you are. I happen to be a happy and inappropriate drunk, so my drunktweets are by far what gets me the most followers. Unless you're tweeting on behalf of your boss, or your parole officer is following you, I'd say drunktweets are harmless fun.

Oversharing. Twitter is beautiful because it gives you the freedom to post whatever you want. And if you want to post “The thing that bothered me about my ex is that he had really weird junk.” then I am totally gonna follow you and favourite that shit.

Did I miss anything? What would you add to the list, or take off it? Have you ever tweeted about a fire before fully evacuating the building? Share in the comments!

Review: A Sudden Bout Of The Plague

Last night I had a tickle in my throat. This morning I felt for a dagger sticking out of my neck. That's right, kids - I have the plague again. And because I don't have the heart to leave you guys without a review two weeks in a row, please enjoy this out-of-ten approximation of my misery.

Suddenness: 8 / 10. Truly impressive, would recommend. If you're looking to get out of a fun weekend or a shotgun wedding quickly, just let me know and I'll email you some of my germs!

Plaguiness:  7 / 10. Quite plaguey, especially seeing as it's just getting started.

Boutiness: 10 / 10. It's a fun word, isn't it, boutiness? I wish it were real.

Reviewability: 6 / 10. Not as reviewable as a book but far more reviewable than a passing phase of existential doubt.

Forethought and Planning in Event of the Plague: 0 / 10. I had planned to casually read a hundred pages of the book I'm busy with, to get a review done today. But I decided to pass out for the majority of the day. If it's any consolation, I had fever-dreams about some water park I was trying to review for you guys. I even had a screen full of text in my dream.

Odds of Survival: 6.6 / 10. I've had bronchitis twice before. So this is either going to be a piece of cake, or the third bout that kills me.

Temperature: 3 / 10. An unimpressive 37.3 C. I'm sure it was higher before the Degoran, but I don't care about my blog enough not to take medicine. Medicine is my favourite.

Achiness: forever / 10. My back, hips and every single joint is radiating unhappiness. This must be what Woody Allen feels like all the time.

Sexy Croaky Voice: 8 / 10. Could totally belt out a verse of Sticky Shoes by Phoebe Buffay.



Overall Rating: I'm Too Tired To Do Maths / 10. I'm all reviewed out. Hope you guys have a good weekend full of rainbows, ponies and strong immune systems!

Clandestine - Five Sentence Fiction

A tiny story based on this prompt from Lillie McFerrin Writes.

The room was dark. Cold tile pressing into her bare feet, she followed the path she'd memorized long ago. Sweaty palms opened the single door that didn't creak, careful not to leave fingerprints on the aluminum handle. Pupils dilated, ears twitched at the crackle of the foil and then the simple, sweet snap between her teeth. 

The tastiest cookies are the ones you steal.

The Great 2 A.M. Wasp Drama

So on Sunday night, I'm casually headed to bed after a not-so-fun day at my job that I don't really love too much, and a night of far too much youtube, when I happen to see that there's a GIANT-ASS WASP on my bedroom wall.

I hate wasps. I really, really, really hate wasps. They're like the sick result of a three-way between a bee and an Orc and Satan. Usually I would just scream and slam the door and avoid the wasp-infested room for as long as humanly possible... but my bed was right there. I was tired. I was already in my pyjamas.

So I decided to be brave and went (okay, ran) to the kitchen to get what is possibly the most ridiculous weapon available for a war against the devil's spawn: a long-handled bright pink feather duster.

I had a vague plan to smoosh the wasp in the feather duster and then shove it out of the open window from whence it came, but as I stood at the door to my room I sorta lost my nerve. The more I stared at the wasp, the bigger and scarier it looked - I'm sure it grew from the size of my thumb to a decent-sized rabid terrier. What if the smooshing went awry? What if it escaped and stung me, or - even worse- GOT STUCK IN MY HAIR?!

This whole situation just crystallizes my plan that when I'm a grownup I'm going to have an industrial strength beekeeper's suit in every room. Actually, make that in every corner of every room.

So I figured the safest thing to do would be to gently shoo the wasp towards the window - but the bastard would not be shood. I'd fluff the feather duster at it and it would fly up and freak me out and settle down a meter away from where it was.

HEY LOOK, I drew you guys a picture of my epic struggle between woman and beast!

Accurate.

So every time I got it flying I would suppress a shriek and bolt out of the room. For something so obviously menacing, it didn't seem to have much forethought going on, because it wouldn't go to me and it wouldn't go out of the window, it just hovered around aimlessly like a big dork. Then it'd just settle down on another obviously-not-window part of the room. We carried on this stressful dance of lameness for a fucking hour.

At one point I got ridiculously hopeful because I saw it dart behind the curtain of an open window, heard it buzz a bit, and then stop. It MUST have flown out! Already feeling victorious, I gave the curtain a little prod to make sure it wasn't just sitting on the other side. Nothing. I started to relax, giving it one last sharp poke just to reassure myself. Out zooms the fucker, circling me (and I'm sure I heard its buzz go a bit higher in its waspy lulz) before sitting quite resolutely on the light in the middle of the ceiling.

The wasp and I had battled it out for the territory of my room, and it had won. I admitted miserable defeat and went to sleep on the couch in the lounge.

Now, you guys know I'm a sensitive soul, right? Here's another fun fact about me: I don't react well to sleeping in strange beds. Most times I'm not in my own bed, I don't sleep at all. And if I do, I have weird icky dreams and wake up feeling hungover.

