The BEST tool to help you write more in 2023

Are you ready to unlock your creativity and unlock your voice? 750 Words is the perfect platform for you! Whether you're an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or just someone who wants to build a writing practice, 750 Words provides the perfect outlet for your daily writing habit. By providing a safe, online space to express your thoughts, ideas, and stories, 750 Words encourages you to explore new possibilities and challenge yourself as a writer. In this video, I'm answering your most common questions about my experience and reviewing 750 Words.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. VIDEO: The BEST tool to help you write more in 2023
3. How long does it take? 
4. What the heck am I supposed to write about?
5. How do I make this a habit?
6. What are the benefits? 
   
   1. Feeling lighter
   2. Unencumbered drafting
   3. Clear-headedness
7. Recommended resources
8. Let's take action
9. Share this post

INTRO

If one of your goals this year is to write more, I've got a really cool tool that can help you do just that. I recently sent an email to my list confessing that while I love to write, I almost never feel like writing.  

Here's what I mean. I love the actual process of writing, once I've got going, but getting myself to sit down and start writing is often quite a hurdle for me. Over time I've learned that the sooner I can rip that first writing band-aid off, the sooner I can get to the good stuff.  So, last year I set myself the goal of building a writing habit into the earliest part of my day, like right when I get up. I launched my own mini experiment to see if I could get over that first hurdle, first thing in the morning, every single morning, if that would help me connect to more joy and ease in my writing when I did sit down to write for my business. 

Now, this was new for me, but it was not a new idea. Much has been written about the benefits of a daily writing practice. But rather than attempt this in a paper journal where I'd get hand cramps and probably give up, I decided to use a handy little website called 750 Words.  If you'd like to check it out for yourself, here is the link. I'm not an affiliate for them. I just really have loved it and found it so, so helpful in adopting this new practice. 

Now when I shared about 750 Words with my email list, I was peppered with responses asking all kinds of great questions about it. I've got those questions and I’m diving into some of the most common ones. 

Read on to learn more about my favorite tool to help you write more:

Please note: You can support my blog by using the affiliate links below! If you go on to make a purchase, I'll receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you! 

VIDEO: The BEST tool to help you write more in 2023

How long does it take?

I wondered this too. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to write 750 words. In terms of the actual length of the text, 750 words are about three standard typed pages. But in terms of time, that'll depend on a number of different factors.

• How quickly do you write or type
• Whether you are interrupted as you're writing
• Are you thinking about what you're writing as you go, or just go stream of consciousness, brain dump style

Because I'm doing this first thing in the morning, often when I'm still in my jammies, I like to use it as a brain dump. I really try to not think too hard about what I'm writing. I just sort of dump words onto the page. I don't take breaks and don't open other tabs. In fact, I make sure this is the only tab that's open at the time. I also have made a concerted effort not to edit my writing as I go. This is a big one and has taken a lot of practice for me. By the way, if you struggle with the editing monster, I have a blog on that so check it out.

In general, I've worked really hard to just leave the typos where they are. Let my first word choice be my last word choice and just keep moving through the exercise. So over time, 750 Words has calculated my average speed. In general, it takes me right around 17 minutes to do my 750 words. I have no idea how that compares to other people's speed, but that just seems to be how long it takes me most of the time.

What the heck am I supposed to write about?

Well, this is part of the beauty of this practice. You can write about whatever you want. You could use that time to make, to-do lists or write out grocery lists. You can process through a weird dream you had the night before or wrestle with complex emotions about something you're anticipating or that's weighing on you. You could draft out a piece of content that you're working on in your business or script out your side of a conversation you're going to have later. You can truly just give yourself free rein to dump whatever is on your mind at the time. 

That's what I've been doing. I find that when I don't put constraints on myself and just make it okay for my brain to go, wherever it’s going to go, the writing pretty much takes care of itself. I almost always feel lighter when I wrap up. 

How do I make this a habit?

With this question, I heard a lot of versions from my email subscribers on how to make this a habit. Questions like, I'm already struggling to write at all. How am I going to then start making a habit of writing every single day? 

Now for this one, you'll really have to be kind of a detective and use what you know about your own behavior. I love James Clear's book, Atomic Habits for learning how to do this really well in lots of different areas of your life.  One of the ideas he talks about in the book is the notion of habit stacking. You take something that is already a habit for you, already consistently doing this and it's fairly automatic, and link it together with the new habit that you're trying to create. It could be really effective, especially if you're trying to do this like I have first thing in the morning. 

