It's National Twitter Writing Month!

It’s that traditional time of year when countless folks from all walks of life dust down the old braincells and decide to take up the challenge of writing an entire novel – their novel – in just one month. Yes, it’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I guess the clue is in the name.

Me, I’m too damned lazy for all that.

Instead, I’ve set myself a much simpler challenge and declared it to also be National Twitter Writing Month (NaTwiWriMo). That’s 30 whole days in which to write at least one tweet. With 140 characters to play with that’s an average of 4.6 letters per day. I mean, how hard can it be?

Ok, it’s not hard at all. Since the beginning of November I’ve penned over 80 whole tweets already. And how many novels have you written in that time, Mr NaNoWriMo person? What’s that? None? I’ll ask you again at the end of the month. Try to keep up will you.

That’s not to disrespect the achievements of anyone taking part in NaNoWriMo, of course. Writing a novel involves commitment, dedication and is a personal voyage of discovery for each participant whereas writing a tweet…. well, isn’t. Twitter is one of the most misunderstood net technologies around (second only to Google Wave for sheer misunderstandedness (is that a word? Now you see why I’m not writing a novel now. I’m nesting brackets in a sentence!)) that’s 90% listening, 10% writing. It’s thinking out loud. It’s standing in the middle of a crowd and letting it all wash over you.

It’s nothing, nothing like writing a novel. And that’s a Good Thing. Novels are personal things, shared. Tweets are shared things, personalized. Novels last a lifetime (and the experience of writing one doubly so) whereas tweets barely last 5 minutes – unless they’re embarrassing ones that come back to haunt you. Insult a celebrity at your peril! And whatever you do, don’t call yourself an SEO/Internet Marketer or Guru ever, but especially on not Twitter or so help me I will hunt you down.

If you want to join me and have your own personal National Twitter Writing Month, follow me and write at least one good – nay, great tweet this month.

Everyone has at least 140 characters in them. Don’t they?