…writing and thinking hard about Return to Earth – and making reasonable progress.  Nothing startling, but it’ll do me. With the million and one other things on at the moment, I’m not expecting miracles.

I have set up a separate blog and Twitter feed for the Return to Earth project, http://returntoearth.at/once/ and @returntoearth respectively.  Feel free to check out and follow (and donate!), I’ll no doubt update that site more than this one, with my recent track record of updates.

In case anyone was wondering what the previous post was about it was all part of a big game run by the the creator of Moblog, Alfie Denning, where forty or so bloggers were provided with geo-cache type clues which would lead people to various points around London where they would find photographs by the talented James Nachtwey and a letter.  Find the photos, collect the letters and work out what the question was. 

It was all to raise awareness of Extremely Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis – which you can read more about at http://www.xdrtb.org/

Whilst I’m still in the middle of my mad affair with Twitter, I’ve created a Scribomatic account you can now follow to get alerts of all the new blog posts from around the Scribosphere.

Follow @scribomatic.

Not sure of it’s of any use to anyone, but here are the top 20 posts in terms of click-throughs from the widget over the past couple of months:

Bear in mind that these click-throughs are probably only a small percentage of the visits to any of these blogs, but it’s good to know that the Widget is doing it’s job. 

If you think there’s any worth in them, or would like to see them published more regularly, let me know…

Hello.  My name is Andy Coughlan and I’m a Twitterholic.

There, that feels good.

Being somewhat addicted to Twitter these days, it’s been bugging me for some time why it is that so few screenwriters appear to be on there.

Having had Scribomatic running for some time now, it’s clear to me that Screenwriters like to blog – we love it.  At its best our blogging is educational, entertaining and enlightening, at its worst it’s irritating and condescending.

But whatever we put on our blogs, the act of writing our posts doesn’t really help our own screenwriting. Blogging, as a writing form, is far more akin to traditional prose writing than it is to screenwriting.

Screenwriting is about being concise, of excising all waste.  Every line of action and dialogue must move the story forward – if it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be there.  We all know that (I hope).

Now with Twitter you only 140 characters to play with, so every Tweet you write is a fabulous exercise in concise writing. Over the past few weeks my grammar and vocabulary has been constantly challenged and my use of redundant phrases and repetition exorcised like never before.

It’s really paying dividends with the new screenplay I’m writing.

But even more than that, it’s fantastic for building relationships.  Far better, I would argue, than posting comments on each others blogs. I guarantee you’ll meet up with interesting and intelligent people… if you want to.  I certainly have.

I’ve hardly checked my feed reader in the past few weeks, in part because I was annoyed I couldn’t go to Cheltenham and didn’t want to read about the fantastic time everyone was having, but mainly because Twitter is such a vibrant and interesting place to be.

It’s happening, right now, right there in the timeline. A lot of people I follow announce their latest blog posts into the timeline as well, so the need for feedreaders diminishes further. And with apps like Twhirl it’s there all the time on my desktop. I don’t have to go surfing around to see all the comments sections of peoples blogs to have conversations.

I’m not saying we should stop blogging, but I suspect that if more of us tweeted, the overall quality of the Scribosphere would go up.

So this is a call to all the screenwriters I know, jump in – the waters warm. And when you’re in, you can follow me here.

In fact, if you’re already on Twitter, or after you’ve joined, post your details in the comments section here so we can find each other…

Useful Links:

Twitter – the big daddy and the place where most people are.  Yes, it’s had its problems over the past few weeks, and the Fail Whale has been making regular appearances, but last weekends upgrades appear to be doing the job.

Jaiku, Pownce, Identi.ca, Plurk – Pretenders to Twitter’s throne, each with their own subtle twist (I like Plurk’s timeline, I’m not worried about file sharing).  If you’re unsure which to pick, stick with Twitter.

Twhirl – A great desktop app.  Also works with your Friendfeed account, posts to Jaiku and Pownce as well,  and they’re just introducing Seesmic integration (more on that in another post soon).

Tip:

Don’t follow too many people to start with – there is a tendency for people to be a bit gung-ho and follow the world and his wife, then drown under the weight of Tweets coming in.  Try to keep the number of people you follow less than your number of followers (difficult to start with, easier the more useful tweets you post and interesting people you follow and talk to).

Futher Reading:

Michael Leis at New Media Buzz has an excellent post on Microblogging and Screenwriting which elaborates on a lot of my points above.

Woke up this morning to find overnight there had been a fascinating contretemps brewing between two very cool web sites, both of which I’m a big fan of*.

In the blue corner, replete with Raccoon, is Seesmic, run by the ever smiling French New Media Guru and founder of Le Web, Loic Le Meur.

In the red corner (with white flashes) is Phreadz, developed by the one man dynamo and all round top chap,  Kosso.

Rather than explain it all (as it’s quite complicated) Christian (aka Documentally) interviewed Kosso about the situation over on Qik.com – watch it now!

As Christian and Deek point out in the video, I think the whole situation has ramifications for bloggers, filmmakers and musicians that extends beyond two web sites having a bit of a barney, it’s about ownership of content on the web.

Hopefully, the situation as it stands will resolve itself amicably. As Kosso points out the two companies have different agendas, there is plenty of space on the web for both sites without the need for fisticuffs.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out.

* OK, if I’m honest, I’m a complete Phreadle, but I’ve always loved Seesmic’s style.

I’m totally loving Twitter. Took me a while to warm to it, but the challenge of saying something useful in 140 characters is much more interesting and ‘in the now’ than writing a long rambling blog post.

Anyone else out there in scribobloggerland feel the same way (apart from David and Shawna)? Feel free to follow me.

I’ve always been of a mind that blogging should be about journaling rather than an anything else, and Twitter seems more in tune with that idea than most blogs these days. But with more scope for conversations.

I just wish I could pluck up the courage to post something on Seesmic now…