When I was first introduced to Twitter, I wasn’t convinced. It seemed like a seemingly unnecessary addition to the electronic beeps, bells, pings and rings that already clutter my life. I certainly didn’t want to use it for my personal life, then I noticed how often I updated my Facebook status and I saw friends and colleagues using it for business and winning business with it.
Within that time, I’d written quite a few articles about Twitter for different clients and I knew enough about it to use it, awkwardly at first, and now with growing confidence and dare I say, a dash of sophistication.
Yet, as a creative artist-turned-creative business, I’m always looking for links between the world of art and creativity and the world of business. In Twitter I find a solid and tangible link to the world of Japanese poetry. Now, before you think I’ve disappeared up my own plughole, bear with me and I’ll explain.
It makes me think of the Japanese poetry form of Haiku. In Japanese, the Haiku poem appears as a single line of text. In English, the rules are changed, we lose the single line and it becomes three verse lines of a total of 17 syllables.
Here I find an important parallel with Twitter. Haiku is having the capacity to say something beautiful and potentially profound in the briefest way. It greatly taxes the poet to produce something of note within such strict limitations. It makes you a better writer, a better poet to express yourself under such restriction.
In this way, Twitter offers us the same challenge. One must express oneself within the confines of 140 characters. You see, like Haiku, Twitter forces you to express yourself with great precision. If you will, you can’t witter when you Twitter.
Twitter encourages you, no REQUIRES you to have a greater command over how and what you write. Few of us can write all that we wish to say to the best of our abilities within 140 characters, maybe 143 or 189, but 140 is so limiting, it’s frustrating and so, it becomes a challenge.
When you are limited in this way, it makes you consider precisely the words that you choose to use and forces you to consider synonyms and their meaning. It further encourages you to hone your editing skills and create text that delivers the exact message, effectively, artfully and within the limits of 140 characters.
My Zen Haiku version of this article:
Twitter and Haiku
Similarities Inspire
Write with Precision
My Zen Twitter version of this article:
Haiku inspires my Tweets, restriction demands precision; limitation becomes opportunity, tiny acts of creativity, the message remains
And just for fun:
If you witter when you Twitter, please be sweet and wipe the Tweet.
One Comment
i gust want to say some thing “great job”
Update your Twitter randomly according to your intrest Or, from Rss Feed Or, from your own tweet message list Or, Any combination of the above three http://feedmytwitter.com