Write...or Tweet?

My friend Kerrie Flanagan is the director of Northern Colorado Writers. She is an energetic, hard-working woman on a mission to motivate and educate writers, especially local writers, and help them reach their goals. From the Northern Colorado Writers Conference in April to the fall writers retreat, and all the workshops, classes, and special events in between, there is no excuse in our area for writers to feel alone as they work toward publication.

Early this year, Kerrie opened the NCW studio. The main room is used for meetings and classes, one of the side rooms as a library and meeting room for small groups, and the third room is the quiet room. Furnished with desks and chairs, not to mention wireless access to the internet, writers go here to write.

"My advice to writers--WRITE," Kerrie says. In this case, she's talking about time wasters in her latest blog on The-Writing-Bug, "Writers Write, Twitterers Tweet."

Kerrie abandoned Twitter after a trial period of several weeks. I plan to interview her about her experience, find out how she went about choosing who to follow and why she felt overwhelmed by the experience. I need to know all the facts because I'm not sure I love Twitter either. I know I'll stay in the T-game until the end of June when I've completed the online blogbooktour class. If I expect to do a real blogbooktour when my book comes out, I'd best stay on Twitter through the fall. But the idea of using the Tweeting community only as a marketing tool is a pipe dream for me. If I'm there, I'll be reading Tweets, following links, connecting up with interesting people. I'll be Tweeting instead of writing.

Unlike Kerrie, I do think Twitter has enormous potential for drawing blog readers and making top-notch connections with other writers and professionals in the writing and publishing community. I also find Twitter fun. But Kerrie's point is well taken. Twitter can be way too much fun. Do I want to be a Twitterer, or do I want to be a Writer?