How I Accidentally Started Blogging Again (and Can’t Stop)

How typical. I hadn’t published a single blog since april — six months of radio silence — and now I’ve written and posted four in one week. This will be the fifth. Why am I like this? Long, barren tundra of creative drought… and then wham, content erupts like a geyser.

Well, I’ll tell you a secret: it’s called 750words.com, and it’s bloody brilliant.

It’s made for people who want to write — who crave the satisfaction of their words materializing across a screen — but somehow don’t. Either because they can’t type blind (hi, that’s me), or because journaling feels too daunting, too effortful, too something.

Someone I follow on Instagram was raving about this tool, saying it helped her sit her ass down and write the bare minimum needed to respect herself as a professional author and poet. That sparked my curiosity, so I gave it a try. And now here I am, echoing her praise.

Why it works: You get a fresh blank page every day. Yesterday’s ramblings are tucked away behind a few clicks, deliberately out of sight. The message is simple: don’t reread and scrutinize b*tch, just write.

The goal is to hit (at least) 750 words. Once you do, confetti explodes across your screen. I don’t care if I’m 42, I live for that toddler-level dopamine hit.

There are streaks, too. Daily wins, a turkey badge, a penguin badge, the whole gamified shabang. And it works. At least for a couple of weeks.

But then the daily rut set in: as much as I love creating written form, I despise typing.

I’ve tried to teach myself blind typing multiple times. Failed every time. I type fast enough — using only my two index fingers, like a caffeinated cockatoo — but it’s messy. I constantly look down, misspell, backtrack, correct. It kills the flow.

How about handwriting, you ask? Ha, forget it. I can’t even decipher my own.

Luckily, I’m a resourceful woman living in the age of AI. Enter Wispr Flow, a voice-to-text tool that turns speech into surprisingly accurate writing, right in your browser.

So now, instead of typing my daily 750 words, I dictate them. It’s faster, smoother, and frankly, more enjoyable. Sometimes it’s a classic “dear diary” dump, sometimes a to-do list, sometimes an existential rant. And every so often, I concoct something that feels like it could be a blog.

That’s where my third little friend comes in.

When I write something with potential, I copy-paste it into ChatGPT and say something like, “Hey, I want to turn this into a blog. Let’s talk ideas.” Since Chat and I have been in a long-term working relationship (borderline codependent at this point), it already knows my interests, profession, tone and preferences. It offers a few directions, I pick one, and then I let ChatGPT spit out a structured first draft.

Then I do what I do best: edit the hell out of it.

I work on style, trimming the fillers, removing the smooth-but-soulless language AI tends to produce and restore my own. Then I work on substance, rewriting angles, observations, adding hard-won personal insights, until it feels mine.

And voilà (or should I say vailà) : a new blog is born.

This new flow (dictating, refining, publishing) has finally given me what I think is a sustainable writing practice. Not because I suddenly became disciplined, or had a ton of great topics for blogs, but because I stopped making writing harder than it needed to be.

I don’t need to “feel inspired” or create from scratch. I just need to repurpose the chit-chat that goes on daily in my brain whether I jot it down or not. I am upcycling my authentic, unhinged journaling output, and I LOVE it.

And that, my friends, is how the sausage gets made over here these days.

I'm so curious, do you use any of the tools mentioned above, in particular Chat GPT for writing drafts? If not, why not, if yes, what are your findings?