I've been writing over at a new site I discovered called
www.750words.com. It's a word journaling site that is very cool. What makes the site interesting is the statistics that are automatically gathered from my typing.
Now it's true, I can journal offline in my wordprocessor somewhere, or in a private blog instead. But what makes this site so interesting to me is that "Buster" (the guy that designed the site) sends the text I type into various text assessment engines that show me graphically what kind of writing I've done. The analytics will even determine my mood based on the words I use and the frequency of them.
The example above shows one of the graphs that came out of today's writing. Note that AS I type he captures WPM (words per minute). I can actually see where I paused to think (or sip coffee) and where my stream of consciousness was at it's peak.
Here's another graph of the mood assessment. Very cool.
To encourage me to journal every day, he gives points. They really don't make a whole lot of sense. The points are given based on how many words I type each day. I get an extra point for making the daily goal of 750, and another point for visiting every day. The points are given sort of like bowling frames. If I make 750 yesterday, that's a strike and I get more points in the next two days. Again, none of the points mean anything except to keep me motivated to write.
And here's a very revealing assessment:
But why 750 words? He explains on his website but in a nutshell 750 words gives the writer a chance to get into "the grove." After about 250 words I find that I actually lose track of time. In the last five days I've written about 4,000 words. I can't believe it's so easy.
You can also export entries so as to keep them on your machine locally or print them out and glue them into a hardback journal.
Very cool.
...dave
When my journal appears, many statues must come down. - Arthur Wellesley
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