I just learned that I can type 277 words in 5 minutes. That puts me at about 55 words per minute, which is not bad. Not bad at all.

Yesterday, I purchased (for $10, no biggie) this nifty little app for my desktop called Write or Die. Very awesome so far, I must say! You can time yourself, set word goals, set time goals, have actual consequences for not reaching said goals (you know, if you really want to put the pressure on…), and publish your posts right from the app once you finish.

It’s customizable as far as your background color goes when you write, but I recommend white if you plan to read it. I picked a light purple, pastel, and it was a tad distracting.

I noticed the funny settings when I first started exploring it. You can customize your grace period, which lets you choose how long it will take before the app starts making annoying noises at you when you’re typing speed is lagging. If you set it to kamikaze, it eats your words – eek!

Essentially, if you want to do writing exercises or freewriting to discipline yourself into writing every day, then this is an amazing app to have.

I didn’t even know they had things like this. Then again, I never knew a lot of things I never knew. Right?

When I’m doing homework, I generally don’t want to put quite that much pressure on myself. However, now that I’m enrolled in online school for creative writing, some of that pressure might be a good thing, right?

For some people – like me – the key to accomplishment is to overload myself. I have to take on enough to push myself into getting a lot done in a day, otherwise I wind up sitting there not doing anything or messing around on Facebook, which is so not productive.

If you’re the same way and need a little push, then this app might just be the right thing for you. Push yourself to write a lot! The writing has to be crappy before you get to the good stuff. I used to sit at Denny’s for hours scribbling whatever’s into my journal. A lot of it was complete shit. But then, after the first 30-60 minutes, I started having great ideas, nuggets of genius would come pouring out and I was lost in my little world of writing.

Back then it was poetry.

Now, it’s novels.

Speaking of which – did you know that November every year is National Novel Writing Month?

I heard about this for the first time this year, 2011. So this will be the first year I take part and actually try my hand at coming out with a 50,000 word piece of work within a month. I am 9 days behind.

That’s okay, though. I’ll play catch-up, then I’ll probably get ahead – or not – but the main reason I’m doing this is to try to develop more ideas or more in-depth concepts.

Writing is one of the most fun, free, and awesome forms of expression in my opinion. Then again, that could be because I love to write. I’m sure if I were a painter, I would think that’s the most rewarding.

No matter what your skill level, you can benefit from writing exercises. You can therefore benefit from utilizing this awesome little app to make that happen! You can save or discard, publish or not, and feel better in the knowledge that you do write every day, no matter how much crap you come out with at first.