750 Words

  I have been writing at a site called 750words.com for several months now (138 days to be specific). Buster Benson, the author of the site, explains the premise as an offshoot of a practice advocated by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist's Way. The exercise described in the book is to sit down, first thing in the morning, and write three pages, long hand. Buster goes on to explain that the average person writes 250 words on a page so 750 words corresponds to three long hand pages. You create an account on the site and then it allows you to write while it tells you how many words you have written in real time. When you have written 750 words, a pop up congratulates you for meeting your minimum.
  The words that you write here are private. They are to help you get the cob webs out of the corners of your mind and prepare for the day. If you choose to share them, you can but that is not the point of the site. It is not a blog site. It is an exercise in process. Buster has added some interesting features to the site. He keeps track of how many words that you write each minute that you write. He runs your text through analysis software that tells you about trends in your writing, topics that you are writing about, your general state of mind. He also gives you badges for achievements like consistently writing without any distractions which are defined as three or more minutes without writing anything. There are also badges for consecutive days writing at least the minimum 750 words each day, for instance 5 days in a row earns a penguin badge while 10 days in a row earns a flamingo badge. While the badges are not fundamentally part of the writing exercise, they are fun little extras.
  I am not sure what good it is doing me but I definitely enjoy writing and I am noticing that the quality of my writing seems to be going up. I can't imagine not writing my morning pages every day at this point. I am trying to get back to blogging. I haven't been very regular at blogging in the past but I hope that my morning pages will help me find the self discipline to blog regularly. Only time will tell.