photo courtesy of Pavel Tcholakov
I think you already know you should be writing morning pages; I doubt it is lack of knowledge that lets 750 words get between you and your best writing. I suspect for many of you it is more a matter of not having the right space or recognition of your efforts that may lead you to skip this daily brain dump.
750 Words Between You and Your Best Writing
Most writers know why they should write morning pages. Whether they first read that Natalie Goldberg fixed the length at three pages longhand for clearing out the cobwebs or that Julia Cameron touts the benefits of this daily exercise for all artists looking to free their creativity, writers know morning pages have been recommended for decades.
These daily bursts of stream-of-consciousness writing help you:
- Record the petty annoyances that distract your creative brain.
- Understand what matters most to you.
- Create order of confusing impressions.
Most of all, they free your brain to focus on the big picture. Creative endeavors often get buried beneath day-to-day concerns you cannot ignore. Morning pages bring those mundane concerns to the surface and give them their due. With them out of the way, you liberate your mind for bigger things.
Morning Pages As a Daily Habit
If you start writing morning pages, you will begin seeing benefits within a week. Your mind gets clearer – kind of like skimming the scum off a simmering stew.
Unfortunately, you can fall away from this daily habit just as quickly as you began realizing the benefits. One day something intervenes, and if the world doesn’t come crashing down around you, you might let it go another day and then another. If you let it go for too long, those daily mind dumps are soon just a memory.
Do 750 Words Get Between You and Your Best Writing?
If you are having trouble meeting your commitment to do your morning pages daily, you should check out 750 words.com.
Buster Benson created 750words.com based on the fact that it takes about 750 words to fill the three longhand morning pages recommended by Cameron, Goldberg, and countless other writers and creativity coaches. You go to the site, write your 750 words in a window with no distractions (no fancy fonts or colors or formatting), and then it is kept private on the site.
And that’s not all. Benson has tricked out the site to make it fun for you to meet your commitment.
Bells and Whistles
You can set up a gentle reminder to arrive each day in your email inbox.
You can visit a colorful stats page to learn insights about your word choices and outlook.
You can even win badges as incentives for tasks like consecutive days you successfully wrote 750 words. For those with a competitive bent or who need to feel accountable for completing daily pages, this site may provide the necessary recognition to remain committed.
You can export old months as text files if you wish to retain your words, though you are encouraged to think of these as throwaway words.
Actually, a Bell Would Nice When I Hit 750 Words
If I could make one improvement to the site, I would add an audio cue when you have reached your 750 words. I like to freewrite with my monitor turned off. I can write 750 words in about fifteen minutes when I can’t see the words on the screen in front of me, but I can get all hung up on minor typos when I am reading as I write.
Other than that suggestion for improvement, I love the way 750words.com encourages me to do the free write thing every day. All my writing improves when I take that fifteen minutes to pour off the foam.
What about you? Let me know in the comments what you think of 750words.com and morning pages. Do 750 Words Get Between You and Your Best Writing?
Hello Tammi,
Nice blog post! I like 750words.com! It’s awesome. What I believe is 750 words are the excellent article length. Sometimes though writers could write 750 or more but not with quality. Matthew Cuts says, wait until you have a quality article to post on your blog! That’s most important. So it’s better to have a 400-500 word good written article than a larger one with nothing important to say.
Thanks for sharing,
John
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Hi John,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I write a lot of 750 word articles, but I try to edit them shorter. I like to be brief on the web and try to make each sentence count.
Cheers!
Tammi
Tammi,
I like the idea of trying to do it daily too 
This is such a great post!! I always thought I was a night writer, that being said I have recently started getting up super early to write and my it astounds me the copy I can put out, by the end of the day I am tired and concentrate on anything. Thank you for sharing
Lynda´s last [type] ..Meijer Coupon Code
I am the same way, Lynda. I instinctively stay up to all hours, but when I can discipline myself to get up early I get so much more done well that day.
Hey Tammi, your speed is amazing. I can easily write 300-500 words long articles, but for me it’s much more difficult to write anything above 500 words. It’s like a wall, it takes me 2 times more time to write a 750 vs a 500 words article….
Tomek´s last [type] ..Female Abs
Well, it’s important to remember that I am not writing articles that fast, just morning pages and rough drafts. I agonize over everything else. If I ever go blind I will likely triple my output.
If you can touch type, try typing blind. I will link to an earlier blog post where I explained how to write articles faster. I try to push myself to keep my fingers moving. If I can shut my eyes to the mistakes I make, I stop making mistakes and get into the flow. Besides any errors are easily fixed by running a spell check at the end. If I think I made a typing mistake, I just hit the space bar and try to start a fresh word. Anytime I lose my train of thought, I just do two carriage returns to start a new paragraph.
Dear me, I guess I date myself using the phrase “carriage returns.” Raise your hand if you knew I meant “Enter.”
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Tomak.
Thanks for the valuable post !!
Very informative blog post, i like to do 750 words because it easy to submit it to web 2.0 sites and in the articles directory.
Kean´s last [type] ..Direct Sales Training
Hi, Tammi,
I was curious what this blog was all about. Now I see it is showing the way of solving the issue with commitments in writting. It’s not easy to do a 750 words article, and yet it is easier than doing one with a thousand words…But what is important is that there is good conent inside of those words and that the words are not just empty, but rather attention grabbing.
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