I’ve discovered I am not a succinct person. There’s a phrase out there that goes something like, “If you can say something in twenty words, it will be better in ten, and best in five.” Yeah…I usually just make a rude noise when I see that quote.

Tweets are 140 characters, and may be the death of me. I’m old school. I still automatically put two spaces after the period. That eats character-count. I happen to like emotion—*wince*; *sigh*; *ack!!*; *HUH!??!!??* Even the ever popular :  ). Not so Twitter friendly, I’ve discovered. I am also an editor by profession, so things like ‘C U L8R’ tend to make me want to go hunt down and beat the poster to death with a red pen. I go to write a quick blog post, and have to break it into THREE posts. (*ahem*) Let’s just say there’s a reason I’m not focusing on writing short stories.

I am also, shall we say, technology-challenged in certain areas and have yet to find how to do the single-character emoticons used in Twitter. I only recently found (okay, with help) those sites that shorten URLs to Twitter-length for web links. It doesn’t help when I go to reTweet something and the message is somehow suddenly too long to send.

Despite all of the above, I’m fascinated by the new social media trends. I’m willing to learn. And, occasionally, compromise. Twitter is now successfully loaded on my phone and I’ve posted while out and about. ReTweeting is working better. Currently, I’m prepping some Twitter stuff in advance—it saves time and frustration. I wouldn’t yet say Twitter is my natural method of communicating, but I’m adapting.