To tweet... or not to tweet?

More likely to 'tweet' than I am!

I've recently completed a series of short stories, deploying my best-loved characters (the ones I like best, that is, although hopefully they're also popular with readers) in a series of silly film parodies.  I'm saving Daphne's staring role (in Snakes on a Narrowboat) for a bonus chapter at the end of another novel with the redoubtable Geordie boatwoman at the helm.  However, even the chance to use a great punning title could not persuade me to write the role he most wanted for failed DWP investigator turned seedy private eye 'Fishy' Pike - Fifty Shades of Gary therefore remains unwritten, mercifully, not least because none of my female characters wanted any part in it!

I write because I enjoy writing - at least when I am motivated to do so and when my characters are active in my mind - although, as I have explained, I also write to redress the picture painted by the mainstream media of our Social Security system and of benefit claimants.  If the 'counter-propaganda' purpose of my stories is to succeed, they need to reach a wider audience than they do at present.  If this is to happen, I need to get better at promoting them to new readers.

I've seen quite a few articles expounding the virtues of Twitter as a marketing tool, since 'tweets', accessorised with the appropriate 'hashtag', can be read by anyone following that debate, not just your 'friends'.  Once you have 'followers' (presumably attracted by something clever and pithy you've tweeted) they will 'retweet' your words of wisdom or links to your work.

I've discounted it in the past for the simple reason that I can't imagine saying anything worthwhile in a mere 140 characters.  I'm not saying I'm always long-winded, but while I might tease my short-but-fearless-around-bloody-great-spiders husband about the probability of finding Samwise Gamgee somewhere in his family tree, I suspect if I get far enough back in mine I'll find actual family trees; I can be positively Entish about getting to the point.

As you will have noticed.

I quite like the idea of letting the Solent Welfare Rights Project have a Twitter account, not least because it would save me personally from having to fend off trolls who might glance at my photo and assume I'm Professor Mary Beard, though I have no idea whether there's any kind of protocol about fictional characters 'tweeting'.  Which of the gang gets to do the 'tweeting' could cause discord, though.  Martin would be good at it, though would need Hilary to censor him and a strict limit on time allowed online to prevent him spending too much time debating whatever bile-fuelled poison Katie Hopkins has vomited into the ether that day.  Tricia might manage a better balance of smart comment and professional decorum.

Anyway, to try to get a feel for Twitter, I've spent a few hours mooching about on it without actually signing up.  I'm still not really sure that I 'get it'.  I found a 'books' section with links to various newspapers' literary review pages and articles, plus dozens of tweets from Richard Dawkins, including one rather well-phrased one about the implicit misogyny of using slang terms for female genitalia as terms of abuse. If I put her in charge of the Solent Welfare Rights Projects' account, Hilary Carrington would certainly have retweeted - or did Dawkins actually retweet it from her?!  Astonishingly, I noticed that a mere 'good evening, folks' from E L James was 'liked' by over 300 people had scores of retweets.  I may be missing something here, but how is a standard greeting from anyone - unless it's someone terribly famous and previously assumed to be dead - worthy of a 'retweet'?  I may have to check that the author wasn't actually E. L. V I S!

Anyway, I think this old Luddite is going to need to sit down with a fellow human who uses Twitter and have her or him explain slowly and patiently what it's for and how to use it properly.  Only then, after a period of careful observation, might I let 'the gang' get to work, or even dabble myself.

In the meanwhile, I can always troll the DWP's Facebook page...