As a challenge from my mentor and friend, Lezlie Laws of LifeArt Studio, I jumped into the daily writing pool two weeks ago. The website 750words.com is a digital take off on Julia Cameron’s morning pages where you’re asked to write at least 750 words each day about anything of your choosing. It can be parts of a story you’re working on, the musings of your mind, or just the same sentence over and over again. The content is up to you.
There’s a free thirty-day trial period; afterward the cost is five dollars per month. I began on Tuesday, September 8th and have written every day since. You receive a reminder telling you it’s time to write at the hour you’ve designated. As an added incentive, the site gives you little badges for milestones along the way, e.g. number of days written consecutively, total words accumulated, how quickly you made it to 750 words, distraction-free writing, etc.
So far, I have an egg (first day), turkey (three days), penguin (five days), and flamingo (ten days), and I’m halfway to the albatross for writing thirty days in a row. There are also badges for 100, 200, 365, 500, and 1,000 days of writing 750 words in a row. I hate to think that I’m that easily manipulated, but I have written a couple of entries at 11:45 p.m. just so I didn’t break my streak. Whatever works.
The site counts your words and runs a few algorithms that give you a bit of insight into your content. It tells you how long it took you to get to 750 words, how many distractions you had while writing, words written per minute, and provides some interesting analytics based on the words you used. I’m not sure what it all means, but I like checking it every day. Your writing can also be searched, if you are looking for something in particular, and it’s downloadable, so you can keep a copy for yourself. I plan on doing that once per month.
If you have a desire to make writing a daily practice, check out 750words.com. It may be the extra poke you need that draws you to the writing table day after day.
