Via way of the Stranger.

As a fan of Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” and Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”, which both encourage writers and would-be writers and artists to sit down at least once a day to write about three pages of longhand free-form writing, I am excited about the new 750 Words project.

The web site was conceived with the idea of giving people a private space online to write 750 words per day (which amounts to three 250-word pages) and in the spirit of the Artist’s Way. What’s interesting about the site is that the creator claims to have made software that will examine your writing and create a mood icon for the day. To make it even a little more interesting and hopefully fun, the creator scores your daily writing on a scale of one to three based on some strange bowling formula that he came up with.

The data he collects is great and is presented in a fantastic way: you can click onto a page where your post divided into a particular mood, mind-set while writing, weather (which I gather is from your IP address) and frequently used words. I’m a newbie, so haven’t had a chance to see my writing put into pie charts yet, but am eagerly anticipating what I’ll see tomorrow. 

He also collects some statistics on the site including your typing speed and how many times you get distracted and stop typing as you write. If you connect with your Facebook account through Facebook connect, he will have your public information on your servers for a brief period of time. You can see who has logged in and the data collected about them, but you can’t read anything others have written. I was pretty surprised to see someone who I went to school with logged on at the same time I was- apparently, I am quite the trend setter.

I just purchased another copy of “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg at a nearby thrift store and am planning on using some of her writing ideas as inspiration for keeping a daily journal. Since I’ve been writing more, I haven’t focused so much on the art of journalling, which I think is necessary for what Natalie Goldberg calls “composting” and also for weeding out the crap from my subconscious. The writing isn’t supposed to be purposeful, elegant, or anything other than a way to clear your mind and possibly clarify some thoughts.

In “Writing Down the Bones”, Natalie Goldberg admits to giving her notebooks to a neighbor to read; the neighbor was pleasantly surprised to find that much of what was in the journals wasn’t good and was in fact, kind of bad.  As a result of reading Natalie Goldberg’s bad writing,  the neighbor felt more inspired to become a writer herslf.

Photograph under Creative Commons  Theilr Photostream