Or you could just 750words which has been around for 15 years I guess now and does the job amazingly.
Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
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Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#72I found that a good exercise for me, was the idea of a “mini-saga,”[0] which I first heard about, in Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind . It helped me to be more concise (which I need —badly). I have no problem at all, writing a lot of words. The challenge, for me, is writing fewer words. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minisaga
Minisaga looks interesting. I have a similar goal - to write more concise stuff (on tech topics) without losing the gist.
For writing about technology one tip I got from someone: set your goal to 10 topics a week, you won't write 10 but it becomes easy evaluation tool for how productive your week was. If you have bigger topics, chunk them up.
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#73Or you could just 750words which has been around for 15 years I guess now and does the job amazingly.
Something that people should be aware of with regards to 750words:
You can use it to track and graph numeric data, too. If you have something in the following format in your entries, it will get added as post metadata:
MY_METRIC: 12345
WEIGHT: 226 pounds
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#74Does anyone else have the problem where they write a lot, but it all seems to go into the void and never produce any tangible benefit? How do I produce writing that people want to read?
In my experience, having spent some years as a professional writer with a bunch of colleagues, every writer comes with their own distinctive flaws. In terms of output, for some people getting words out is like juicing a stone. For others, the words flow freely but the juice is bad. In fact, the single most productive writer I worked with was also the absolute worst to read on a word-by-word basis. He was also one of…
> (and editing ≠ writing)
This. For many years I though I had to write like I read, that the words had to be perfect the first time -- like you are used to read. But the finished work is nothing like the first draft. Just write, don't stop even to fix typos. Never stop the flow. Then, once you have dumped your brain into words, leave it for a while and come back to do the editing later.
Like Stephen King also mentioned in his book (on Writing): write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. The first draft is for you, the second is for an audience (of selected people).
I wrote a quick blog post about it a while back: https://blog.torh.net/2022/06/14/writing-is-hard/
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#75OP, you have mentioned the entries are encrypted. Could you please explain how? :)
Sure! The writings, tags, and prompts are encrypted at the application level (using Rail 7’s ActiveRecord encryption, which is pretty cool).
I think that this is about as secure as it could be beyond letting users generate and store their own encryption keys.
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#76I found that a good exercise for me, was the idea of a “mini-saga,”[0] which I first heard about, in Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind . It helped me to be more concise (which I need —badly). I have no problem at all, writing a lot of words. The challenge, for me, is writing fewer words. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minisaga
I like this idea. I have a friend who writes news and journalistic pieces, and I recently asked if he ever writes for fun. He said that creative writing is like pulling teeth. So he could easily write 1000+ words, but writing 500 creative words would be a good exercise. I’ll send him the Minisagas idea.
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#772017 I had the new year's resolution to write one blogpost a week. Now, I'm making all of my income from technical writing. Consistency is key. With that said, less is more. Stephen King said, he writes 6 pages a day, which is probably too much for most people. But one page a day should be doable.
Do you write a blog? Could you share any links to ‘How can I get better at technical writing’?
Not really, sorry.
I just wrote and wrote and wrote and one day companies approached me to pay me for articles.
Later, I worked with editors and tried to learn from what they edited in my articles.
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#78Me: ChatGPT please write 500 words for todays essay on the importance of writing 500 words each day.
ChatGPT: Ok, here is an essay…
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#79Does anyone else have the problem where they write a lot, but it all seems to go into the void and never produce any tangible benefit? How do I produce writing that people want to read?
My New Year's resolution, to achieve positive text-writing valuation, is to join the HN 10Karma Club. It doesn't pay the rent, but one can't deny the quantitative validation of imaginary Internet points.
I’ve been quite tempted to delete my account and start again so getting to 10,000 doesn’t become a goal. It’s fake internet points but I feel the temptation nevertheless.
Re: Show HN: Write 500 Words a Day
#80Or you could just 750words which has been around for 15 years I guess now and does the job amazingly.
I've always found 750 just a little too much.
Also 750 doesn't have the same prompt feature.
Seems like a valuable addition to me.