I recently published what turned out to be a pretty popular guest post by Helia Phoenix over at Write for Your Life. It was about Morning Papers, a writing technique or process developed by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way.
If you’re not familiar with Morning Papers, although it seems there are lots of you who are, the idea is to sit down and write approximately three pages of writing each day to get your juices flowing and empty your brain of its nonsense.
I’ve always thought my approach to writing to be the antithesis of Morning Papers. I edit as I go, I fret about every sentence and I find it tough to move on when I know something still needs work.
Deep down, I know that this dilly-dallying is all the more reason for me to give the Morning Papers a shot. But actually, I have another problem with it. I’ve never quite been sure about where all this writing goes.
On paper. Sure. But then in the bin because I hate having excess paper lying around. In cyberfolders? I suppose, but I’m kind of averse to creating hard drive clutter too.
Well, and finally to the point, it seems there’s a new alternative for folk like me, in the form of a new(ish) site called 750 Words. The idea is much like Morning Papers, but your work gets stored as part of your online profile and can be kept as private as you like.
People often refer to Tumblr as an online journal, but journals are often private affairs. 750 words seems to have that as part of its core features.
Plus, the following paragraph, taken from the site’s homepage, has made me want to, finally, give this much heralded writing technique a go.
From the homepage:
You can’t just fart out 3 pages without running into your subconscious a little bit… 750 words takes a bit of effort, and it never fails to get me typing things that I have wanted to articulate without realizing it. And that’s the point.
When you put it like that, it all kind of makes sense.
Head over to 750 words and see what you think. It looks like a great idea and project, plus the site’s copy is marvellous. Always an extra brownie point awarded for that kind of thing.
(Originally spotted by Patrick Rhone)
