750 Words

By 8:30 this morning (Saturday, mind you), I had already written 750 words of free text (758, actually). I feel pretty good about this. It's my first day trying out a little site called 750 Words, an online version of the tried and true writing exercise of (go figure) writing. A little bit every day. No editing, censoring, or drafting. Just letting the words flow. I wrote my 758 words (about 3 pages) this morning in 15 minutes, and there's actually some decent material in there. But that's not even the point. The point is to just open up your mind, put whatever's in there on the page (or the screen), maybe for practice, maybe for therapy, maybe as a way to sort through your thoughts, relieve stress, purge.

Whatever it becomes, the cool thing about it is that it's bound to become something. We so often lack motivation or inspiration and as a result do nothing, produce nothing. But by sitting down and just forcing yourself to pull sentences out of the empty space in your brain, things appear. Ideas materialize before your eyes as if by magic. Loose ends connect. Questions are asked. Conclusions are drawn.

The site is the brain child of this guy. It's different from a blog in that the content is totally private and there's no "posting" involved. Different from a journal in that you can type instead of suffer massive hand cramps, it helps you keep track, and it goes into a kind of little bank instead of just into a boring word document. He's made it fun and motivational, with monthly challenges you can sign up for and little badges to reward you for writing, say, 10 days in a row. 

It also provides stats that measure things like how long it took you to write each day, words per minute, and number of distractions. It shows you your frequently used words, which can provide a fascinating (and potentially disturbing) look at your subconscious. Maybe it won't surprise you, but you want to know my most frequently used word today? In 758 words at 8:30 on a Saturday morning? That I am now sharing with you in the assumption that you will even care?

my

My my my my my. Me. My. Mine. I. 

Conclusions, you see, are drawn.