750 words: Day 400 - 325,520 words
So today is my 400th day of writing 750 words a day. A lot of days -- most days, actually -- this is just a place to toss out my emotions and thoughts on the day. Some days -- not a lot, fortunately -- it's just mindless babble of how I have no idea what to write here and that I need to just keep writing in order to fill out my 750 word quota. Occasionally -- only very rarely, thankfully -- I steal words from other things I wrote. They are still my words, even if they technically weren't created on this space for this reason. Then there are those days when I use this space to actually write. This is one of these days.
I wasn't going to mark any special notice on here when I hit these daily milestones. After all I passed a year without much notice. Actually, the day this journal turned a years old, it was one of those days when I didn't have the energy or brain function to clearly write anything. So it just was a page full of words so that I could continue to believe I can write, even when I can't.
Still, it's 400 days today and I will break the 350,000 word mark, too. So it seems worth noting. Because I don't want to spend hours writing some sort of Important Message here, I'm just going to notate things I've learned about writing 750 words a day.
1. I'm not good at composing quickly. They time me here at 750 words and while I can (and have) written my words in 20 minutes or less, those words are usually not publishing worthy.
2. I can write a publishable post in this space, in 750 words and in under an hour or so. It's easier with meta than with fic and its easiest when I'm writing some sort of personal philosophy or thoughts.
3. I rarely post the things I write here, even if they are publishable. I think that I feel that some of this is too personal. Or I think that it could us a little tweaky to make it perfect and then never go back to tweak it.
4. When I started I had a very hard time just writing down what I was thinking without going back and fixing my grammatical errors. I have taught myself to push past them now, but I still find myself hitting the backspace key before I think about it. There are days when I, after I've gone back and deleted the error, intentionally put it back to help train myself that errors in this space are not evil.
5. I dislike having obvious grammatical errors on my paper even when I know they don't matter. On the other hand, writing quickly means that I have a lot of not-so-obvious grammatically errors that I often post to other places.
6. I don't think I will ever be good at writing a "rough draft". I despise the thought of going back and reworking something that I've already written. I've considered that I should do my rough draft verbally, by using a talk-to-text program, but I haven't decided if it would work for me or not. More than likely I would talk into it and then ignore the entire text and just write it again, normally. I don't know.
7. I'm not sure that I like that I can so easily keep track of how many words I've written while I'm doing this. I do get distracted at the number count, and I know that I may stretch out the word count in order to fill the quota or, worse, stop before I've finished my thought just because I've written my quota.
8. I don't go back and read what I've written. Not sure how I feel about that either. I'm sure there's meta in these words that I could post, but I don't ever go back and review the days I've done.
9. I should write these earlier in the day. This site was based on the concept of "morning pages" a place to start out the day with a clear head. I tend to write at 11 at night. My brain doesn't always work well at that time.
10. I don't write done negative thoughts. At least, I don't write down negative thoughts often. If I do, I always end up mitigating those thoughts. Even thought I don't go back and reread these, I feel that keeping negative thoughts around forever is a bad thing. Negative thoughts should be left in the past so that they can't contaminate the future.
Well, I hit ten and that's the usual arbitrary number that these type of lists stop at. Fortunately for me, I've reached my 750 word goal.
I wasn't going to mark any special notice on here when I hit these daily milestones. After all I passed a year without much notice. Actually, the day this journal turned a years old, it was one of those days when I didn't have the energy or brain function to clearly write anything. So it just was a page full of words so that I could continue to believe I can write, even when I can't.
Still, it's 400 days today and I will break the 350,000 word mark, too. So it seems worth noting. Because I don't want to spend hours writing some sort of Important Message here, I'm just going to notate things I've learned about writing 750 words a day.
1. I'm not good at composing quickly. They time me here at 750 words and while I can (and have) written my words in 20 minutes or less, those words are usually not publishing worthy.
2. I can write a publishable post in this space, in 750 words and in under an hour or so. It's easier with meta than with fic and its easiest when I'm writing some sort of personal philosophy or thoughts.
3. I rarely post the things I write here, even if they are publishable. I think that I feel that some of this is too personal. Or I think that it could us a little tweaky to make it perfect and then never go back to tweak it.
4. When I started I had a very hard time just writing down what I was thinking without going back and fixing my grammatical errors. I have taught myself to push past them now, but I still find myself hitting the backspace key before I think about it. There are days when I, after I've gone back and deleted the error, intentionally put it back to help train myself that errors in this space are not evil.
5. I dislike having obvious grammatical errors on my paper even when I know they don't matter. On the other hand, writing quickly means that I have a lot of not-so-obvious grammatically errors that I often post to other places.
6. I don't think I will ever be good at writing a "rough draft". I despise the thought of going back and reworking something that I've already written. I've considered that I should do my rough draft verbally, by using a talk-to-text program, but I haven't decided if it would work for me or not. More than likely I would talk into it and then ignore the entire text and just write it again, normally. I don't know.
7. I'm not sure that I like that I can so easily keep track of how many words I've written while I'm doing this. I do get distracted at the number count, and I know that I may stretch out the word count in order to fill the quota or, worse, stop before I've finished my thought just because I've written my quota.
8. I don't go back and read what I've written. Not sure how I feel about that either. I'm sure there's meta in these words that I could post, but I don't ever go back and review the days I've done.
9. I should write these earlier in the day. This site was based on the concept of "morning pages" a place to start out the day with a clear head. I tend to write at 11 at night. My brain doesn't always work well at that time.
10. I don't write done negative thoughts. At least, I don't write down negative thoughts often. If I do, I always end up mitigating those thoughts. Even thought I don't go back and reread these, I feel that keeping negative thoughts around forever is a bad thing. Negative thoughts should be left in the past so that they can't contaminate the future.
Well, I hit ten and that's the usual arbitrary number that these type of lists stop at. Fortunately for me, I've reached my 750 word goal.