Lying on the couch covered in blankets that smelled a bit like cat, I was prepared to have an uncomfortable sleep. What I didn't expect was the epic nightmare I had about evil ghosts that were eating my soul. I'm not even exaggerating, this was some trippy existential shit. And it had one of those awful patterns where you wake up and think everything's okay but then it turns out you're still in the nightmare, so you wake up again but you're still there, so you wake up again...

Eventually I woke up for realsies and decided no amount of scary wasps would make me stay on that couch for another second. So I got up, checked that I still had my soul, (just in case), and went to my bedroom.

The wasp was still sitting on the light, its wings closed. It suddenly looked small and unimpressive. It was minding its own business. I let it be.

I left the door open and climbed into bed. I'll admit I had the covers up over my head until I got too hot and tired to care anymore.

In the morning the wasp was gone.

HELL YEAH IT WAS. Apparently I'm most intimidating when I'm unconscious.

Tiny Hibernation Post

No review today because I didn't finish a book this week. I think I've forgotten how to read.

But for your merry amusement (and to prove that I'm not dead) have a snoring dormouse:





I love the way his little hands move up and down, like he's knitting a dream-sweater!

(Regularly scheduled tomfoolery and skullduggery will resume on Monday.)

Keep Your Trenchcoat Closed

A writer's impulse to flash can be a dangerous (and occasionally illegal) thing.

Because once you're past that point of OMG OTHER PEOPLE SEEING MY WRITING IS LIKE FALLING INTO BOILING ACID FULL OF SHAME AND REGRET, well, it's rather pleasant to show your writing off. Especially when (not to name names) certain relatives and fellow amateur writers say nice things to you.

Things like:

I like this.

This is nice.

This is great.

This is excellent.

This is my favourite thing ever.

You should be worshiped as a goddess.

Of course, there are those negative (oh, excuse me, I meant constructive, helpful, and my personal favourite: just being honest) comments that send your ego screeching back into the boiling acid stage. But more often than not, I find if people don't like something they just wander off - someone who takes the time to comment is generally pleased with the thing.

And that praise, however lukewarm, tends to be a little addictive. For a sensitive (read: cripplingly insecure) soul like mine, there's something edifying about someone (often a stranger) telling you that what you're doing is worthwhile, that something you made had an effect on someone else.

And there are so many options for flashing now: between FictionPress and Jottify and Livejournal and Smashwords and blogs and facebook notes and haikus that fit into tweets. It's all about showing off, pimping, and the instant gratification of comments, likes and shares. And all the cool kids are doing it - tweeting lines from their books and even posting 'deleted novel scenes' to their blogs (which I really don't get - isn't that the literary equivalent of serving leftovers to dinner guests?)

While deep in this oversharing phase, I happened upon the first piece of advice in Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer: Don't whore out your amateur stuff, you idiot. It's counterproductive.

Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing. But that's the gist, and it's been bothering me ever since.

I have the manuscript for my first novel, Sarai, complete and sitting on my laptop. I could format it tonight and have it up on Smashwords by tomorrow. And that is so bloody tempting - but I know it's not good enough yet. It's far from good enough. It's embarrassingly inadequate, actually.

But the truth is that I've posted writing - here and on my Jottify account - that I didn't like, that only marginally passed the not-embarrassingly-inadequate mark.

But I posted it anyway, because it was 'good enough for the internet.' I flashed it because I wanted a reaction, even if it was just a passing like by someone who simply hoped I would like their stuff back. But the hard truth is that unless someone is a professional writer or editor, their opinion, however glowing, will not make you into a better writer.

So I've made a resolution to keep my trenchcoat closed, and face those hard edits, ask those hard questions of myself and make my work stand up to my own (punishingly high) standards, rather than taking the easy road and flashing bits that I know aren't at their best yet.

Do you think writers these days - especially n00bs like me - suffer from chronic oversharing?  Share (or overshare) your thoughts in the comments!

Amazing Guest Post: Top Ten Torrid Moments In Period Film

[By The Awesome Anna!]

In a recent post, Dasia listed my blog Yearning for Wonderland as one with which she’d most like to do a post-swap. 

I have never guest blogged. However, given that Dasia sometimes writes her posts by MASHING HER BOOBS ON THE KEYBOARD, I felt confident in writing this post as I, too, have boobs.

Also, as you can see from the previous paragraph, I have mastered her advanced blogging technique of ALLCAPS. This technique shows how EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THESE WORDS are. See, don’t they leap right off the screen?

These techniques (boob mashing and ALLCAPS) are but two of the reasons why Dasia is my blog/Twitter buddy/Siamese twin separated at birth. She is also brilliantly funny, not to mention the originator of the “Benedict Cumberbatch weequashing in crisp twilight” meme. I kid you not. 

Well, okay, I’m kidding about the separated Siamese twin thing…unless they found a way to separate us by *gasp* nine years. Time traveling Siamese twins! I think I’m onto…no, I’m just digressing.

As I pondered how to transcend my own whimsy for DHAB, I direct messaged Dasia on Twitter.

In typically Dasia fashion, she immediately popped back with:

A splendid solution - I could write a post on period films that would be too saucy for my own blog and yet likely bore Dasia’s jaggedly sophisticated readers to tiny tears of despair.

I started researching this post, if you call eating  a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and numbing yourself with endless video clips of men in tight-buttoned pants (excuse me, BREECHES) as research.

For inspiration, I stared a lot at this photo:

Then I went to the kitchen and made some nachos. I decided I needed further inspiration, so I stared awhile at this photo:

This is how you can tell I am a real writer. I intersperse my writing and research with lots of eating (hard) and daydreaming (harder).  I watched endless clips of period pornography, involving lots of glove squeezing and longing glances. I suffered, gentle reader, so you need not.