Mar 28

Could I have written 3 additional novels last year instead of tweeting?

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This morning, I noticed that I sent my 19,000th tweet, which is honestly an absurd number when I think about it. Nineteen thousand tweets, in just over a year on Twitter? Seriously? What the hell have I been blabbering (and probably annoying people) about?

How much time have I spent “writing” on Twitter that perhaps could have been used more wisely? Let’s break it down (for my own rationalization, of course).

• I first became “active” on Twitter in January 2011; call it 14 months ago.

• According to the Oxford University Press, the average tweet is 14.98 words (call it 15).

• According to Publisher’s Weekly, the average (median, actually) length of a novel is around 65,000 words.

• I’ll estimate that 20% of my tweets are RTs, not original content.

Math:

19,000 tweets x 80% (original tweets) = 15,200 tweets

15,200 x 15 (average word count of tweet) = 228,000 words

228,000 / 65,000 (median novel length) = 3.5 novels

Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion* that I could have written three and a half additional novels in the 14 months I’ve been tweeting, by simply replacing tweets with sentences in a story.

I’ll never tweet again. Right after this one. Oh, and this one. And of course the kitteh one. And…

* OK, it’s not really a conclusion…just a bizarre comparison I thought of before my coffee hit.

Tags: novel, tweets, twitter, twitter novel, writing

About the author

Steve Umstead

Steve Umstead has been the owner of a Caribbean & Mexico travel company for the past ten+ years, but never forgot his lifelong dream of becoming an author. After a successful stab at National Novel Writing Month, he decided to pursue his dream more vigorously…but hasn’t given up the traveling. Steve lives in scenic (tongue-in-cheek) New Jersey with his wife, two kids, and several bookshelves full of other authors’ science fiction novels. Gabriel’s Redemption was his debut novel, published in February of 2011.

9 comments on “Could I have written 3 additional novels last year instead of tweeting?”

Tim Barzyk on March 28, 2012 at 10:12 am said:

You know you like it…
~~~
Mark my words: someday, “The Best Tweets of All Time” series will be published, and you’ll be glad you spent all those hours expressing yourself in 140 characters or less.
~~~
Tim
scienceforfiction.com

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- shayfabbro on March 28, 2012 at 11:59 am said:
  
  We should totally start on that book…right after I check my G+ and Twitter
  
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  - Tim Barzyk on March 28, 2012 at 12:59 pm said:
    
    Ha! Yeah, polish ‘em up! There will be one on writing tweets, one on humor tweets, one on science tweets! It’ll be great. What else would be a good one?
    
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- shayfabbro on March 28, 2012 at 1:09 pm said:
  
  We could do snarky tweets also! I like the science ones, as long as we can add some Star Trek or perhaps Dr. Who in there somewhere…
  
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  - Tim Barzyk on March 29, 2012 at 8:47 am said:
    
    Snarky would definitely be a best seller!
    
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shayfabbro on March 28, 2012 at 11:58 am said:

Psshhtt! I never tweet or FB or any of that…*sneaks off to check Twitter, FB, Pinterest, groups*. I am totally disciplined when it comes to writing. *types 3 messages to FB groups, checks gmail, sends 3 tweets, RTs 5 posts, pins totally geeky Dr. Who stuff*. You just gotta make yourself FOCUS on the book ya know? *googles Hunger Games and how to get Harry Potter on Kindle, notices a few more notifications on Twitter and chat message that pops up on FB*

See? Just be more like me and you’ll go far!

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- Jessica Marcarelli (@jmarcarelli) on March 30, 2012 at 1:16 am said:
  
  Your comment made me laugh so hard – this is the battle of an average day for me.
  
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  - shayfabbro on March 30, 2012 at 9:25 am said:
    
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Jessica Marcarelli (@jmarcarelli) on March 30, 2012 at 1:15 am said:

Oh my goodness. Can I say that I could have written this? Now I can’t stop counting my tweets….and FB posts…and blogs…and blog comments…and forum posts…gaaahhh!

Jessica
Visions of Other Worlds

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