Deer in Headlights

where I rant and rave just a little…

I have reached the phase in my Twitter initiation I am calling the "deer in headlights" phase. Twitter has become a big deal to me. I swore that I would never *ever* join. The weird little symbol laden blurbs made no sense out of context.

On a shy whim, when I was feeling particularly discouraged with many other things in my life, I followed my favorite author to the twitterverse. Nothing like diving into the deep and taking my WIP novel with me. Both me, and my novel got quite wet.

I plunged in head first with no life preserver, and no instructors. I only had faith that if my favorite author was on there, it must be all right.

*comes to the surface gasping for air*

Holy Information, Batman! The ocean is teeming with authors and writers I never knew existed. Not only that, but the number of people "in the biz" keep pulling me under, and my "Following" list keeps growing with astounding leaps and bounds. I won't even get into NaNoWriMo right now, for fear I will get pulled under once again. None of this is bad, mind. It's just an overwhelming amount of *stuff* to soak up in only a couple of weeks.

Today I washed up on shore. I am beaten and tangled with the flotsam and jetsam that swirls around in the tide of Twitter.

(It makes your brain mushy.)

I keep telling myself I should walk away from the keyboard. Go do some laundry, wash some dishes…EAT…but no, I sit attempting to mine for more nuggets of information. NaNoWriMo, Independent publishing, ebooks, new books, blog posts, giveaways, goodreads...the list goes on and on. I feel rather gluttonous, and tired! I have been enjoying late night writing binges a bit too much with NaNoWordSprints as well.

If I were a fly on my office wall, I imagine I would see me sitting at my keyboard looking glassy-eyed, but with my eyes moving way too fast as they skim every line…A bit like a SciFi movie where the antagonist has the protagonist wired up to a machine and is flashing pictures of events on a screen at dizzying speeds.

If you think my metaphors are mixed, and my messages messed up, that's kind of what Twitter is like when you first dive in…mixed up and a potentially big mess.

All of this rant aside, I am again extremely grateful that I took that plunge and followed Susanna Kearsley to Twitter. It's the truth. I really did follow her there. She didn't know, but I am sure I made it completely clear how much of a fan I am of her work, once I got there. Susanna, you are my rock in the Twitter Sea. (Sorry, I am also feeling really punchy right about now.)

Presently, I am on the beach (ooo, back to the beach metaphor) and I need to make my sandcastles and write my stories in the surf. I will be lurking around Twitter still, but I will be much quieter. If I don't follow the next person that follows me, I hope they won't be offended. I *really* need to stay focused.

Did Twitter pull you under when you first joined? How did you rein in your curiosity and regain focus? Are there tricks and trades of Twitter I should know about? (I won't use an autotweeter. I like to form my tweets one at a time.) Please leave a comment, because I love to hear from readers.