The benefits of 750 words

I’ve now been using 750words for two months, and I’ve made some interesting observations which I would like to share.

1. Coherence

I’ve noticed that my entries have become much less random. I now can pick a topic (sometimes two topics) and write my entire 750+ words about one topic. It helps me to expand on one idea and see how I can flesh it out as much as possible – a great tool to improve my writing.

2. From journaling to writing practice

I keep my metadata, and expand on them, but the majority of my entries I now consider as an excellent opportunity to practice writing. The benefit of being able to toy around with ideas while writing, and seeing where it takes me, helps me to train my “writing muscle”. However, I’ve noticed it doesn’t seem the right place for me to keep a journal; instead, it seems like a training camp for my writing.

3. Ideas  

Recently, I glanced over my entries at 750 words, and I realized that many of those entries could be polished or used as a basic idea to expand on here on my blog. It also indicates that I enjoy writing about a wide scope of subjects – and that I can’t just limit myself to writing only about my research, or only about my experiences as a graduate student.

4. One disadvantage – exporting entries

I’ve exported the March entries – but since the export command gives you a .txt-file, you end up with a giant string of unformatted text. I wanted to save the “best entries” somewhere special, but I’ve noticed that is not really possible. While I enjoy taking my journal out, and flip along the pages and see what I wrote earlier, I don’t really like how I can access my entries at 750 words. Therefore, I’m considering to pick up journaling again as well, as it seems to complement my writing at 750 words.