Angel and muse

You wonder about all the time you spend online sometimes, where it’s heading, where it’s taking you. Where all the twitter followers might take you, how you can ever read all the valued work of the people you follow; for me: the writers, readers, bloggers, family historians, cancer researchers, vintage lovers, photographers, artists, entrepreneurs, creatives and other ‘out theres’ paving a blazing way.

You wonder how you might ever keep up with all the blogs you love and subscribe to, clumsily it seems, through a series of readers that overwhelm you. You wonder how you will capture the essence of each crafted voice and message you admire or learn from and how you will apply them to your own journey.

And then you lie here in the middle of the night in hospital after an operation, full of painkillers and strange emotions, and receive the most blessed message from a fellow traveller, more a leader and teacher, met through your various journeys in your online world.

In this case, it’s from Susannah Conway, angel and muse to me and many, as we are in the middle of engaging in our Unravelling 2 e-course journey. In the midst of pain, the message about ‘Stories’ and what we will be thinking through and working on this week hits a poignant space, the tears start but it also makes my heart soar and immediately celebrate possibilities. And I start writing again, if here, full of painkillers in the middle of the night.

That’s why I twitter, blog,  flickr, read blogs, subscribe to Susannah Conway, Colleen Wainwright, Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Sage Cohen, Shanna Germain, Jonathan Fields and Joanna Penn. Why I love the creative inventions and reinventions I find on etsy and in delish and love reading about people dealing with fear and challenges in fearless.  Why I engage with these very special people and their products, read their work and their reviews, listen to their podcasts, follow their entrepreneurship, their stories, their journeys, buy their books, join their online classes and apply the thoughts, processes and aspirations to myself as I journey on.

It all leads to engaging with like others and knowing what real stories I can tell, what my role as angel and muse in an online space might be, finding the unique transcendent voice that might articulate the story or experience that others might learn from, add to or grow from, imperfect and flawed as it is, a reaching to a sacred creative place.

Postscript:

No dramas with the op – I am fine and recovering and it’s nothing major!

If you do have a recommendation for an RSS reader that doesn’t overwhelm or any other strategies for dealing with all the blogs you come across and want to keep up with, I would heartily appreciate any tips!

‘Bird by bird’: learning @ twitter

Many of you will know Anne Lamott’s insightful book, ‘Bird by bird: some instructions on writing and life’ . The phrase, ‘Bird by bird’ comes from a story about Anne’s brother, overwhelmed by a study on birds he has to complete. Anne’s father tells him, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” Anne uses this metaphor to talk about writing and the need to keep moving ahead one steady step at a time, with short assignments or a focus on paragraphs, perhaps, but as long as you turn up at the table and actually sit down to write.

My sojourn into twitter has been a bit like that, learning how to build one step at a time. I’d been interested in the phenomenon of twitter but didn’t really understand it. I was finally pushed, through work, to set up a twitter account for a workshop where we explored new technologies and innovation. Once I’d set up an account, I began to explore. I started by following my key blogging reads and influences – Joanna Penn, Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, the communicatrix, Sage Cohen. Joanna especially is a big twitter aficionado and talks on her podcasts about twitter as her main social media platform along with her blog. I learnt from the  podcasts. I watched and studied my key influences and how they used twitter to connect, be useful, get to know others, share information, gather feedback, advise about their own work and convey something about themselves. All in 140 character bite sizes of information.

Miraculously, people started following me. The birds began to flock and call. It still amazes me and I treat each follower interested me in as a gift and am honoured.  The tweets initially seem all over the place as they build. I try to read them all and work out how to respond. I feel overwhelmed and wonder how these people with hundreds and thousands of followers manage all the attention and communication. I search for some clues from other more experienced twitter players and find some useful advice to move forward.

Joanna Penn is incredibly helpful as always, as a role model and through her writing and podcasts. From The Creative Penn, I learn how twitter can connect with other social media, the value of being useful and finding my own ways to add value. Joanna’s  post on ‘Social Networking for Authors: Tips for using twitter effectively’  was really useful to get started. Reading it again now, there is still so much more I need to understand and apply – such as use of hashtags and using tweetdeck or similar tools more effectively. This article is an excellent starting point with lots of links to other twitter tips especially for writers. (Note to self: go back to this great post and learn some more now you are further along.)

Similarly in his excellent article, Free Advice, Chris Guillebeau emphasises that: ‘The best way to build a following is by doing stuff away from Twitter, and encouraging people who find you elsewhere to add you on Twitter…’  That makes sense and is where I find value on twitter and hopefully where I can add value over time. Chris also comments on the power of twitter, that 25% of his business comes from twitter even though in the previous 30 days he only mentioned his actual business on twitter once.

Naomi Dunford in ‘How to get 8379 new Twitter Followers by Christmas’, provides a blitz of a framework for gaining a twitter presence using a structured approach of tweets over a few days with a formula which is roughly: 1/4 retweeting, 1/4 responding, 1/4 sharing and 1/4 ‘stuff from your own head’ to show you are a human being. Then repeat…Best to read the article for the whole story – it is well set out in steps and phase one and two, plus humour throughout so it’s not so terribly serious. I haven’t gone the whole way with this, more due to my timeframes than anything, but love the structure and have used the ratio formula to try to balance my own tweets and also learn the ‘rules’.

There’s so much I still don’t understand but I have found twitter to be an incredible network of connection and unlimited possibilities. I am especially honoured by the kindness of people I have met through twitter and their genuine interest in me.  People I read and love are amazingly following my tweets. New people are connecting with my story and themes, and I am connecting with theirs. C Patrick Schulze, whose author’s blog I was reading, wrote this blog post for me on planning a novel. It’s about writing a story, not a novel, and has been incredibly useful for where I am now with my own story in moving on with writing. Where else could you get such connection? Every day I log on to twitter and find people connected to me in my thoughts and interests, and I learn more about them, reading their work and thoughts and what they are reading.

‘Bird by bird’ I will move ahead in this space. I wonder how the people with hundreds and tens and hundreds of thousands of followers manage these diverse and dense flocks, but I guess it builds by stealth and you manage it best as anything else likely to overwhelm you, as Anne Lamott suggests, one step at a time.

What has learning to twitter been like for you?

Image, Birds of Paradise by Jen_Mo from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks