What I learned from writing 750 words a day for 365 days | Hacker News Reader

What I learned from writing 750 words a day for 365 days

bennesvig.com

165 pointsbennesvig64 comments

My biggest motivation, now nearing three years without missing a day writing usually 500 to 2,000 words daily, which applies to exercise and a million other habits you don't want to lose, is

If you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it's all over.

(which I wrote up here -- http://joshuaspodek.com/a-model-for-consistency)

Words to live by if you want consistency and discipline in your life.

I'm also coming up on two years without missing a single day of exercising, for which the same philosophy motivates me -- http://joshuaspodek.com/burpees-the-one-year-review

EDIT: Another lesson I learned: That the route to quality generally comes from quantity -- http://joshuaspodek.com/route-quality-quantity.

Consistency isn't everything. If you're consistently doing ineffective things it can be as bad as inconsistently doing very effective things. Doing nothing but burpees twice a day a year might make you feel like you've accomplished something, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as a varied, intense workout regiment with specific goals.

As a journalist/geek, the best thing my first editor (a beautiful writer) did for me was forcing me to write two or more news stories every (week)day for the 18 months I worked at that paper. Every day he (or another editor) edited my copy and gave me feedback. The writing was exhausting and the editing was invaluable. +1 for feedback.

As an aspiring writer I am inexplicably envious of you for having someone to edit your writing every day for such a long period.

You very lucky person.

Doing burpees twice a day a year is better than not doing any exercise at all. True, it's best to have a goal, and to push yourself, but sometimes just building the habit is the first and hardest step.

Indeed. The best exercise schedule/diet/anything is the one you will actually do.

Plus, if you want to get good at doing burpees, I bet you'd get pretty good after a year.

Doing nothing but burpees twice a day a year might make you feel like you've accomplished something, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as a varied, intense workout regiment with specific goals.

This is why I end up doing neither burpees twice a day nor a varied, intense workout regiment with specified goals.

> If you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it's all over.

I'm using Lift[0] to keep up. It:

- helps you keep on with the current running streak

- makes you want to increase the counter anyway should you ever break a streak

- displays progress by days stacked per week, which makes even low weeks not break the 'week' streak. [1]

- reminds you casually yet in a motivating way to continue (reminders are configurable per activity)

- the social part is completely optional and virtually disappears if you don't use it, yet is readily there should you want to use it.

[0]: https://lift.do/

[1]: https://lift.do/users/0140aefbac4ece8b509d/2054

+1 for Lift. I gave a Quantified Self talk a few months ago about my first full year using it. http://wanderingstan.com/2013-10-16/video-what-ive-learned-i...

Good point about the social part: I drift in and out of using it, but it certainly helps when I need to get back on track.

There's an old musicians' saying: If you don't practice for one day, you notice. If you don't practice for two, other musicians notice. Three days and everybody notices.

Of course, reality likes to get in the way. Injury has a way of screwing up exercise plans. Don't just bull through warning signs in the name of consistency.

> If you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it's all over.

This is oh-so wrong. Haven't you heard of people working inconsistently? Haven't you heard of activities that just won't come to your hand?

If you are a real poet or writer, you might very well be completely dry and it will be quite impossible for you to write a single word on one page for months, even years! And then maybe the source of inspiration will get some water again, usually because of the winds, and you will throw your master opus in a month, and die happy.

So, ok, go on with your writing-as-other-lift-weight but please keep in mind that some other people might have another idea of what writing is.

Is it impossible that writing, even if not towards the current goal you are working towards, has some benefit? I mean, even for real writers and poets, not just the rest of the unwashed masses?

A real poet or writer may not use everything (s)he writes for months but they still write (bad first drafts or just work that they'll never use). Also, for a real poet or writer, that is their job. So they HAVE to write, even if they miss a day or two. For someone who writes for hobby and wants to get good at it, it helps to have a plan like this in place. Hitler would have been an artist if he had the self-discipline to create something - anything- everyday.

If writing/exercising/insert-any-habit-here works for you by doing inconsistently, good for you. It works for the OP when he does it consistently. To each his own.

"You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing. for example. or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two."

--Frank Herbert (author of Dune)

Well okay, Frank Herbert did not have the writing block. Against how many writers who have?

From the passage, it seems that Frank Herbert did have writer's block and chose to write anyway.

???

"I have never had the problem of a writing block."

He means that what other people call "writing block" is just a label that bubbles up from within to describe not feeling it. Not feeling like writing. He prefers to label it, "I'd much rather go fishing." And with that belief, he writes anyway. Even expecting it to be rubbish. And then is surprised to look back and see it's comparable to those days on which he didn't have "writing block".

Well I can fairly believe other writers which have a nearly physical block and can't write a single word without trashing it immediately to the bin.

A couple of observations:

You can only get better with experience.

But remember that improving requires both practice and feedback. Practicing something that's developing the wrong habits will just reinforce those bad habits through neural pathway strengthening. This is a key principle in many skill activities (music, sports, gymnastics, strength training). It's one of the nuances to Gladwell's "10,000 hours" premise.

Go Full Screen / Eliminate distractions

I'd have to heartily agree. Full screen might not be entirely necessary (I often have reference or other materials present while composing), but removing distracting elements from my environment is hugely useful. It's also ironic to note Ben's use of animated gifs to highlight his blog post (I ended up removing both with the Chrome element blocker plugin). In general I either modify the CSS for sites I visit frequently, or use tools such as Readability (or Pocket or Instapaper) to provide simplified, streamlined, uniform, text-dominant presentations of online material (curating and tagging the content is an added bonus).

good writing is mostly good editing

Absolutely. I've long considered it a bit like sculpting in clay. First you gob a bunch of stuff up there, then you start carving away at what shouldn't be there, occasionally moving bits around.

I mostly agree with you. The only point I'm hesitant about is the idea that feedback is absolutely necessary. I think feedback can be both good and bad; bad in the sense that things like originality, uniqueness, and novelty might be averaged out into blandness.

I think I would say "reflection" instead of "feedback", which can encompass both internal and external reflection, without which no change (or improvement) can take place. Your subsequent actions should derive from and be influenced by your previous actions and alter their course based on your reflections. Balance is important. And balance swings both ways: don't get caught up inside your own head and completely disconnect from reality, but also don't let others dictate who you are and what your experience really is.

Art is tricky that way: it is essentially social, involving others, from the outside, but is also inherently selfish, expressing your (the artist's) feelings and sharing them. I think it's important to be mindful of this dichotomy, but not get too wrapped up in it.

Feedback may not be absolutely necessary in all disciplines (endeavors? arts? crafts?), but for some things it can be vital. I recently found out that discs in my lower back are closer together than they should be, and my spine is slightly out of alignment in two planes, probably because of bad posture (the day job) and incorrect form during high intensity workouts (which I need to even break a sweat). I'm thinking that getting a physical trainer or other specialist to critique my form would probably be a good idea, especially if I want to continue my workouts.

I think it is.

There are cases in which it may be ... very specific. You're looking for feedback from a select group / highly refined community. Though this also presents issues -- see discussions of "the problem with mathematics" where there might be a half-dozen people who are capable of even following, let alone assessing, an argument or theorem.

Where you're working in a system without any selection, you're not dealing with an evolutionary system (or you've misidentified the selection process).

I was simply trying to say that feedback is sufficient, but not necessary for the creation of art.

In some fields, and at some levels of mastery, yes, feedback may not be necessary. If someone is truly at the top of their craft, pushing the bounds, with no superiors or peers, feedback could be destructive. I posit that most people aren't at this level, and those who think they are probably aren't. Even so, contemplation would probably be a good idea, but that's probably already happening in those cases anyway.

The only point I'm hesitant about is the idea that feedback is absolutely necessary.

Improvement is a process of variation, selection, and inheritance. That's the fundamental process of natural selection, but it's applicable across a huge multitude of domains.

For process improvement, the "inheritence" would be your memory / neural pathway strengthening of the activity. A challenge with behavioral modifications are ways in which the feedback / reward mechanisms can be hacked to reinforce "bad" (or at least unwanted) behavior. I've commented some at G+ about what I call the dopamine meme -- effectively a large number of addictive behaviors which provide transient rewards but are ultimately long-term deleterious.

A concern with the "write something every day" model is people who write and publish absolutely all their crap. It leads to stuff such as blogspam -- I had a discussion not too long ago with an editor of an energy blog who quote their mission: "Our aim is to get people excited and discussing engineering topics." My response:

I'd prefer if you reconsidered your aim: to inform people of advances in engineering topics. Which means both an accurate portrayal of the state of the art and new developments, and a focus on relevant stories.

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/dbMEcysw...

Point being: if you get in the habit of writing crap, you'll get really good at writing crap. And there are numerous organizations which deliberately exploit this ("virality", "gamification" and the like -- I've seen it from the inside).

Improvement is a process of variation, selection, and inheritance.

I don't think anyone in the evolution racket ever claimed that natural selection meant things were improving. They might be balancing themselves out and adapting to an ever-changing environment, but that doesn't mean it's "better" than what it was (whatever "better" means); just differently oriented to favour survival. And like you said, "if you get in the habit of writing crap, you'll get really good at writing crap".

My point was to be wary of (I should have been more specific) outside feedback; to be careful not to dilute your personal artistic expression in favour of popular opinion.

that doesn't mean it's "better" than what it was

Robert Pirsig wrote a whole book on the nature of Quality...

In the evolutionary sense, "better" means "more fit for survival". Which is to say it's an empirical test. The adaptations which are the "best" are those which survive to create offspring.

In human affairs the question becomes more complex, and can be subjective. In part it depends on the environment and success criteria you've established. Are you trying to inform? To entertain? To be commercially successful? To pitch your startup? To expand your own understanding?

Not quite writing, but related: Jacob Nielsen's approach to Web UI testing is one that I've long been impressed by. Rather than dissect a design into its components and assess those individually, he has a very simple, and effective, test: assess the suitability to task of the interface. Define what it is you want the user to do and let them attempt to do it, using different designs. See which is the most successful. After you've identified which is better, you can look at the differences between the designs (or texts) and figure out why one succeeds where the other doesn't. It's simple, highly empirical, and, by focusing on goals rather than means wraps up a huge bundle of variables that would otherwise cloud assessment.

good writing is mostly good editing

Absolutely. What the internet needs is some collaborative site where people can trade editing for article submissions. That way everybody can get better at their editing skills, which is where the real impact can be made.

Sounds like the perfect "weekend project" :-)

>good writing is mostly good editing

My wife (who is an author and copywriter) often says "It's easier to fix crap than air."

Have you seen https://draftin.com/ ? I'm not affiliated but I've used it a few times as an editor and it works pretty well.

have you been to critiquecirle.com?? amazing place with amazing people. They REALLY helped me improve my writing (and critiquing).

I'm in the early stage of something similar: I'm going for 1000 sessions of 1000 words each. I'm currently in the 0110s.

The main thing I'm learning is: If I keep going without looking back, if I churn out lots and lots of material with minimal pre-selecting, I WILL surprise myself.

I think pg wrote something along the lines of- the best ideas that haven't already been acted upon are the good ideas that NECESSARILY look like bad ideas.

Similarly, a lot of the good writing I get is what "feels" like meaningless drivel (at the beginning), but on hindsight turns out to be revealing, compelling, interesting. (This is all subjective, of course, but the response from others can be telling.)

So that's what I'm going for, by chasing real scale. I've written about 110,000 words of stream-of-consciousness drivel so far. I'm betting that I unearth some interesting gems when I'm at around 500,000.

As long as there is SOME degree of reflection, you will learn and grow as you go. I do this by writing summaries of my earlier drafts that interest me. Another cool thing that happens when you write in large quantities is that you get more detached from your writing, and you don't feel like you're "killing your babies"- you can approach it with the cold, calculative and impersonal editor's pen because the sheer volume desensitizes you, in a good way.

A pottery metaphor. If you spend all your time trying to perfect the first pot you make, it'll probably still look like crap. If you try to make 1,000 pots as quickly as you can, some of those pots will surprise you with how they turn out, and you'll learn a lot more about the nuances of pottery in the process.

Same with writing. For me, at least.

What type of organization do use for everything? Is it just a daily log or do you have some sort of structure. And are you writing article and blog type pieces or is it creative writing?

I am always curious how people structure their disciplined writing.

I used to write blogposts with a clear headline, stuff like "how to X" or "why X is wrong", etc. My main blogging was social commentary, about local political affairs and news. But I got tired of that and now do a "start writing in pure stream of consciousness" thing. So you could say it's creative writing. But I think I have a lot of source material in there which can be further edited and refined into essays or blogposts. My goal is just to hit 1000 words per session. I typically do this on my commutes to and from work- I write on my smartphone into evernote, then publish on wordpress. I number the posts when publishing. The goal is to hit 1000 such posts.

