Twittering

Ages ago (years!) I set up a Twitter account, under the name 'medwardsbooks'. Or to be strictly accurate, my son did it for me. I was encouraged to tweet by Maxine Clarke, but at the time, I quickly became overwhelmed with work and domestic issues, and decided to focus on writing novels and blog posts instead. So I abandoned Twitter.

At Crimefest last week-end, a number of conversations prompted me to give Twitter another try. Karen Meek of Eurocrime (who, incidentally, gave her surname to a character in The Frozen Shroud) asked me to write a blog post in memory of Maxine for the Petrona Remembered blog. And this reminded me of the way Maxine used to encourage me to overcome my technofear.

Nev Fountain told me of how he'd written a story in tweets, and this idea of playing a game with the form did appeal to me a lot. He was enthusiastic about Twitter, as were several other people, notably Ann Cleeves, who often gives me, along with other writers, generous and helpful advice based on her own successful experience.

Of course there are lots of reasons not to spend too much time with Twitter. I'm still rather busy as a partner in a law firm, though becoming part of a firm as large as Weightmans has helped to ease the burdens that existed in the past. I've got to find time to write books, short stories and blog posts. And have a life outside writing. But I've decided that I won't continue to use these as excuses for not tweeting. Instead they will become excuses for getting confused about Twitter etiquette, and general incompetence. Given that my initial attempts to include the cover of The Frozen Shroud on my Twitter home page have been greeted with the message that "something is technically wrong" (any clues as to what I'm doing wrong would be welcome), it may be a bumpy ride...

Of course, as anyone who knows lawyers is aware, we tend to be verbose. So 140 characters is sure to prove a challenge. All the same, I look forward to trying to rise to it..