A bit slow to respond
It’s been a crazy week for me (family is sick, our apartment is still mostly unpacked) and I still have about 100 people to fix streaks for and write back to. I’m headed to Austin for SXSW Interactive right now and am giving a panel tomorrow on Cooperative Games (look me up if you’re going). If I haven’t written back to you yet with fixed streak news, I think it’s going to be a couple more days before I do… but rest assured that I will get to them all if you have written to me with your name on the site.
In the meantime, keep up the good writing!
Move complete, waiting for DNS to propagate
The migration to the new server is complete now, and we’re just waiting for news of the new server’s location to spread out across the Internet. Some of you should be able to get the new site already (if you can go to the site and write, then you’re on the new server), and the rest of you should be getting there soon. Just refresh 750words.com every hour or so to see if your corner of the Internet has been updated yet.
Thank you for everyone’s patience!
Scheduled Maintenance March 4th (exact time TBD)
Update 9:23pm Thu Mar 3: Due to some server configuration issues that will take 24 hours to resolve, we’re going to postpone this move until tomorrow EVENING or Saturday morning. We’ll know more by tomorrow morning. Still try to get your words in as early as possible.
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We’re moving servers again! You may have noticed that our servers are having trouble handling the traffic again, so we’re moving! PLEASE try to get your words in before or after this time period. I will of course be happy to repair any streaks that are broken due to the downtime, but the fewer the better.
Plan for the outage, and I’ll see you on the other side with a much faster and more stable server!
The Office of Letters and Light: November's over, but why stop writing?
NaNoWriMo has been over for a week, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up writing daily. I find writing to be excellent stress-relief, and I would kinda like to sell a novel or two someday.
Now, I’m not talking NaNo-levels of production (though if you can keep up that pace, by…
Yes, you NaNoWriMoers, keep using 750 Words all year and you might be able to write TWO novels next November. :)
The new NaNo badge
As of today, it looks like 28 people have written 50,000 words or more during November. If you’re one of these amazing people, you will start seeing the badge on your stats page starting today. Congratulations!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Just got the new NaNoWriMo badge designed and will start awarding them soon.
In the meantime, enjoy your turkey! Here’s a nice review of 750 that I did an interview for last week:
750words <3 #reverb10
My pal, Gwen Bell, and a couple other amazing people are putting on a little challenge for next month called Reverb 10. The gist is that you sign up and they will give you a writing prompt every day during December that has something to do with reflecting on your year and thinking about next year. In their words:
Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. The end of the year is an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead. With Reverb 10, we’ll do both.
This December we invite you to share your story and join us in reflection.
How to participate
Prompt Starting December 1, check in here for daily creative prompts (some of which will be from published authors). You can also subscribe for complimentary inbox delivery, and watch for updates on Twitter.
Create Respond to the prompt. In a post on your blog, through a tweet, with photography, or however else you desire.
Share Participate and share your reverberations using the #reverb10 hashtag (on Twitter, Delicious or Flickr). Learn from the reverberations of fellow participants.
I helped build the sign up form (and even hosted it on 750words.com), because I think it’s a great project. To learn more and to sign up to participate, click here: Another great site about writing prompts that I’ll be mentioning more of soon is Type Trigger, made by fellow Seattle-ite Lily Pierson, that’s all about giving you a writing trigger every 6 hours to help inspire you to write something new. Check it out!
Top 10 tips for better writing
I personally think it’s a bit overkill, but that’s just me. My top 1 tip for better writing. Write. Every day.
Out of the office 11/2-11/8
We’re traveling to the East Coast today with our 5-month old to spend a week in Delaware, New York, and neighboring towns and villages. I will have my laptop with me and attempt to work, but wifi is sort of limited in the places I’m staying so if it takes me a little longer to get back to you, I apologize!
750 Words + NaNoWriMo!
So, I’d like to do something special for people who are using 750words.com during NaNoWriMo for their novels during November. I’m a 2-time NaNoWriMo survivor myself (one of my books is still for sale on Amazon: Man Versus Himself). The question is… what should I do?
Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? What would you like to see on 750words.com to help you write it out? So far, I think I can add a special message when you pass your daily 1,667 word limit (dang that’s a lot), and also come up with a special NaNoWriMo badge for those of you who manage to write 50,000 words during the month.
Also, what can we do to let more NaNoWriMo people know that this is a good site to use for that challenge? Are people willing to post about this site on these forums?
Add your ideas and thoughts in the comments here.
