NEWS FLASH: After many years as a certified Twitterphobe, I've finally caved in and signed on to both Twitter and Instagram.  (I'm also on LinkedIn; but I'm holding the line with Facebook).

My mission is to bring creativity, color, and pleasure to the world of academic and professional writing, one Twittertweet or Instatreat at a time. Please follow me @helens_word.  

If, like me, you're a newbie in the Twittersphere/Instaverse, you're welcome to hang back and watch as I take my own halting baby steps. But if you're already a confident power user – as I know many of you are – I'd be grateful if you could work some of your social media magic to help me grow my audience.

I've just posted a bouquet of old newsletter collages and blog links to both platforms so that you'll have plenty of fun stuff to like, share, and retweet. Next I plan to publish my 10-part Write Like Freddie series, with some bonus photos at the end.

But but but but but but – have I mentioned my lingering sense of dread? The anxiety about professional self-sabotage that hangs around me like a black cloud? My fear of being sucked into the social media muck and losing all sense of proportion – to say nothing of time?  

To reframe my negative emotions, I've turned to paper collage and its creative cousin, metaphor.

If I visualize my website as a colorful garden where I happily potter around most days – nurturing seedlings, pulling out weeds, watering and fertilizing and pruning – I can see Twitter as just another tree in a much larger landscape, one that I have planted for its capacity to attract avian life. Sure, I'm a bit worried about all the noise. Did you know that the English word jargon comes from an Old French word denoting the sound made by twittering birds?  

I've reimagined Instagram's squareish camera logo, meanwhile, as the door to my garden shed / log cabin / mountain chalet / writing studio. That wonky, welcoming Instaportal gives me another metaphor to ponder: perhaps my collage is trying to tell me something about the creative relationship between society and solitude?

As soon I've built up a respectable Twitter/Insta following, I hope to use both platforms to crowdsource future newsletter material. For example:

• What metaphors for writing does this week's collage invoke for you?

• What tips and tricks can you recommend to others for writing more productively, playfully, pleasurably, [choose your own adverb]?

• Most pressing for me at the moment: How do you make the most of Twitter and Instagram without going insane?!

A special shout-out to all the generous colleagues and friends – Michelle Boyd @InkWellRetreats, Karim Khan @KarimKhan_IMHA, Inger Mewburn @thesiswhisperer, Amanda Palmer @amandapalmer, Steven Pinker @sapinker, Margy Thomas @ScholarShape, and Pat Thomson @ThomsonPat, among others – who have encouraged or inspired me to take this scary step.

I hope to see you soon in the newest patch of my garden!

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I couldn't resist bringing little feet (and tweets) into this visual homage to social media savant Pat Thomson, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, whose long-running patter blog is already well known to many of my readers.

On Wednesday June 8, Pat joined me on Zoom for a wide-ranging conversation on "Writing and Social Media.” We discussed how academic writers can use social media to advance their writing practice, and I got to hear all about what Pat has learned from her many years of wrangling "the socials." When I quizzed her about my own Twitter and Instagram hesitancy, she assured me that I’ll be well-supported by my social-media-savvy sisters and brothers if I take the plunge!

Here’s WriteSPACE member Nina Ginsberg’s lively account of the live event:

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As a blog writer myself, I was especially looking forward to Helen’s discussion with Pat Thomson. And based on the spirited chat box and participant engagement, I clearly wasn’t the only one!

In this discussion, Pat shared her ideas on the differences between blogging and social media, her processes of selectively using social media, and how she compartmentalizes social media engagement. Pat elaborated on each of these points by drawing on her extensive experience. An example of this is Pat’s observation that people get exhausted after reading a topic for 2-3 blog posts, so that’s when she moves to social media to generate some traction for things that are not immediately apparent or topics that get less engagement – and that tweets can make a connection if the blog title is not driving interest. 

From blogging, we moved to other forms of social media, but mostly focused on Twitter. Pat tweets once on a Monday and once on a Friday and the most useful aspect of Twitter for her is checking who has ‘@’ tagged her into what conversations, because this is more about building a network and community of scholars. Pat avoids certain conversations or topics on Twitter, as these draw unwanted, heated, combative attention (for example ‘feminism’). I really liked Pat’s approach of directly messaging people who pushed back about something she said and how she told them she was not interested in being embroiled in a public argument. A good take-away was to use Twitter to invest and promote other people and their publications to pay it forward, as opposed to getting embroiled in debates.  

This discussion presented a few new ideas for me... I didn’t know about the fractious UK Education schism between the Trads vs the Progs, or that Pat's musician son taught her ideas on crafting/managing careful persona limitations. Hearing about the stickiness of endless self-promotion and building your profile got me thinking about my own academic work, as did the benefits and issues of visibility, vulnerability and vanishing.  

Pat currently has 927 blog posts on her Patter blog, and she is thinking of taking a break when it reached 1,000. A very well-deserved break, too! It was great to see so many attendees for this session. The chat box was firing with ideas, links, and gratitude to both Pat and Helen for giving their expertise so generously online.

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A recording of this WriteSPACE Special Event is now available for members in the WriteSPACE Library.

Not a member yet? Register here to receive an email with the video link.

Better yet, join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources.

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Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year).

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Helen's Blog RSS