Seven Hundred and Fifty Words

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but events have overtaken me.  750words.com is a great tool for Composition students or anyone interested in writing. The premise is based on a technique popularized by The Artists' Way by Julia Cameron. While I'm not thrilled with the flash on her homepage (can flash rendered pages just die already? they are not big, nor are they clever), the exercise is sound enough. Write 750 words, about three pages every morning. The original appears to call for long hand writing, I'll take the web version, thanks. Writing long hand for any extended period is a very painful exercise for me (as I've recently had to rediscover), and frankly I end up focusing more on trying to make my print legible than anything else.  The website tracks your writing, and scores you based on how much you write (up to 750 words - it does provide an average total number of words as well), and whether you allow yourself to be distracted. The idea is to simply free write in one continuous session. You can sign into the service via your Google account (my preference), Facebook connect, or through a Yahoo account.

It also provides a wide variety of stats. How fast you completed your words versus the site average, how many distractions, how fast you typed. It also analyzes your word choices in a variety of ways. You can sign up for a "challenge" each month, and you can assign a reward for completing the challenge as well as a penalty for failure. I like the idea of the challenge, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with rewards or penalties. I feel I'm more apt to learn when I'm just allowed to play with no consequences. Luckily, the challenge section is totally optional. I think the creator of this web app's personal page is just as interesting as the application itself, check it out.

The writing environment itself is very sparse and minimalist. It is very much as it should be. You do get options on a separate page for setting font and point size, but the default was just fine for me. I'm playing around with going to arial 12 for tomorrow and I'll see how that works out. So far, I'm having a really good time with the site and I expect it's going to help my productivity as a writer.

The toughest part of any writing project is getting started. The temptation is always to check one more source, to do another outline (if you're into that sort of thing, it's not my cup of meat really . . .), or otherwise procrastinate in delivering the paper. I think continual, deliberate practice takes the intimidation factor out of writing. I always imagine it as that moment when you're standing at the edge of a diving board, but have not yet started your jump. That moment is intimidating, it is an obstacle - it is all too easy at that moment to turn around and walk down the ladder. Maybe do a few laps, or have a soda. But if you practice overcoming that moment without fail everyday, it will cease to be a problem. I'm particularly fond of this way of doing free writing as it feels like a game, and that in itself is sufficient motivation to keep me going. I'm placed at 715th and climbing!