I lived abroad for 365 days. Each day I wrote a "recap", and posted it to Facebook. Many recaps were over 1,000 words long. I received tons of feedback, often in real life. It was a brilliant experience. I agree with many of the points in the OP. I would like to add that there was no such thing as oversharing. Honest, gut-wrenchingly intimate details (with some anonymizing and filtering), framed in a well-composed piece of writing, somehow stand on their own. They become more personal to the reader than to me, the writer. They contrast to the whitewashed self-portraits of most people on social networks. One point I disagree on is the importance of editing. I think the key to good writing is a solid first draft. If you are editing content, rather than grammar, ordering, syntax or structure... then throw it out and start over. Before writing, give your thoughts some time to bake. Then write them down, and edit minimally. If you want to edit more, put it away and edit the next day. I never did that, starting and finishing most pieces on the same day. But, I have had regrets on every piece of writing I have ever produced. Lastly, I explored every last idea that I had. You should have an idea queue. Get to all of them.

I learned something different from writing 750 words for a year.

I grew to despise the need to do this exercise daily as I slowly realized that I would not get any meaningful improvement in my writing. I would not be Hemingway. My brain was too set in its ways.

One night as I was working on my masters I forgot to log in 750words before midnight. At first I felt sadness, but in the following days and ever since all I've felt has been relief.

I guess some people are just better readers than writers.

Am I allowed to be a bit disappointed? Writing so many words in one year and when reporting about it the carefully chosen title is "10 Things I Learned From Writing 750 Words a Day For 365 Days"?

If I had a spare domain name and 5 mn I would create a randomly generated Title Cap string on this template at xthingsilearnedfromdoingyforzday.com and the page content would be <p>Nothing</p> in random size and random background and text color.

hah, that's awesome. I'd suggest even coming up with a trite, cliche, cheesy list of vacant "lessons" rather than "nothing". "The journey is more important than the destination", etc

Hm, but these clichés could accidentally carry some tiny usefulness for a few people, which would defeat the purpose of xthingsilearnedfromdoingyforzday.com.

Maybe using random translations of the word "nothing" could be nice: Nada, Rien, Nichts, 没有, 无, ...

Definitely not as impressive as some of the other commenters here, but I'm 6 days into a 'Write 1,000 words for 100 days' challenge and find this inspiring. I've noticed after day 3 that the writing is coming easier, and I look forward to the feeling of getting it done.

I moved from Wordpress to Medium after a day, as Medium took focus off of themes, widgets, and everything else besides the writing and allowed me to just write. It's pretty exciting seeing the read stats and realizing that something you're writing (as off the cuff as it may be) is being read by hundreds of other people. Thanks for writing this, and I hope to get as far as you do in improving my writing and making it a habit.

I used 750Words for a long time. After NSA scandal, I have had a hard time divulging my guts out to an online data center. I am thinking about setting up a client side encrypted Emacs/Org-mode journal system. Although I have to say that little strip on top of 750Words that tells you how many days has one written consistently and the analysis were very helpful in keeping up with the daily writing. Ultimately, I grew tired of writing 750 words daily about myself.

Applies also to startups:

"If you want to save yourself time and sanity, get the horrible first draft out of the way so you can start making your writing great."

Funny how people recommend writing X number of words per day, but no one ever recommends saying to program Y amount of lines each day, as it supposedly builds bad habits.

Why wouldn't writing X number of words per day build bad habits as well? Honest question.

> Why wouldn't writing X number of words per day build bad habits as well? Honest question.

It would do if they were the same words. The trick is to write X number of words each day, on different subjects, and reflect on what went right and what went wrong. It's variety combined with reflection that makes it work.

> It’s much easier to edit something to become great than to slowly write a perfect first draft, which I don’t think is even possible.

It is even possible. Isn't slowly writing a first draft exactly what you are doing by revising?

Do you have examples of how it's possible?

For me, I believe it's not possible, because I can't sufficiently model a reader's reactions while writing. If I want something to be good, I have to let it sit and come back to it as a reader. Only then can I see the imperfections. Or rather, some of the imperfections. It takes me 3 or 4 passes before a piece really settles down, and showing it to others often yields new avenues for improvement.

Apparently Isaac Asimov did it all the time. He didn't rewrite, or did so very infrequently.

Are you sure? In his obituary, it says two drafts. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-obit.h...

John Scalzi (well published sci-fi author) does one draft, with editing along the way.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/07/27/novel-writing-and-rela...

