I Keep My Promises. Sort Of

So I joined Twitter a little over two years ago after a life-changing night when I read Twitterville by Shel Israel.

I said to myself: Self, what are you thinking?? You must be on Twitter NOW!!!

Now in fairness, I’d been telling my authors that for years, along with blogging and Facebook, etc., but it was always followed by an “even though I have no idea what any of those things are” kind of vague disclaimer.

But all of a sudden I saw the light. I absolutely had to get on Twitter to promote my clients’ books!

Now one of my big takeaways from Shel’s book, and there were several, was about developing a personality on Twitter. He commented something about how when you go to a business lunch, you don’t sit down and jump right to business. You ask about family, how was your vacation, so on and so forth.

So I realized that if I just got on Twitter and started shouting at people to buy my clients’ books (which was really what I sort of wanted to do), it probably wouldn’t get me very far. So fine. Personality, check. I’m not sure that what I did was totally what he had in mind, but I adapted it a little for my own purposes.

Well pretty quickly I realized that Twitter was invented for me. Hey, if Al Gore can say he invented the internet, I can say Twitter was invented for me. It was perfect for me!!

I never wanted to blog. It seemed so time consuming. But Twitter, oh my lovely Twitter. Twitter was perfect for me. I work by myself and spend a lot of time with my own thoughts. All of a sudden I had a place where I could share them.

I don’t even think I totally understood who was seeing them in those early days. Thoughts would come into my brain and go out my fingertips into the twittersphere (I think it, I tweet it). And then omg someone would respond!! It was like having voices in my head responding, but it was other people!! So I wasn’t crazy!! Crazy, right?!? I LOVED IT!!

Actually, to say I loved it would be a gross understatement. I was literally insane with love. I developed something of a rhythm that settled into a mix of agenting/publishing related tweets, personal/family tweets (the ongoing antics of 6yo and 3yo (who started as 4yo and 1yo)), and then some reserved just for the crazy.

That final piece was where I’d just go really off the wall—mostly not on purpose, but somehow it would just happen. Perhaps future blog posts will explain the origins of some of the late great hashtags, with the all-time favorite, of course, being #hidontrun.

But so I learned how to use hashtags effectively and some of my favorites, especially from the early years were #hidontrun, #tweetupsalon, #scarychef, #queryquotes, #crazyeyes, #pocononos, #boonybin, #NEMesis, and #NannyBedelia, among others.

And as my authors sold books or came out with books, I tweeted the heck out of those, and I found some amazing things happening. People responding to me telling me they loved this book or that one. Asking questions about when another book was coming out. Telling me they bought XYZ book as a gift. I’ve also gotten calls and emails and tweets from reporters saying they’ve been following me on Twitter and now they want to do a story on one of my authors. Or another. And so on and so on.

So what is my point?

Yes, I got onto Twitter with the hopes of helping even a little bit in the marketing my authors, but if I weren’t having fun on Twitter, I don’t think I would be any help at all.

When I started this blog, it was because I had some BIG NEWS coming along. And lo and behold, turns out I thought blogging was pretty fun too. All of a sudden I had more room to tell my incredibly long stories and I didn’t have to tweet bomb the entire Twitterverse. I decided I’d post when I had something good to say, and it was fun!!

I think it’s pretty clear by now that at least part of the BIG NEWS is that I have a couple of authors who are hooked up with Coliloquy. And I am very excited about what Coliloquy is doing.

When I committed to blogging every day this week, I thought Coliloquy would be doing this thing that they will be doing this week, but they aren’t. And I learned that blogging every day is not fun.

I will never be a daily blogger. I hate daily blogging.

I am keeping my promise to a post every day this week, but not my promise for a funny inside story from the months of working with Coliloquy. Those will come. But they will come when I feel like telling them. When it’s fun.

And then I’ll tweet the hell out of it so you’ll run over to read it.

And in the meantime, did you hear that I got the ARCs for ENDLESSLY?!?! Maybe now that I have a blog, I’ll do a giveaway. Guess you’ll have to keep running over here when I tweet BLOG POST!!!

Thanks for reading. Can’t wait to keep sharing ALL the big news with you in 2012.

Or, you know, before then if there is any.