Meeting a New Old Goal

I had this up on Twitter yesterday, but I suppose I might as well announce this here: I'm using 750words.com to try to keep a goal for myself. That goal is to write at least one thousand words a day. With writing seven hundred and fifty words, another two hundred should be nothing.



It feels kind of weird to just jump back into writing like this. I haven't been able to do it since the end of June. What is that now? Two or three months? That's a really long time in writing nearly nothing. But now I'm jumping back in and it feels pretty good. I'm going to try to keep this promise to myself. I signed up for this month's challenge, so if I do fail, I'll go up on the Wall of Shame, however, if I win, then I'll go up onto the Wall of Awesomeness. I know, neither are really going to give me anything substantial, but I am an honorable person. If I make it, then I make it, if I don't, well, it's my own fault and I'll have to pick myself up and try again. That's why I want to chat a little about this right now.

There ought to be more people using this web app. It's rather awesome. Not much more than going onto the website, writing down a little bit of your thoughts (up to 750 words of them, and really, that's not that much when you really think about it), and go on and look at some of your peers who made it and didn't for the day. I guess you would be a day late to sign up for this month's challenge, but if you feel eager to jump in, just wait twenty-nine days and your chance will be here soon enough. In the meantime, get out your keyboards and crack your fingers! Train yourself for writing seven hundred and fifty words at a time. It's slightly less daunting than it seems.

Yes, you will be writing nearly one thousand words, but you don't have to do it in one setting. It is a lot more rewarding just to finish it up in one setting, but if you aren't that type of person, than you don't have to do it. It's all up to you. Your preferences are numerous.

What else does 750words.com have to offer? Well, all your writing is private, but you can choose to make your status public (it's private by default). Oh, yeah, 750words uses word regression to give a rough estimate of your mood while you write, how fast you write, distractions while you write and so forth. It's a rather impressive little app. I'm serious, check it out.

Oh, and one more thing that will get you to come here. Badges. There are badges for a bunch of different achievements. There's one for being an early riser, there's one for being a night owl. There's one for being a newbie, there's one for being a seasoned veteran. Right now, I have only the egg badge which signifies that I'm a newbie. I'm working on a couple other badges right now. I sadly don't think that I'm going to get the cheetah badge any time soon. This entry is taking me a few more minutes to write than I had been hoping. And I don't think that it takes into account that I have the distraction of the television set.

Anyways, back to the subject, give 750words a try. If not for writing itself, then for getting into shape for NaNoWriMo. 1,667 words a day is a daunting task. 750 is slightly more manageable. Start off by trying to do this challenge next month. If you make your goal of seven hundred and fifty words a day for the first two weeks, give yourself a little bit more and raise the bar for yourself to one thousand to one thousand two hundred words. That way you'll be getting yourself closer and closer to the ultimate goal of 1,667.

But that's my little recommendation of the season. I usually will not recommend anything like I am doing right now, so just let it be known, I'm being sincere about this. It's free to use, and it gets you into a community of like-minded people. What is better than that? No one will be able to see what you're writing unless you choose to post it to a blog or something. But you will be able to challenge others to writing at least seven hundred and fifty words a day.

So do your part as a writer and write and challenge other writers to do the same!