For those unfamiliar, which included myself up until two days ago, 750 Words is a site which is sort of an online, private journal. It really goes out of its way to encourage you to write everyday (you can guess how much you need to ride to be able to mark a day as “done”). It sends you e-mail reminders (well, you can set it to that), and it tracks your progress, giving you little trophies and a running score. The longer you maintain a streak, the higher your score goes in increments (kind of like bowling, where if you get a strike, it adds your previous scores). The interface is also really clean, there’s no fancy buttons or anything to distract you. Just white space and a blinking cursor. With a word count at the bottom.

Secondly, it’s private. Which means you won’t ever be able to see what I wrote (unless I share it) – there’s plenty of other places online you can go to see my writing (mainly, Writer’s Ink and Half a Picture, if you’re interested). This is for me, it’s a thought buffer, an emotional dump, anything I want to be without the fear of prying eyes.

Thirdly, and probably the best incentive to join is the funky stats they give you over time. The site uses all sorts of sophisticated text analysis tools to give you information about what you write. Besides typing speed, word count and time spent writing, which is standard, it tells you things like what themes you discuss most or what sense you make use of. Do you talk more about the past or the future? About yourself or other people. I’m sure that as the site develops (it’s still pretty new) these things will get even more sophisticated. If the explanation wasn’t clear, here’s an example of a statistic page for my writing yesterday (without the actual writing).

If you’re interested, check the website out. Sign up. It may take a few days, as the website is still fledgling.  Here is the link again, for those who don’t feel like scrolling.

The point is, “Half a Picture” is now back, with a facelift. The new fiction-blog will include flash fiction, as before, not exceeding 500 words. The twist is that this time, I am not alone. To start things off, the site will include fiction by myself (posted around the weekend) and the always wonderful Ahuva Goldstand (her stories will be posted around mid-week). We might be joined by others, we might not.

Anyways, my first story, entitled “Tap”, is now up. You are welcomed to check it out, leave a comment, tell your friends.

Enjoy.

Writing a 50k novel in 30 days is difficult enough in its own right, but add to that a full month of school, homework and such as well as juggling 3 jobs… let’s just say sleep will be a rare commodity in the coming days. The plus side being, sleep deprivation makes for excellent, imaginative writing. Whether it will actually be relevant to the work at hand is a different matter, one I will only be able to suss out once November has come and gone.

As to novel I plan to write in the coming month – it’s an as yet unnamed steampunk crime novel. One complete with clockwork body parts, a con-man with a split personality (trying to, incidentally, con himself) and one flying city. Throw in a nice helping of zeppelins and zeppelin-riding pirates, and we’ll see what happens out of this ecelctic collection of characters.

The only bit of prep I’ve done is write up a short (page and a bit) outline, so that I don’t lose sight of the plot itself. I may have dug myself into a hole here, as its a very convoluted, twisty-turny plot. So that’s why I need a map. Aside from those two sheets of paper, I’ve got nothing – I plan on just sitting in front of the laptop every night and letting it rip.

If you want to cheer me on/find out how’s it going – I’ll update regularly on Twitter (linked to the right), semi-regularly on Facebook (ditto), and I will most definitely have a weekly NaNo update right here.

So, in the immortal words of the Joker, “Here… we… go.”

http://thewritersink.wordpress.com

Check it out and spread the word!

If you’re having trouble wading through the sea of awesome, my story, “Winter by the Wayside”, is HERE.

As an aside, Blogification will continue soon. I’m working on a new angle… again.