750 Words and the Great Brain Dump.
I've been reading a lot of writer's blogs lately, thanks to YA Highway's Field Trip Fridays. Yesterday, they had an article listed that, at first, I was only mildly intrigued by. But it was in list form and so I guess for me it was a little extra eye-catching. Write It Sideways put out a list of 6 tips for busy people to clear their heads of noise so they can sit down and write in those precious moments they can find in a day to actually sit down. The very first tip threw out a suggestion to dump all those random thoughts that tend to dominate our minds in the mornings and that a great place to do it was 750words.com.
At first I thought, "do I really need yet another site to update and/or fail at updating" and thought I might use LJ for my daily brain dump. But, the explanation on the homepage of the site is very convincing that I might rather throw all that stuff there instead of on a blog or social networking site where I might want to remember to lock those posts and that I wouldn't need the same features and stuff that LJ has. I thought I'd give it a try and 15 minutes later, I had reached my 750 words of stream of consciousness bull shit that no one, including me, ever wants to read. I felt a little refreshed and a little less foggy headed like I could get up and carry on with my day without that noise bumping around inside my head distracting me.
They've got a nifty little score card as a mild incentive to continue everyday and they even have monthly challenges you can sign up for with rewards (name on the Wall of Awesomeness) and consequences (name on the Wall of Shame) if you succeed or fail to spit out your 750 words everyday for a month.
But perhaps the coolest feature of the site is the analyzing they do of your entries once you're done. They analyze the time it took you to reach 750, how many times you got distracted (breaks of 3 minutes or more), how many words per minute, how many minutes you were actually typing, etc. Then, they've got stuff that shows the rating of your entry (G, PG, etc.), the weather while you were writing, a whole series of pie charts that analyze the mood of your writing based on words you use and how they're used and a frequently used words list. Even though the site, from a user standpoint, is very stripped down and simple, the tool itself is pretty impressive.
So, I'm using it to try to get all the pointless drivel out of my head that no one wants to read and perhaps get back to posting decent entries here. I've deleted so many half finished, rambling entries in the past couple of months it's not even funny. I'm having a lot of trouble focusing and getting motivated lately, so I'm hoping this will help. Also, I've been working on my fiction again lately and I need every little bit of help I can get to make the most of the moments I can steal away each day to get something decent on the page.
At first I thought, "do I really need yet another site to update and/or fail at updating" and thought I might use LJ for my daily brain dump. But, the explanation on the homepage of the site is very convincing that I might rather throw all that stuff there instead of on a blog or social networking site where I might want to remember to lock those posts and that I wouldn't need the same features and stuff that LJ has. I thought I'd give it a try and 15 minutes later, I had reached my 750 words of stream of consciousness bull shit that no one, including me, ever wants to read. I felt a little refreshed and a little less foggy headed like I could get up and carry on with my day without that noise bumping around inside my head distracting me.
They've got a nifty little score card as a mild incentive to continue everyday and they even have monthly challenges you can sign up for with rewards (name on the Wall of Awesomeness) and consequences (name on the Wall of Shame) if you succeed or fail to spit out your 750 words everyday for a month.
But perhaps the coolest feature of the site is the analyzing they do of your entries once you're done. They analyze the time it took you to reach 750, how many times you got distracted (breaks of 3 minutes or more), how many words per minute, how many minutes you were actually typing, etc. Then, they've got stuff that shows the rating of your entry (G, PG, etc.), the weather while you were writing, a whole series of pie charts that analyze the mood of your writing based on words you use and how they're used and a frequently used words list. Even though the site, from a user standpoint, is very stripped down and simple, the tool itself is pretty impressive.
So, I'm using it to try to get all the pointless drivel out of my head that no one wants to read and perhaps get back to posting decent entries here. I've deleted so many half finished, rambling entries in the past couple of months it's not even funny. I'm having a lot of trouble focusing and getting motivated lately, so I'm hoping this will help. Also, I've been working on my fiction again lately and I need every little bit of help I can get to make the most of the moments I can steal away each day to get something decent on the page.