Passion Hasn’t Left the Building
Every morning I fire up Twitter. Sometimes I participate. Sometimes I only listen in.
Few messages of importance can’t be delivered in 140 characters.
I’ve heard folks say that they have found Twitter so efficient, that they’ve lost their reason for writing. I thought I might suggest a few reasons to keep writing while we still Twitter.
- Writing helps us develop a natural, confident voice in text that communicates and is attuned to readers. My voice on Twitter is different than my voice when I write here. I like them both.
- Writing challenges us to organize our thoughts. We get practice at building a meaningful message that goes deeper. Big ideas and new thoughts need room and time to be explored.
- Writing gives readers a complete idea with facts and details to consider. A more complex conversation results. Fun and fast happens in 140 characters. Thoughtful takes more.
- Writing gives us practice at accessing our deeper thoughts and insights. We get familiar with how we most efficiently work with and filter ideas. We can choose a variety of genre to express a viewpoint.
- Writing teaches us not to be frivolous about the ideas we put in text. We take time to edit so that the message we send is the one that is received by a reasonable reader.
Some ideas can’t be explained or supported in a small character set. Twitter works for fast, efficient one liners. But writing about passion or problem solving will always need something longer. A quick conversation on Twitter cannot replace a written piece well-considered.
Twitter can inspire us, provide the research of a crowd, or be the seed of a piece we write. But we cannot tweet a big idea with justice, heart, and in a totally accurate fashion.
How do you use Twitter?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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