About 3 months ago, toward the beginning of February, I discovered a website that was guaranteed to revolutionize my writing practices. It's called 750 Words, and it's a site for developing a habit of writing every day. The recommended allotment is, surprisingly, 750 words a day, and the site urges you on to maintaining this habit with badges and stats and the sight of hundreds of other people with more willpower than you writing more than you every day.
The biggest element of this site is streaks -- the number of days in a row that you've written something, and especially the number of days that you write over 750 words. You get badges based on the number of days you can string together, with other little badges thrown in for writing fast enough or during certain times of day.
Those aren't really important. What's important is how many days you can string together. And being a competitive fiend, I took to this challenge like a small animal to hibernation.
I did a writing challenge a few years ago and managed to stick with it for its whole length (November) so I was pretty sure I could handle this challenge since it involved less writing every day. I guess I wasn't thinking about the fact that 750 Words sort of goes on for life.
Anyway. This daily writing turned out to be right up my alley. Spurred on by the Turkey badge, the Penguin badge, the Flamingo badge, I started building a habit. In fact, I'm using 750 Words to write this right now. I'm not sure if that counts as irony or coincidence or inception.
This habit turned out to be great. It was the perfect way to hash out my thoughts every day or, when I didn't have anything pressing to think about, to write some fiction -- something I hadn't seriously done since high school. Every day my word count rose and my streak climbed slowly higher.
I started clicking on other peoples' accounts to compare myself. If they were still Turkey badges, it was a pretty good feeling seeing how much higher my streak was. But the site caters to a certain kind of personality and this wasn't always a morale boost.
However, after the shock and feelings of inadequacy, these accounts were just another goal. "The Phoenix badge? Puh. One day I'm going to be a Space Bird!" If these people valued little pictures of birds associated with their accounts enough to make themselves write every day for 500 days, I was obsessed enough to get there too.
One weekend me and Cole (my brother) went to Missouri for a funeral. I knocked out my 750 words Friday morning and we drove down Friday evening. We stayed all day Saturday and left Saturday evening, and didn't have access to internet the entire time. I totally forgot about 750 words, but around 11pm as we were crossing the Missouri-Illinois border, I realized I was an hour away from losing my streak and we were hours away from home.
In desperation and with a total lack of integrity, I called Eric (a suitemate) and had him copy 750 words of text into the website at 11:45. It ended up being a mish-mash of something about engineering, but it counted.
Another time, me and Danny were getting ready to go to a hangout at 11 and this hangout was guaranteed to go well past midnight. With people waiting on us, I typed out a hurried paragraph about what a cheater I was and copied and pasted that paragraph twenty times until I had 750 words.
Another time, we were driving home from a trip to Panama City Beach (during which I had periodically secluded myself to maintain my streak) and we had been in the car all day so I hadn't had a chance to get my words in. At 11:30 I started to get antsy. At 11:50 we pulled up to the dorm and I sprinted upstairs to slam my words out in 9 minutes. I don't remember anything I wrote, but I doubt it was profound. Regardless, the streak was maintained.
As my streak mounted, the website's analytical abilities began to dissect my personality. It told me I was an introvert, anxious, often upset, and obsessed with death.
But I didn't really care. What I cared about was the slowly climbing number in the top right of the screen that gradually inched its way up to 50, 60, 70 .... 78 days in a row.
And if you've been feeling anxious this whole post, sensing the foreboding tone sprinkled in every line-- well, the train's pulling into the station.
Yesterday, May 18th, I forgot my words. And the 78 day streak came to a screeching halt.
I didn't have any significant excuse. I took a long nap, I spent a lot of time sitting around... I told myself to buck up and get writing three different times. I had the time. I didn't forget. I have no defense.
But my 78-day streak is over.
So now I'm an egg again. In three days I'll be a turkey. Two days after that I'll be a penguin. It's going to be a long time before I get to albatross level again.
But in my brief moments of clarity, sometimes I see that that's not what this about.
It's about building a habit.
-----
Note: This post is 922 words. I'm on a 1 day streak.
The biggest element of this site is streaks -- the number of days in a row that you've written something, and especially the number of days that you write over 750 words. You get badges based on the number of days you can string together, with other little badges thrown in for writing fast enough or during certain times of day.
Those aren't really important. What's important is how many days you can string together. And being a competitive fiend, I took to this challenge like a small animal to hibernation.
I did a writing challenge a few years ago and managed to stick with it for its whole length (November) so I was pretty sure I could handle this challenge since it involved less writing every day. I guess I wasn't thinking about the fact that 750 Words sort of goes on for life.
Anyway. This daily writing turned out to be right up my alley. Spurred on by the Turkey badge, the Penguin badge, the Flamingo badge, I started building a habit. In fact, I'm using 750 Words to write this right now. I'm not sure if that counts as irony or coincidence or inception.
This habit turned out to be great. It was the perfect way to hash out my thoughts every day or, when I didn't have anything pressing to think about, to write some fiction -- something I hadn't seriously done since high school. Every day my word count rose and my streak climbed slowly higher.
I started clicking on other peoples' accounts to compare myself. If they were still Turkey badges, it was a pretty good feeling seeing how much higher my streak was. But the site caters to a certain kind of personality and this wasn't always a morale boost.
However, after the shock and feelings of inadequacy, these accounts were just another goal. "The Phoenix badge? Puh. One day I'm going to be a Space Bird!" If these people valued little pictures of birds associated with their accounts enough to make themselves write every day for 500 days, I was obsessed enough to get there too.
One weekend me and Cole (my brother) went to Missouri for a funeral. I knocked out my 750 words Friday morning and we drove down Friday evening. We stayed all day Saturday and left Saturday evening, and didn't have access to internet the entire time. I totally forgot about 750 words, but around 11pm as we were crossing the Missouri-Illinois border, I realized I was an hour away from losing my streak and we were hours away from home.
In desperation and with a total lack of integrity, I called Eric (a suitemate) and had him copy 750 words of text into the website at 11:45. It ended up being a mish-mash of something about engineering, but it counted.
Another time, me and Danny were getting ready to go to a hangout at 11 and this hangout was guaranteed to go well past midnight. With people waiting on us, I typed out a hurried paragraph about what a cheater I was and copied and pasted that paragraph twenty times until I had 750 words.
Another time, we were driving home from a trip to Panama City Beach (during which I had periodically secluded myself to maintain my streak) and we had been in the car all day so I hadn't had a chance to get my words in. At 11:30 I started to get antsy. At 11:50 we pulled up to the dorm and I sprinted upstairs to slam my words out in 9 minutes. I don't remember anything I wrote, but I doubt it was profound. Regardless, the streak was maintained.
As my streak mounted, the website's analytical abilities began to dissect my personality. It told me I was an introvert, anxious, often upset, and obsessed with death.
But I didn't really care. What I cared about was the slowly climbing number in the top right of the screen that gradually inched its way up to 50, 60, 70 .... 78 days in a row.
And if you've been feeling anxious this whole post, sensing the foreboding tone sprinkled in every line-- well, the train's pulling into the station.
Yesterday, May 18th, I forgot my words. And the 78 day streak came to a screeching halt.
I didn't have any significant excuse. I took a long nap, I spent a lot of time sitting around... I told myself to buck up and get writing three different times. I had the time. I didn't forget. I have no defense.
But my 78-day streak is over.
So now I'm an egg again. In three days I'll be a turkey. Two days after that I'll be a penguin. It's going to be a long time before I get to albatross level again.
But in my brief moments of clarity, sometimes I see that that's not what this about.
It's about building a habit.
-----
Note: This post is 922 words. I'm on a 1 day streak.
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