750 Words and the Great Brain Dump.

[mellymell]

I've been reading a lot of writer's blogs lately, thanks to YA Highway's Field Trip Fridays. Yesterday, they had an article listed that, at first, I was only mildly intrigued by. But it was in list form and so I guess for me it was a little extra eye-catching. Write It Sideways put out a list of 6 tips for busy people to clear their heads of noise so they can sit down and write in those precious moments they can find in a day to actually sit down. The very first tip threw out a suggestion to dump all those random thoughts that tend to dominate our minds in the mornings and that a great place to do it was 750words.com.

At first I thought, "do I really need yet another site to update and/or fail at updating" and thought I might use LJ for my daily brain dump. But, the explanation on the homepage of the site is very convincing that I might rather throw all that stuff there instead of on a blog or social networking site where I might want to remember to lock those posts and that I wouldn't need the same features and stuff that LJ has. I thought I'd give it a try and 15 minutes later, I had reached my 750 words of stream of consciousness bull shit that no one, including me, ever wants to read. I felt a little refreshed and a little less foggy headed like I could get up and carry on with my day without that noise bumping around inside my head distracting me.

They've got a nifty little score card as a mild incentive to continue everyday and they even have monthly challenges you can sign up for with rewards (name on the Wall of Awesomeness) and consequences (name on the Wall of Shame) if you succeed or fail to spit out your 750 words everyday for a month.

But perhaps the coolest feature of the site is the analyzing they do of your entries once you're done. They analyze the time it took you to reach 750, how many times you got distracted (breaks of 3 minutes or more), how many words per minute, how many minutes you were actually typing, etc. Then, they've got stuff that shows the rating of your entry (G, PG, etc.), the weather while you were writing, a whole series of pie charts that analyze the mood of your writing based on words you use and how they're used and a frequently used words list. Even though the site, from a user standpoint, is very stripped down and simple, the tool itself is pretty impressive.

So, I'm using it to try to get all the pointless drivel out of my head that no one wants to read and perhaps get back to posting decent entries here. I've deleted so many half finished, rambling entries in the past couple of months it's not even funny. I'm having a lot of trouble focusing and getting motivated lately, so I'm hoping this will help. Also, I've been working on my fiction again lately and I need every little bit of help I can get to make the most of the moments I can steal away each day to get something decent on the page.

Comments

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

That sounds intriguing - are your entries private, or do you just pick a name no one will associate with you so people can't find you? Because I would think if you're doing a brain dump, that maybe that would be best!

I know how you feel about one more social networking site though! I sometimes feel like I have social network schizophrenia because of all my copious identities and it's hard to keep track of what is on what. That said, the ones that are single purpose are often most effective for me. I like last.fm because I don't really have to DO anything, other than let it scrobble and keep track of my music. I like that goodreads just keeps track of what I read, and I don't feel obligated to post or journal or talk about my life otherwise. Facebook always makes me feel bad because I'm never sure how much I actually want to share there. :-)

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

It's automatically private and they encourage you to use your real name, though you can log in with various accounts from elsewhere (Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.). But there's nothing stopping you from signing up with an alias. You can follow people, but you're really just following their statistics (word count, how many points they have, etc.), not their entries. There's a setting to further lock your stuff with a password, but I'm not exactly sure what it's for and haven't messed with much in that vein over there yet.

Seriously! I also try to keep sort of different things going to different places and it's hard to keep up with sometimes. I let it all fall apart before the holidays when I got so busy and it's been really hard to pick back up! I'm finally, after perhaps years of having the account there, actually updating Goodreads (I've got an app on my phone now which makes it easier). But I'm with you, I can't seem to consolidate things at all and I do best when each site is limited to just one facet. Facebook is officially worthless to me. I still ship my tweets there, but I almost never go there and absolutely never bother looking through my news feed. Even after blocking all the stupid applications, there's just too much noise.

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

There is absolutely a lot of noise on Facebook. It's the biggest annoyance. Hiding helps, but it's not perfect.

Tumblr is another thing I tried, but never kept up with - it's just one more blogging tool.

Facebook, I'll read my news feed, but I don't post a whole lot.

I do wish so many people hadn't fled for FB from LJ. Oh well.

[mellymell.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, I'm all set with Facebook. I've gone through periods of trying to keep up with it, but I just have zero motivation to. I really wish I could get email updates from select people though. I know I can set up lists of some sort over there, but I just don't feel like spending the time to do it.

I've visited people's Tumblr accounts when they've been linked, but I just don't see it as something I would use.

I lament the exodus from LJ a little. But then in the back of my head, I'm callously thinking, "well, at least my friends list is a little easier to keep up with now".

I'm glad a lot of people use Twitter even if they don't post here much anymore! It's ridiculous how used to the short format I am now, too. Most of the stuff I used to post long entries on here can be covered in 140 characters and that just baffles me a little.

[padawansguide.livejournal.com]

Ha! This exactly.

I do try to read my news feed, but I haven't felt like spending the time to set up the lists, so I just don't post very much.

And I hide a lot of people. It's a bad place for the spoiler phobic too, which I am about some things, so I hide people who tend to post stuff like that.

I do use googlereader a lot - because it's really easy to read all the non-LJ blogs and tumblrs I want to follow. I used to have to go to individual ones and that's really saved me. I figure I can post to LJ or twitter if I want to share something, so I don't post to tumblr, but I can easily follow the ones I want to via googlereader. I've actually done that for some LJ comms too - if it gums up my f-list too much (and it's not locked), I add it to google reader and I can skim. I do that with twitter feeds too - people I want to skim, but are too much to keep up with all day.

And yeah, I agree on LJ. I lament it, but it's WAY easier to keep up with LJ now! :-)

Twitter is great for short stuff. My pet peeve though is when people take many tweets to say something. Either take the time to edit it down to 140 or make it a blog post! ;-)