Art

750 Words

I know, I’m two years late to the game, but I’ve started using 750words.com. I’ve finally heard about “Morning pages” and 750words enough times in the last few weeks that I went ahead and started an account. Funny how that works, hunh? It really does take a critical mass to get things going, even for one person. Now Vine on the other hand… I’m going to hold off on that.

Morning Pages is a daily writing practice from the Artist’s Way. Basically you write out about three pages of stream of consciousness longhand  first thing in the morning. Think of it as an early morning brain dump, something to get you focused and ready for your day. Or not. Maybe it’s just a mass of incoherent garbling, a long list, or maybe it’s just the word Why? 750 times. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

750words takes the Morning Pages practice and puts it up online in a thankfully default private setting. What other online application’s settings are default? This is fantastic. 750 words = about three pages, give or take. It’s long enough for you to really go in depth into an issue that’s bothering you, yet it’s also short enough that you don’t want to give up.

The thing that I’m enjoying most about the site so far is that there are STATS. YES. Analytics on my writing. BEHOLD MY SUBCONSCIOUS (which is not nodding coyly while my inner goddess does somersaults):

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Anyways, you get the idea. It’s a pretty interesting way to recognize patterns, or to get a handle on things that are bothering you. Apparently I’m more affectionate and extroverted online than in real life. Just kidding!

Here’s a screengrab from the “linguistic analysis” of a rambling account of a strange dream I had a few nights ago. I’m thinking about  my own mortality, apparently. If I recall, the dream was about the abandoned Sutro Baths, and marriage. >:)

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20 Years of Journals

I’ve been reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre, which is let’s say, not quite what I expected. In the introduction, it explains that after the publishing of Sartre’s letters, everyone asked Simone- hey, why don’t you publish your letters too so we can get the whole story?  And she said that they were all lost during the war. They turned up later (obviously), but it’s unclear whether or not she was lying to keep them from being published, as they show a side that’s at odds with her public persona.

Anyways, it got me thinking about my journals, scrapbooks and correspondence. I’ve journaled all my life, and today I pooled them all together in one place for the first time in… ever. I’m going to try to slowly read my way through them. In keeping with my minimalism resolution, I’m thinking about purging, or maybe digitally archiving the more boring ones, but it’s so hard. I’ve deleted entire blogs many times, but this just feels so different. I guess I’m a book sentimentalist.Have you ever thrown away a journal or a diary?

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