Pound those keys–no paper needed!
As you may have seen me mention, since the beginning of January I’ve been making a concerted effort to write at 750words.com daily. The idea of this website is simple: every day, you log in and write at least 750 words. What you write is private, and although you may share your statistics publicly, you don’t share your words–at least not from the site. You can write whatever you want–journal entries, rants, fiction, blog posts–it’s entirely up to you.
So far I’ve been doing pretty well. As of this writing (the original of which I’m typing, yes, at 750words.com) I’ve completed 40 days and written 32,218 words. This is the most consistent writing I’ve done in a while, outside of NaNoWriMo.
My entries usually take one of three forms. I may just write a sort of stream-of-consciousness blather about my day, projects I’m working on, or other personal matters. A journal entry, for the most part. I may write a blog post, as I’m doing now, which I’ll edit and post at a later date. Or I may work on a fiction project that I have underway. A couple of weeks ago I started a new short story, and I’ve written the entire thing in 750 (or so) word bursts. I’m getting close to the end of that story, and it’s been interesting–sort of like a mini-NaNoWriMo.
We humans like our rewards, and there are rewards to be had at 750words.com beyond the satisfaction of writing every day or working on projects consistently. The persistent writer can earn a wide variety of cute badges, which will be displayed on his or her page. The nice thing about the badges is that once you’ve earned them, you get to keep them, even if you fall off the writing wagon. Many of mine were earned a while back, and I’m challenging myself now to “re-earn” them. There are also point rewards for writing, so if you’d rather track your consistency this way, you can do that as well.
If you’re not into cute animals (in which case I feel sorry for you), you can also peruse many interesting metrics and data compiled from your daily word-grinding. You can track how long it takes you to reach the 750 word goal. You can track your total words written. You can analyze your emotions while writing and the words you use the most. You can compare yourself to other writers, and look at your data over time. It’s very interesting.
I particularly like the regressive imagery analysis when I’m writing fiction. I think it’s a great indicator of whether I’ve hit the mood I’m hoping for or not. If I’m writing a stressful scene where the protagonist is trying to escape a zombie horde, and the metrics tell me my writing was concerned mostly with death and my mood was “upset” while writing…score one for my writing! If I’m writing a love scene, the result should be different!
You can use the site for free for 30 days, but if you fall in love with the site and want to support it financially, it will cost you a mere $5 per month.
I made two New Year’s Resolutions back on New Year’s Eve. One was to try to be more productive (writing-wise) this year; the second was to try to cultivate consistency. The great thing about 750words for me, is that it is helping me to achieve both these goals.
Photo credit: jaylopez
We’ll be launching our fourth volume in the Speculative Elements series this Friday: Flashpoint. As with the earlier volumes in the series, all the stories in Flashpoint involve something thematically related to the title, whether literally or figuratively. Sometimes both.
* close to turning in the manuscript for Dark Beneath the Moon, the sequel to One’s Aspect to the Sun. It’s been a long road with this manuscript, but I’m feeling pretty good about it now.
