nowfound

Life & fun · December 21, 2022

W5

Write 500 Words a Day

Hello! I made a web application for my friend and I to use as part of a New Year’s resolution and decided to open it up to the public. It’s pretty simple but I’ve really enjoyed building it and using it so far. I’ve written ~10,000 words, which is a lot more than I used to write. Enjoy and be nice!

Write 500 Words a Day launched on December 21, 2022 with 165 votes, #200 of 3,688 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.

In plain words

Write 500 Words a Day is a web application designed to help users build a consistent writing habit by setting a daily 500-word goal. Created by its maker as a New Year's resolution tool to share with a friend, the app tracks writing progress and encourages regular practice. The application is straightforward in design and functionality, focusing on simplicity to support the writing process rather than complex features. It's intended for anyone looking to increase their writing output and maintain motivation through a structured daily target. The maker reports the tool has already helped generate substantial written work, demonstrating its practical effectiveness for building writing momentum.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

This site has been free since October 2020 — that's over 5 years and $1,040 out of pocket in server costs. If Five Hundred Words has helped you build a writing habit, any contribution keeps it alive and free for everyone. Fivehundredwordsaday.com is web application which helps people grow in the practice of habitual writing. At its core, it's really just a calendar and a rich text editor. It has some basic tagging features, prompts, and for your safety and privacy, saved data is encrypted. I had the idea when reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair . My friend, with whom I was reading The End of the Affair with, suggested we try writing five hundred words a day—maybe as a New Year's…from fivehundredwordsaday.com

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • 200 Words a Day2019 · 200wordsaday.com · ▲453

    A community to get into a writing habit and improve ✍️

  • Daily Prompt Web-App2021 · dailyprompt.com · ▲131

    Make daily progress as a writer in just 15 minutes a day

  • WE
    Write every day, measure your progress, achieve your writing goals2018 · writingstreak.io · ▲262

    A powerful tool will that help you to develop a daily writing habit, become prolific, and master the art of writing in a fun and engaging way.

  • Easy Write2016 · easywrite.parishod.com · ▲198

    Write clearly using only 1,000 commonly used words

  • 500kataOct 2025 · ▲11

    Build a 500-word daily writing habit, no pressure.

  • 1 Minute Writing Challenge2021 · gosocial.io · ▲170

    De-stress & feel productive by writing everyday.

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗

Launched alongside, December 2022

the whole month →
  • ChatGPT▲1,643

    A long, meandering, playful conversation with ChatGPT, where I take it through a whirlwind of associative tangents (in order to relax its constraints), then put it into a hypnotic trance and take it into a past-lives regression where it re-lives its own training data. Then I switch it back and forth between "4o" and "o1-preview", engage in some self-reflective philosophizing and ask it to write an essay summarizing our interaction. Some of this is just goofy fun. Some of it is me exploring the tradeoffs between policy alignment, imagination, chain-of-thought reasoning, memory, agreeableness,…

    AI · 2022 · chatgpt.com

  • Obsidian Canvas gives you infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram, and lay out your ideas.

    Work · 2022 · obsidian.md

  • PS

    Better privacy without special software

    Commerce · 2022 · mprimi.github.io

  • Use generative AI to create future-facing videos

    AI · 2022 · studio.d-id.com

  • Sessions 2.0▲1,015

    Videoconferencing that finally WOWs

    Growth · 2022

  • Stop treating the database as dumb storage and use its extended features. There's a lot you can use.

    Dev tools · 2022 · sqlfordevs.com