What makes people happy? The Times got a bunch of writers to each say something about what it is that brings cheer to their lives, and I particularly enjoyed Caitlin Moran's response, which was all about Twitter. Granted, I don't use Twitter in the way she does, I use Multiply and Facebook for these purposes (whilst I use Blogger purely as a soapbox), but I can identify with a lot of what she says.
She talks about being a writer who not only works from home, but also values the way that in writing you have time to think about what you're going to say, as opposed to what happens when she does venture out of the house and meet people face to face. "That whole talky-to-people's-face thing - that's, like, constant improvisation. It's like a gigantic, lifetime-length episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Very stressful. There's no 'delete' function. You can't google a salient, point-proving fact." As someone who loves the "edit" feature (and I feel so lost without it on fb), I am so so with her on this!
Seems to me that the things she loves about Twitter are things that I could equally say about Multiply, they're just typical of online social networking. Twitter allows her to exercise her chattiness in a way that works a lot better for her. "Unlike life, you can simply lob in a comment to someone else's conversation without it seeming rude... And also, unlike life, you can simply ignore people you don't like. It's so benign." and she talks about others she knows who are also writers working from home, who "use Twitter as some magical coffee shop in the sky, where one can repeatedly drop in and while away 20 minutes, before knuckling back down to a deadline."
At which point I raise my eyebrows and say: only 20 minutes? what self-discipline, what willpower :)
For the full article in the Times click here.
