As most of you know, I recently dipped my toes into the waters of Twitter. Turns out I love it. Yes, it's impersonal in that it's electronic communication rather than face-to-face, but where else can you tweet a bestselling author you really admire and have her respond?

One minute later!

I now have a small community of aspiring authors, published authors, agents, and friends from whom I get all sorts of great insights, motivation, and ideas.

Twitter has quickly overtaken Facebook as my favorite social networking tool. I still like Facebook, and use it exclusively for personal friends at this point. It's great for sharing photos and news and seeing what everyone else is up to, but Twitter is much more immediate. It's almost like an online chat with dozens of people at once.

The drawback? It can take up too much of your time if you let it. I try to limit my at home access to 3-4 times per day for a few minutes. I unfollow people who overtweet. I catch up on everyone's tweets, respond to some, tweet a few things of my own, and get out. I also catch up if I'm waiting in line or at the orthodontist, or working out on the cross-trainer.

The benefits? Getting friendly, helpful tweets from authors like JoAnn Ross in response to a comment/question. Learning that an agent I'm following is no longer taking submissions. Being virtually surrounded by aspiring writers who understand what it's like to struggle with the story and the dream.

Twitter provides the “water cooler” that so many of us who work from home lack. (Or those who work outside the writing/publishing industry.)

Still not sure what it's all about? Already signed up but don't know what to do? Check out this helpful link.

It's time to get your feet wet! Join me @Gwen_Hernandez.

UPDATE 4/8: Here's another good link for Twitter Etiquette, geared toward writers, but helpful to anyone.

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