750words is a website that encourages a daily habit: every day, write 750 words. That’s three pages a day. Doesn’t matter if you’re happy or miserable, you sit your ass down and write three pages. There is no prompt to follow, so I usually write whatever’s on my mind at the moment.
Buster Benson (the website creator) calls it a daily brain dump — something to “help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day”. Calling it a brain dump is helpful for silencing any inner voice demanding perfectionism. I don’t need to write gold, I just need to write. Sometimes I’ll even leave a typo in, which would have driven a younger me nuts.
Today marks my 100th-day-in-a-row of writing. I’m quite happy with that.
100 days also happens to be the amount of time I’ve been on a job hunt outside of the academic lab. (That I am less happy about). I’m grateful to have a healthy habit to hold because unemployment is making me go bonkers.
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Before this, my longest streak was about 80 days. That streak ended after I fell asleep watching Bojack Horseman one December evening last year. By the time I woke up at midnight it was too late. (Bojack Horseman is a cartoon that stars a self-pitying, talking horse who indulges himself every time he doesn’t feel good about himself and his decisions — which is every episode). I felt silly and dealt with my disappointment by indulging in more late-night cartoons.
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In Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed answers a letter from a reader who describes herself as “a pathetic and confused young woman of twenty-six, a writer who can’t write”. The reader asks: “How does a woman get up and become the writer she wishes she’d be?”
Strayed’s response: “Write like a motherfucker.”
This is one way of following her advice.
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But wait, there’s more!
Each time you reach a milestone on 750words, you get a goofy, animal-themed pixel badge. It pleases me more than I’m willing to admit. You may as well dangle a carrot in front of me.
