Writer publishing work through Twitter

Twiller on Twitter
Twiller on Twitter

Writers' block hampers even the best of authors – it lasted for 60 years for Henry Roth. But one writer who will never ever suffer from the condition is Matt Richtel. And that's because he is currently only writing 140 characters (the maximum Tweets are allowed to post) of his novel a day… through Twitter.

Part of a growing group of writers who are looking to the web to get their work published, Richtel is producing a novel called Twiller – a Twitter thriller – via his Twitter feed.

In bite-size chunks, he is getting his work out to a growing number of followers daily.

New York Times journalist

It's not as if he is a struggling writer either, with a day job at the New York Times and already one book under his belt. But as he says in his blog, he has put down pen and paper and picked up the mobile phone. And the plot of this micro-masterpiece. Well, we'll let Richtel explain:

"It's about a man who wakes up in the mountains of Colorado, suffering from amnesia, with a haunting feeling he is a murderer. In possession of only a cellphone that lets him Twitter, he uses the phone to tell his story of self-discovery, 140 characters at a time. Think Memento on a mobile phone, with the occasional emoticon."

So if that takes your fancy, log on to Matt Richtel's feed now.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.