To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

I have a confession to make: this is not my first attempt at blogging.  Yes, I admit, I am a one-time failed blogger.  Why?  Not because of crippling writers block or a lack of interesting incidents to write about.  It was the website background that did me in.  My friend and I decided last spring that we wanted to try our hand at blogging, so we created an account on tumbler.  But we could not figure out how to pick a background for our site that didn’t make the text hard to read.  After several attempts at solving this problem, we were unable to even find the URL to our blog to begin with, so we were forced to give up.  Foiled—not by our ineptitude at writing—but by our lack of technological skills.

Although Dr. Kovich, Rockhurst’s resident Shakespeare expert, will animatedly swear up and down that Shakespeare would never have joined twitter (“Real men do not TWEET!” he declares), the English department as a whole seems to be moving into the age of technology.  For instance, I have been forced to remedy my blogging incompetence both by creating this blog and by using a blog for a class I am taking called Honors Art and Literature.  We are using a site called edublogs to share images and information about the books we are reading and the papers we are writing— by tonight I have to come up with a 150 word reflection and some images regarding research I have done on Native American vision quest shields for a presentation.  But the biggest foray into technology of the English department was just revealed to us English majors in an email I received today: tweeting about literature and writing. 

Again, I have an admission: I don’t have a twitter account.  Since I am twitter-illiterate (though perhaps not for long), I will just pass along the information we received in the email.  The first step is to follow @RULitGeeks on twitter, and then follow these steps listed in the email if you tweet about English related things:

·         If you talk with someone or have an interesting thought about any work of literature, from a class or not, put the hash tag #RUreading anywhere in your tweet.  Also try to evoke a sense of the conversation in your tweet—noting a title, author, theme, genre, character, rhyme scheme, interpretive disagreement, whatever.

·         If you have a conversation or an interesting thought about your own writing or the act of writing, put the hash tag #RUwriting anywhere in your tweet.

·       Finally, if you want to announce, attend, or comment on a literary event, such as the poetry reading by Robert Bly, then put the hash tag #RUlitevent into your tweet.

Although I’m sure Shakespeare was a “real man” and the word “tweeting” is a bit cringe-worthy sometimes, a humorously true saying about Shakespeare is “Shakespeare got to get paid, son,” meaning Shakespeare knew what to do to be a successful writer and he did it.  It seems like in this day and age utilizing technology for literary purposes might be what it takes to be successful.  So, to tweet or not to tweet, to become technologically savvy or not become technologically savvy?  I think Shakespeare would do it. 

For all you tweeters out there, feel free to follow @RULitGeeks to see how our little experiment is going!