#freewrite

here again to attempt a full 8-hour writing day. i've also been attempting a ritual where i handwrite for an hour to warm myself up and that's been getting me to great word counts, about 800 words on average per hour.

today's song: slowly - the altogether, karen han

from our sponsors at Freewrite

Here at Freewrite, we help writers reach peak productivity in order to meet word count goals and create their best work yet. That’s our reason for being.

Today, we’re going to share the three easy steps proven by science to help you reach your writing goals!

1) Set A Goal & Write It Down

The psychology of goal setting is pretty clear. It’s what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Research has proven that people who set goals experience higher motivation and are more likely to feel accomplished.

However, the type of goal you set makes a big difference to your efforts. Make sure that your goals are (a) clear and specific, (b) realistic, and (c) measurable.

Being clear about your goal will help you hone in on what you’re trying to achieve and ignore distractions. Make sure to write it down, as well. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews has revealed that people who write down goals are 33% more successful than those who simply set a goal in their head.

Next, be realistic. This means being honest with yourself about what you can and can’t achieve based on your other life obligations. Setting goals that you can’t achieve will only lead to frustration and, ultimately, a lack of motivation.

And last, make sure each goal is measurable. “Write 1,000 words each day” is much easier to measure than “Finish this book.” Because we all know it’s difficult to measure a book being “done”!

Breaking these goals down into smaller, simpler steps will help, too. If your goal is to write 20,000 words during Camp NaNo, break that down into 5,000 words a week, and then figure out how many words you’ll have to write each day to reach those smaller goals.

2) Practice Freewriting

Freewriting is thinking. It’s as simple — and as difficult — as that.

While every writer is unique, and there is no one way to be a writer, there are similarities we all share as humans — especially humans in the modern world — that create common obstacles to doing the things we love — like reading, writing, and yes, thinking. There are the obvious external obstacles: social media, email, the internet. But there are sneaky internal obstacles, too — the main culprit being the inner critic.

As humans, we are judgmental. It’s in our DNA. Our brains are constantly assessing situations, imagining outcomes, and making decisions. It’s part of survival at a very basic level. However, that means that when we do anything, including writing, we tend to automatically assess our actions — judging our own words, tweaking and editing them as we go along. That constant evaluation not only hinders progress, it can also stop us from ever getting started. And if we do manage to sit down to write, that inner critic creates an unconscious anxiety that prevents us from experimenting and writing down our most innovative and creative — and weird! — ideas.

We’ve all heard the advice to “write now, edit later.” Or perhaps you’ve heard writers reference “the sloppy/crappy/messy first draft.” Those are just fun ways of referencing the writing method in which you separate the drafting process from the editing process. Or, what we call freewriting.

Many people haven’t written this freely since childhood, but there’s a reason this method is taught in MFA programs. Getting your thoughts down first and revising later increases productivity and yields better, more creative work because it allows you to give your brain fully to each task. It means that when you’re drafting, you’re drafting, and when you’re editing, you’re editing. There’s no context-switching or multitasking.

So, what if you gave yourself permission to write badly at first? And we don’t just mean cheesy or with glaring plot holes — we mean typos, missing words, character names replaced by big Xs because you couldn’t remember them in the moment.

The next time you draft, we challenge you to give it a try. Just let yourself go and give your thoughts and feelings over to the act of creating. Because that’s when the magic happens. 

3) Track Your Stats

OK, you’ve set measurable goals, and you’ve started drafting. What’s next?

Track your efforts!

Here at Freewrite, we’ve created a tool to automatically track important writing stats, like word count, writing days, writing streak, and more! It’s called a Postbox Profile, and it gives you a unique URL that allows you to share your stats with writing friends.

Anyone with a Postbox account — that’s anyone who writes on a Freewrite OR uses our free in-browser drafting tool, Sprinter — can create a Postbox Profile and track their stats.

👉Don’t have a Freewrite yet? No problem! We have a FREE in-browser drafting experience called Sprinter that helps you shut down distractions and make progress — and gives you access to Postbox. Start writing today absolutely FREE at sprinter.getfreewrite.com.

This week’s writing exercise idea came when I was exploring Dave Birss’ site. He’d put together a spot where you could do an idea sprint. The timer has several settings on it. So get your phone or an egg timer. Set it to one of the following: 90 Seconds 3 minutes 5 minutes 7 minutes 10 minutes If you have Hank Green’s Focus Friend, then by all means use that as your timer. (You’ll be able…

The goal of resting and becoming myself again is going...moderately well. I'm taking this weekend very slow. A rush of errands in the morning, laundry, grocery and all that, then haircut... oh right, the beautiful bus ride to the barbershop. Fat snowflakes falling. Out the side window of the bus they were whooshing past, near-horizontal lines, too fast to see as flakes. But out the front window lines of snow-frosted trees flanking the street as far as the eye could see. Disappearing into a white void. And the falling snow had a totally different personality: big clumps falling slowly from the white void above, spiraling laxily at first but then faster and faster, giving the impression we were navigating at warp speed through a star field. I was mesmerized. At the barbershop ▒ was busy, the only barber there fluent in English. Packages and clients came and went; she managed it all as she cut my hair. I was wearing my baggy blue sweatpants, the new ones, from ◳ , that are bringing me so much joy at home this winter. When I finally wandered out of there, hair a bit too short and mannish, the fat snowdrops were everywhere. Silent, it's crazy how rain is so loud but snow is silent and peaceful.  They don't tell you this in California. Leaving the barbershop I trudged parallel with this kid, we were both struck by wonder and delight. The snow was light, fluffy, sticking to everything. Snowglobes are realistic. I stamped my feet and brushed off and went into ╪ . Chatted with the barista about the unexpected delight of the weather. (Later as I was walking back to the bus I passed her on the sidewalk, a bag of salt in both arms, squinting through the snowflakes.) I bought a nice bag of Ethiopian coffee by ╎ , and I browsed the peaceful, interesting, curated, expensive things in there. Stores like this always remind me of ⚺ . He was so ahead of his time, such a tastemaker, so chic. At ╪ they had a set of expensive metal plates and bowls. Incense holders. A bag made of knots of scrap fabric. And beautiful pieces—clothes. These sweaters that were threadbare but hung beautifully. Made of such interesting yarn. And I did find a coat that I liked! It was a start. It was green and patchworky, from a brand called ⛠ . Maybe I should go on ⛮ as ⛶ suggests. I would love to have nice things. A coat that I can just put on and feel chic in. I get it—shopping, clothes—I get it. ⛜ always has truly beautiful pieces...I actually could work toward that. It's very impressive that ⚺ was that way at twenty. I didn't give him enough credit, or I didn't appreciate that sensibility of his, I mean.

I should call ⚴ today, it's been a minute. Need to know how my diva is doing. The temperatures are about to be minus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I saw.