Hooray! 750words is back after a proLOOOOONGED absence. (Can you tell I missed it?) If youre a writer, and youve not tried 750words, you absolutely must try it out. It is the greatest motivating tool ever invented for writing, yet the concept is incredibly simple: you simply get small, meaningless yet immediate rewards for writing. Its based on the idea that if you simply write 750 words a day (about three pages of standard computer printing), youll eventually be able to finish any writing project. Writing is first and foremost a matter of getting words onto the page, and the biggest hurdle to doing that is — well, not doing it! I mean, not getting started. I mean, the irrational fear that the words wont come, or the aversion to that initial mental ramping-up that writing seems to require more than most other tasks. On 750words, every day is represented as an inviting little green box. When you login, you see your box for that day, as well as your prior days boxes filled with visual representations of whether or not you wrote on any given day of the month. The goal is that at the start of the month, you see a long and inspiring stretch of empty green boxes waiting to be filled. At the end of every month, you see a long and rewarding stretch of little green boxes filled with Xs, like a bowling scorecard. Theres also a little point system which is rather complicated, but the gist of it is to reward you for: a) starting to write on any given day, b) writing at least 750 words, c) writing multiple days in a row. I started my new account three days ago, and I have written 750 words each of those three days. On my first day, I got 2 points (one for getting started, one for hitting the target of 750). By day 3, Ive amassed 12 points because of writing in a three-day streak. This way, like a jogger whos addicted to his daily run, Im motivated to hit 750 every day so I dont lose points. It works, too. Yesterday we arrived at our apartment in the Development Zone very late at night, and I was really too tired to be writing. But I had to sit down and do it so Id get my points for the day. Of course all that is meaningless: you dont get anything for those points, except the internal satisfaction of having them. You can also game the system pretty easily: last night at about 1:30 AM, when I was halfway to 750 and too tired to write any more, I grabbed an old email message on the topic and copied in a passage that got me over 750. So what? I got my points. The one thing that is potentially quite useful is a set of simple metrics for your writing. You get metrics about your mindset (I seem to get Extroverted, Positive, and Feeling a lot this month, because Ive been writing a story about how I met my wife). You also get metrics about time orientation (past, present, future), primary sense (sight, hearing, touch), and most frequently-used words. Those can be helpful, especially for fiction writers. Its a limited writing platform. You only get one frame per day, so everything you write, on every project you write about, all goes together. There are no writing tools, just like in a Facebook posting. No italics, no boldface, etc. Its not intended as a place to finish your work, but to get it started. There is a small fee ($5 a month after your initial monthlong free trial), but thats well worth it. The biggest thing is the motivation. And for that, 750words is the greatest!
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 00:38:10 +0000
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