The Written Nerd

Okay, I've got internet, but not wireless or phone. Stuck in text-only land until a friend comes by to figure out my network issues on Saturday. Sigh. In the meantime, some stuff. I love the Brookline Blogsmith's reference to Bambi : we are all "twitterpated" now. I've been tweeting (ugh, finally a word more embarassing than "blog") incessantly as @booknerdnyc and @mcnallyjackson, and learning a lot about books, book news, and what folks had for breakfast. My new favorite Twitter use: at last night's event at McNally Jackson , John Wray discussed his ongoing Twitter novel (@John_Wray). He allows as how he doesn't think it's the "wave of the future", but he likes the challenge of making something happen in every 140 character installment, as well as serving a larger narrative. Seventy-one years ago (that's before Twitter), writers already valued "talks, rum, argument, politics and laughter", and a quiet place to wr...

Umm.... I guess I'm on Facebook now. We recently created a Facebook page for McNally Jackson -- I admit I groaned a little at first, but it's becoming a neat way to spread the word about events , extend discussion beyond the bookstore, and share the love. I had to create a personal profile to administer the store page, and well.... there are just so many cool people out there (that I do, actually know IRL**) that I now find myself friending with abandon. I think I'd avoided Facebook for a long time for the same reason I haven't read Harry Potter -- if everyone else is doing it, why should I? (In other words, I'm a snob, and it somehow seemed like something for kids with short attention spans.) And I still have my reservations about the procrastination potential, not to mention the idea that relationships can be maintained without face-to-face contact, and that "friend" is a verb... but I think perhaps I was just being stubborn by avoiding it altoge...