I’ve been on Facebook for years, but never really understood the point of Twitter. The social media platform seemed to me like a chaotic crowd of people shouting short sentences at each other. A couple of years into writing my book and listening to writerly podcasts advising on the importance of an ‘author platform’ I decided I needed to do something about it, and in January 2018 I set up this website and joined Twitter.

As I began to understand how Twitter worked, I began to find value in it because there are a lot of writers and other creatives on the platform. Australian writers (#Auswrites) connect up and play writing prompt games, ‘meet’ in a 6am writers group, share successes and disappointments, favourite books and authors. Some even meet up in real life for coffee/brunch occasionally. A global writers group (#writerscommunity) provides similar connections across the world. #PitMad is a regular pitch party where writers can tweet a 280-character pitch for their unpublished manuscripts and agents and editors make requests by liking or favoriting the tweeted pitch. And the list goes on…twitter writers are a friendly, engaging and welcoming bunch.

Twitter is also a place for writers to do good for the community. In early January a small group of YA and Children’s authors got together and organised #AuthorsForFireys, a twitter auction designed to channel funds to firefighters and agencies providing relief for those impacted by the Australian bushfires. Over 500 creatives participated in Authors For Fireys, a week long auction of signed books, illustrations, unique experiences, one-off opportunities and writers’ services. Authors from publishing houses like Penguin Random House, Allen and Unwin, and Harper Collins got in on the act. You could bid to have Clementine Ford cook you dinner, to sip champagne with Annabelle Crab and Leigh Sales after Chat10Looks3, get your hands on a leather bound edition of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild or offerings from a diversity of people from Nick Cave to Kevin Rudd to Christos Tsiolkas, who isn’t even on Twitter. My personal favourite was the $5,000 bid by Trades Hall for a personalised poem by Maxine Beneba Clarke – no pressure there!

I bid on a number of items and was lucky enough to end up with a manuscript assessment from Dan Hanks, a professional editor in the UK. All donations went to fire services or disaster recovery appeals across the country and as of yesterday the initiative had raised AUD225k and counting, and lifted the spirits of all those who participated.