Now, I know that pretty much without fail every morning I'm going to be pouring myself a nice hot cup of coffee, putting on my shoes, and going for a walk on the treadmill. So early on to help me develop this habit, I started bringing my laptop down with me. I would set it up right at my little treadmill desk and kick off my walk with my 750 word brain dump. When I was done, usually about 17 minutes into the walk, I'd close my laptop bump up the speed and continue with my walk. This helped immensely.  It was so effective that I really developed a taste for it, and so even now, long after, it's become a habit, that's still my preferred way to do these brain dumps every morning.

What are the benefits?

Now, if you're thinking, ah, this sounds like a lot. What? You're not alone. When I emailed my list about this, someone wrote back and said, “I'm skeptical, convince me”. So, I've written down just a few of my favorites. 

1. Feeling lighter

First up, I found as early as day two that I was feeling lighter after doing my brain dump in the morning. Just clearing the cobwebs and putting some words down on paper. Getting into that rhythm really did do some kind of magic in my brain and cleared some space. I also found over time that it helped promote deeper reflection. Oftentimes, we need space and quiet to work out how we even feel about certain things, what we even think about what's happened to us, what we're feeling right now, and the choices we're going to make in the future.  There's just a lot to process in the course of a day, and even these 17 minutes of focused time have helped me do that, which I think is pretty incredible. It serves a practical purpose. Oftentimes, I would make little notes to myself in the course of my brain dump, and then when I was done, I'd go back and copy and paste them and transfer them over to my Asana so that I didn't lose track of them.

2. Unencumbered drafting

Now, something I didn't expect but have really appreciated is that the process of writing without editing my words and without going back to change words or fix typos or punctuation has honed my skill at unencumbered drafting.  Like just straight-up creating on the page? Even if it's not, Shakespeare. Seeing the little red squiggles under those typos, feeling the discomfort that wells up, but continuing on anyway, is a really valuable skill, and one that, frankly, I don't allow myself to practice enough. Obviously, it will depend on how you choose to use your writing time. If you struggle with this kind of endless self-censoring and editing, give the brain dump a try, and try not to correct your own mistakes. 

3. Clear-headedness 

Finally, the big one. By building this practice into my daily routine, I found that hours later when I would sit down to actually write something on purpose for my business, a blog post, or an email I felt so much more joy and ease and clear-headedness than I ever used to on a consistent basis. I can only attribute that to this new practice because it's the only part of my routine that's changed.

The reason I think this is such a big deal is that if you have set a goal for yourself to write more in 2023, anything that you can do to make the actual writing process more joyful and easier on yourself, it's worth experimenting, right, because then you're going to want to do it more. 

Now, a cool part of this is you don't need anything special to get started, but if you're looking for a platform on which to give this a try, I highly recommend 750 Words.  When you go there, you'll notice it's quite a paired-down interface, which is perfect. There's no menu of formatting options. There's no option to post it publicly or send it out anywhere. It's really just a blank screen with a date at the top and a word count at the bottom.  As you type, the site will scroll automatically for you and it will keep track of your word count saving as you go. The best part, when you hit that 750-word mark, the word count will change from black to green. It's oddly satisfying. 

There's no cost to getting started. They offer a 30-day free trial. From there, if you want to become a member of the site and use it ongoing, it's just $5 a month.  Now since I started using the site, they've released a beta version 2.0, which I haven't tried yet. No matter what version you're using, there are a few little bells and whistles at the end that can help keep you interested in coming back for more. 

As you know, they keep track of your word count and the time it took you to reach that word count. They calculate your words per minute rate as well as any estimated distraction. If you click away from the window, for example, they'll count that as a distraction from your writing session. They also generate these cute little colorful pie charts that use the content of what you've written to make educated guesses at the predominant emotion you were feeling as you were writing, or the topic or theme that you were most concerned about. They share info about your mindset while you were writing and whether you were mostly oriented to the past, present, or future, and you're most frequently used words. It's really cool. It's fun to take a spin through and compare over time. 

Even with all those fun little features, the website itself is totally secure. You don't have to worry about your information being shared or sold. The creators have made it clear that they have no intention to ever accept advertising of any kind so that your information will remain protected. I hope you’ll give it a try. 

Let's all write together more in 2023, my friend.  

Recommended resources

Want to explore more ways to help you write your content? Check out these blog posts:

• 3 sneaky places to find website copy inspiration
• Creating content amid crisis
• Don't write a word of copy until you're clear on THIS
• Words won't come? 5 simple tips for writer's block
• Change these 2-morning habits to write better content

Let's take action!

Ready to implement what you learned in this post? I like your style!

1. Choose to use 750 Words, the tool in this post, and test it out in your business.
2. Curious about the Copy Challenge I offer? Come join us here! 
3. Want more actionable tips + real-life examples to help you reach more of your dream clients? Subscribe to my email list!
    

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