Twittering?

"It seems to me that the problem with diaries,

and the reason that most of them are so boring,

is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails

and speculating on cosmic order."

Ann Beattie, Picturing Will, 1989

While perusing through a NaBloPoMo "friend's" blog I came across an interesting question. Perhaps it was only interesting to me because, when it comes to text-messaging lingo, I'm a little out of my league. No, a LOT out of my league. Aimee Greeblemonkey (don't you just love that name) asked simply: Anyone twitter?

Twitter? What the hell is that?

After looking on her site for some examples of twittering and getting her email definition of "short blurbs about your day, under 140 characters" I had to stop and think about how many characters I use in a blurb, a post, a day. The number has got to be startlingly high. I also decided after spending most of yesterday on my Princess post, either I am going to have to shorten my entries or give up my goal of posting every day in November. I'm losing momentum and it's only day 3.

You see in my mind, my last post was very clear - being a princess is not a bad thing. But instead of simply writing, "being a princess isn't a bad thing" I had to go around the block, down the street, and through an alley to get there. [That last run-on sentence would be a perfect example of what I'm talking about.]

And then, even when I get my thoughts on paper in some kind of order, there is that whole re-write thing. While I'm sitting here on my butt making examining each sentence time and again, my chores aren't getting done. Last night I was saved by my real life Prince Charming. Just as I was finishing up my thoughts on princess-ship and was nearing the point where I could tweak the final sentence and push the publish button I realized I was going to have to stop to make, eat and clean up the evening meal. That's when my sweetie jumped into action and offered to do the cooking so I could finish the writing task at hand. You gotta love a man like that! But I suspect he'd get a little tired of my blogging if it interfered with too many meals.

To admit I have very definite "delusions of grandeur" would be an understatement. I've finally put two and two together and come to the conclusion that this is probably why my stints as a daily journal keeper have never been very long. I get hung up on the end product way before the chapters are written. Kind of like seeing myself on the Oprah show telling the lover of good books how much I appreciate getting a Nobel prize for Diary Writing before my book is out of my head and on paper. Even in my most vivid imagination, I realize there is quite a long leap between "Dear Diary ... " and a writing prize of any sort. Still my perfectionism and grandiosity take over somewhere after the first "Today I ...."

This is probably why the quote for this post jumped out at me when I was googling about writing. I quite found the balance between trying to make my uneventful life seem eventful (or at the very least laughable) and making sense of the world's happenings.

As long as I'm dissecting my writing style I might as well add that in my journalism class I was instructed that short sentences are better sentences. For whatever reason, this seems to go contrary to my natural rhthym. If I were a dancer, I'd wear flowing voile scarves and twirl around the stage with barefeet. If I were an artist, I'd paint big bold curlicues in vibrant colors. But I'm a writer so I write in lengthy, rambling, but hopefully meaningful, circles!

Where Dr. Suess would write"I do not like Green Eggs and Ham, Sam I am," the Merry ME version would go something like this. Sam, green eggs and ham don't really suit my fancy. I mean really, some foods are supposed to be green, like broccoli, spinach and pistachio nuts; but eggs? Does anyone out there like green eggs?

And like the person who can't see the forest for the trees, I often get lost in the words and forget the story. Like now, for instance. I kind of forgot where I'm heading with this post.

What I'm trying to say is this: I need to learn to twitter!

TTFN
Merry ME