PROTIP: that article was 1073 words, title and all. It felt long because it's a 500-word essay puffed out with double fluff, in addition to bullets, quotes, etc. 500 words is stupid simple. You break it up into 5 paragraphs of 3 or 4 sentences each. - Topic paragraph: Topic sentence, summary of paragraph 2, summary of paragraph 3, summary of paragraph 4, summary of closing paragraph. - Paragraph 2: Topic sentence, argument 1, argument 2, argument 3. - Paragraph 3: Topic sentence, argument 4, argument 5, argument 6. - Paragraph 4: Topic sentence, counterargument 1, counterargument 2, refutation of counterarguments 1 and 2. - Paragraph 5: Rephrase topic sentence, summarize paragraphs 2-5, finish with a joke or conjecture. * * * That's 119 words, by the way. In other words, 10 vaguely thoughtful Reddit/Hubski comments is 1000 words per day.
Hmm. Sorry to bring back an old thread here, but my main issue with this article is directly related to this. See, there's a difference, I think, between writing something like fiction, something with your life so intrinsically intertwined in it and something like a web comment that exists in total anonymity. It isn't about writing ANY 1000 words a day, which is, perhaps, what this fellow suggests (especially considering this blog post might be one such experiment), it's about writing 1000 words of your medium. It is in your medium that you are self-conscious, in your medium that you try to cherish every little word (even when they must be killed off). Writing is a craft, sure, but this comment is not going to improve my fiction anytime soon, as far as I can tell at least.
I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek. We are always brain storming ways to get more people involved and talking on the site, as we know there are a lot of lurkers who for whatever reason are content just to lurk. Writing 10 comments per day may not help anyone become a better writer on their subject of interest, but it would sure as hell make Hubski a lot of fun.