The problem and the joy of Twitter is that it’s brief. Twitter has replaced my RSS feed since it’s fast and simple. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just happened. I spent so much time on Twitter that I just stopped looking at my RSS feed. At first, when I considered this, I felt that maybe I was skewing the way I digest news and wasn’t getting a well-rounded feed. But RSS feeds are by choice and so is who I follow on Twitter.

The difference is that I can share what I read to my followers or I can comment or I can just post a thought. On the latter, the platform is considered microblogging. And micro it is with only 140 characters. Now, for some, it’s 280 characters. I didn’t get that expansion but the anonymous Twitter account I run did. That’s hilarious because I can now actually add the word f*ck to my anonymous Twitter posts because I don’t have to worry so much about word count. I’m sure that’s the reason they’re expanding the character count… so we can all swear more.

So why am I writing about Twitter rather than tweeting about it? It’s because I follow so many writers. I love reading about their writing experiences, their publishing experiences, their point of view on life and death and love and whatever. And that’s because I want to be a writer.

If you read writer’s posts on Twitter long enough… like a day or two… you will see one of them post that if you want to be a writer, then just write.

Well, duh.

But I’m a public school teacher. When do I have time to write? Like, um, never! And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

And that’s the problem. I’m just making excuses. I sit in class watching my student work on projects I give them and envy the time they have to think and write and create. Then I say to myself, “Some day.” And get back to grading or planning or answering questions. I’ve done this for years!

Well, f*ck that! I have things to say. They’ve been filling my head for ages. I write ideas down in notebooks and notebook apps. I write then down on Post-It notes. I try to remember them when I have none of those things handy only to forget what thoughts or ideas I need to write in my notebook, etc. Those writers posting on Twitter are right. If you want to be a writer, just write.

So I took that advice and hashed out this little 519-word post. It just flowed out of me. It took approximately 15 minutes. It was easy.

Just write.

My students didn’t even know I was doing it, they were writing themselves. It was satisfying, it hardly took any time.

Just write.

And now back to grading, planning, and teaching these little sh*ts… um… these wonderful high school students something and then have them write about it.

EDIT: Because Twitter is now wholly owned by Elon Musk and the Saudi Prince who owns him, that platform is now irrelevant. Elon only supports fascist beliefs and has his own interpretation of what free speech is (which is not at all inline with what American free speech actually is). Therefore, I am no longer on Twitter. Now I’m on Mastodon and everything else I wrote about Twitter above still applies, except now it applies to my Mastodon instance.