Which isn't to say that's superior, just that it works for some writers.

Interesting! Thanks. It sounds like a different take on the same rewriting-is-necessary principle, rather than slowly writing a perfect first draft.

I actually agree with you, and I'm just complaining about how edit and draft seem imprecise.

I was thinking of how Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird. Also, Philip Roth said something about taking the right first steps instead of the wrong ones and that's how he could tell he had material for a book.

It's possible if you redefine or throw out the words draft and edit. Sure they mean something to you now, but for me you might as well say the secret to writing is writing. The advice to draft then edit till it's good, leaves out how hard you try on the first draft. It makes it sound like editing and drafting are different things when they aren't so different. Do you punctuate on the first draft? In American Pastoral the whole story happens parenthetically between dashes, how would you think to do that on a second pass? I'm worried the first draft has a way of keeping the subsequent drafts down--like writing about socks; on the third draft you still have socks.

Seems to me you are taking time to think, but you could just as easily (to my way of thinking obviously) call it all one draft spread out over a few days.

Yeah, I definitely agree the notion of "draft" is an artifact of write-only or write-mostly media. For me it's much more about the number of passes over the work, so I use "draft" more to mean "a pass, separated by time, over a significant segment of the work".

The concern about early drafts anchoring later drafts is interesting. I'll have to think more about that as I write. Thanks for mentioning it.

I had a similar thought, but was thinking about coding. I try very hard to write 'perfect' code the first time. I think it's a skill that's developed, and also a spectrum. You start out writing awful code and need to go back and revise it many times, but hopefully over time you internalize what better code is so that you don't have to revise as much.

Thanks for sharing this, I find building new habits and skills is an exercise of building discipline, the realizations you've shared can apply to many things.

I'm 30 days away from finishing my second attempt at a 365 day photo project[1] (where you take a photo every day for an entire year). Interestingly, everything[2] Ben writes about writing 750 words a day holds true for my project. I suppose I'll have to do a writeup on January 1st after I finish this one and kick off the next one.

1. Process over product

Totally agree. Being absolutely comfortable with the technical fundamentals is far easier if you're not concerned with the quality of your output on a day-to-day basis and—instead—concern yourself with the quality of your output over time. The quality of my output, in general, has increased over time as I've spent more time immersed in the craft.

2. Know why you're [shooting]

I'm shooting because I want to become a better photographer, get better at capturing my artistic vision, and, eventually, get published or shown.

3. Planning always helps

It sure does. There are days (or even weeks) where I realize that it's 11PM and I haven't shot anything for the day. Having a shot list to draw from, along with the occasional planned shoot, helps a lot.

4. There are no good first drafts

To produce my one published photo every day, I'll shoot somewhere between 2 and 800 photos, with the average being about 35. Yesterday, for instance, I had a photo shoot where I shot 813 photos. I'll probably winnow that down to about 30 'selects.'

6. Jerry Seinfeld is Smart

"objects in motion tend to stay in motion"

7. Mix up your [photography]

Yesterday was a self-portrait triptych. The day before that was a dog on a table (always bring your camera!). Shooting different things helps me get better at different types of photography (studio, street, still life, macro, etc etc), but they'll inevitably inform each other in ways I couldn't even imagine until after.

8. Get it done early

Having my daily photo out of the way earlier in the day inevitably makes me feel lighter and more relaxed. It is a strain, even though it's just for fun.

9. The ultimate practice for…

I love shooting studio self portraits. They give me a chance to practice different lighting setups, and (in a lot of cases) fail miserably at it. But, by failing miserably on my own and alone, I have the chance to perfect or totally write off that setup before I try using it on a subject.

10. Prime Yourself

Flickr, 500px, even Instagram. Plus photo blogs, photo books, art galleries, and so on. I spend a significant amount of time looking at others' photography.

[1] In case you're curious: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbrethorst/sets/72157632426...

[2] #5 is the only 'lesson' that doesn't hold for my project for obvious reasons.

Your photos are amazing.

thank you :)

great list and wonderful photos!

What kind of stuff do people who do this write?

I am at a very early stage in this process, and my initial goal is quite modest - my real aim is to cultivate the habit of writing 500 words every day, breaking through the laziness barrier. So any crap will do. And does. Sometimes it's complete stream of consciousness babble, sometimes it's a bit better than that. I don't care. The point - for me - at this stage - is just to build the habit. No more.

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