16
Feb
2009
This Is Just Part of What I Do…
If you follow me on either of my Twitter accounts, you might have noticed that my updates averaging 50 – 100 a day tapered off for a while…
Well, okay, they dropped off rather suddenly. Two weeks ago, as a matter of fact.
If you missed at TeeMorris.com my interview on Conversations with Coach Ian Scott, I can sum it up as “the last week of January.” A series of events that week suggested I step away from Twitter for a spell. I needed some downtime, some time online where there was no signal as well as no noise. What was odd about this “Twitter Moratorium” was I remained plugged in to Facebook. I took some time to get to know the networking platform a bit better. (Sadly, this was before Facebook came out with their somewhat broad Terms of Service update. Not sure if there is a blogpost from me in there, but I am now looking at them with a cautious eye.) During my break from the community, I was still working on expending my network by attending Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Breakfast here in Washington D.C. Even with keeping my toe dipped in the Social Media pool, this Twitter hiatus I found liberating. I found it educational. I also found it a bit ironic.
Why “ironic” you ask? The other reason I took a break from Twitter was because I had just closed negotiations with Que Publishing to write All a Twitter. Yes, my next book will be out this summer and it will cover something I am truly passionate over: Twitter. I guess my 28,000 updates on TeeMonster are finally going to amount to something.
Oh, you didn’t misread me — the book will be out this summer. As in June. As in to make sure we have time and ability to polish and edit the manuscript, I have roughly two months to write this book. Two months. Why the rush? Let’s just say, much like with Twitter itself, it’s a personal issue and an accomplishment I would love to achieve.
Back to that “Cone of Silence” I took a brief getaway in…
So I stepped back from Twitter to ask myself if I could seriously do this. A solid resource for both the experienced and novice user, in two months time. Was something like that possible? Could I have that much to say about Twitter? I figured I would find out soon enough as I took a seat in my studio, installed Que’s Word template, and started Chapter One.
In two weeks I produced over 20,000 words and over thirty screen captures, all based around Twitter. Today I turned in 25% of the manuscript to the publisher.
I think I’m off to a good start.
So what this means is that my MOREVI projects, both the podcast of Legacy of MOREVI and the writing of Exodus from MOREVI, have been put on hold until All a Twitter and another creative project (that I had begun developing only a few weeks before this request from Que) have been completed. I will still be on Twitter, taking notes on what’s happening around me as I forge ahead. I will also blog progress reports on All a Twitter, post forthcoming episodes of In Your Right Mind, and continue commentaries on creative solutions and ideas for the workplace. There will also be video and audio clips from speaking events that are starting to come in, and news on a future talk I will be giving in New Zealand. You can expect all that here.
You can also expect me to be ready to celebrate, come Balticon 43, the pending release of what will be the all-in-one-and-all-around-go-to-guide for Twitter.
This is going to be a fun ride, everybody. Strap in and hold on to something.
