what do you use to track your monthly, weekly, etc word count goals?

[Maeven_quinn]

I'm curious, what do you all use to track your own word count goals and stay motivated?

Word count helps me stay on track and stay prioritized. It works great during NaNoWriMo, but I got nothing other times outside of november.

Apps? Websites? Elaborate collections of abacuses?

 

[HeyAll]

I don't do anything to track wordcount. All that matters is getting the stories done and thinking up new ideas.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've never thought in terms of wordcount goals. I track how my published stories are doing regularly, and I set goals for publishing stories, which I may or may not meet. But I don't pay attention to word count.

 

[AfterDusk]

I don't do anything to track wordcount. All that matters is getting the stories done and thinking up new ideas.

I'm very much the same as HeyAll; I have never been one obsessed with word count. Sometimes I can get the point across in a sentence, sometimes it takes pages. I've been aiming to publish something once a week, beyond that I don't fret much about the rest.

 

[Hypoxia]

Sometimes I am proud to have churned out a few thousand finished words lickety-split but mostly I don't care. Counting words is not one of my goals. Quality of life matters more.

 

[KeithD]

I mentally try to get in at least 1,000 words every day, but I don't dwell on it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Word and Excel. At least back when I did... but now I could give a crap about what I type a day, a month, a year. Just so long as I finish the story. And then again, there are a lot I have to finish or re-work to my satisfaction that are still hanging around. I keep wondering why they haven't run away.

 

[TxRad]

Word has a word count feature under the Tools drop down. It counts total words

In whatever folder you keep your stories in there is a column for word count. You just have to right click on the header and scroll down to almost the bottom of the list.

Want to know how many words you wrote on a story today? When you finish writing, look at the folder where it was stored and check the word count. Go back to the story and use the word count tool to see where you are now. You can enter the numbers in a spreadsheet even, if it is that important or your memory is short.

I do none of this. I do use word count to sort my shorter vs longer stories. Or to keep chapters close to the same size.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't track word count at all. If I want to know how long a story is at any particular time I just press the Count Words button. It's an irrelevant measure of progress to me, since I never say, "Right, this next piece is going to be 20k, let's start tracking progress." I have zero clue, setting out, as to how long something will be, and it takes as long as it takes to write, anyway, so why bother?

 

[Hypoxia]

I write with the free little Jarte editor. I greatly value its WordWeb thesarus. In Jarte, hover the cursor over an icon and the byte, word, line, and page counts of selected or unselected text appear. Like magic!

I spell-check in MS Word 2002, then finish in Jarte, including a word count along with title, description, tags, and notes in a header. That count is just to hint how many LIT pages I might fill.

Since writing for LIT is not my job and increased production is not my goal, I don't care much beyond gross size. Track production over time? Oh, I hope not.

 

[SamScribble]

Counting words reminds me of that old joke about two New York Jewish women holidaying in The Catskills.

Over a rather dreary supper, one of the women turns to her friend and says: ‘You know, the food at this place is terrible.’

‘It is!’ her companion says. ‘And the portions are so small.’

 

[_Lynn_]

I've never tracked word count and goals don't work well for me. If there's a story in my head, then I write. If not, I find something else to do.

 

[Maeven_quinn]

It appears I am nearly completely alone in daily word count + word count goals = motivation to finish a project by a certain time.

Nonetheless, I discovered that NaNoWriMo has a feature that allows for custom word counts per month.

It will help me keep to the about 5k a week goal that I'd like to start the year of with.

 

[HeyAll]

I think a lot of authors force themselves to write a certain amount per day. Ive read that many times. But then again their income depends on it

I wish i could write a lot per day. Sometimes the ideas just wont flow.

 

[Maeven_quinn]

I wish i could write a lot per day. Sometimes the ideas just wont flow.

What do you think causes the block?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Word has a word count feature under the Tools drop down. It counts total words

In whatever folder you keep your stories in there is a column for word count. You just have to right click on the header and scroll down to almost the bottom of the list.

Want to know how many words you wrote on a story today? When you finish writing, look at the folder where it was stored and check the word count. Go back to the story and use the word count tool to see where you are now. You can enter the numbers in a spreadsheet even, if it is that important or your memory is short.

I do none of this. I do use word count to sort my shorter vs longer stories. Or to keep chapters close to the same size.

I have looked at the word count column... there seems to be a discrepancy between what the column displays in Explorer and Word.

I'm using Win10 and Word2007.

For my longest work in the directory I was in, the word count was 65,145, the word count in Word was 84,775. That's almost a 20,000 word discrepancy. Unless of course Word count a 'space' as a word and Explorer doesn't. I have yet to find how that column is calculated in Explorer.

Just thought you should know... if anyone is interested.

I thought it would be a cool column to add, but if the percentage it's off is consent(I'll be checking that now) it could still be useful.

ETA: The average discrepancy is around 20%. At the lower end it's 18% at the higher end it 23%. I don't see too much rhyme or reason why looking at a number of files. Oh well, some more good work by Microsoft coders.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

It appears I am nearly completely alone in daily word count + word count goals = motivation to finish a project by a certain time.

Nonetheless, I discovered that NaNoWriMo has a feature that allows for custom word counts per month.

It will help me keep to the about 5k a week goal that I'd like to start the year of with.

I keep track of it with the novels I'm writing because word count goals keep me disciplined in my writing routine. I don't use a program, though, but a tracker spread I made in my bullet journal. As much as I love my digital tools, there's something more tangible about my analog ones when it comes to goal/task management.

 

[TxRad]

I have looked at the word count column... there seems to be a discrepancy between what the column displays in Explorer and Word.

I'm using Win10 and Word2007.

For my longest work in the directory I was in, the word count was 65,145, the word count in Word was 84,775. That's almost a 20,000 word discrepancy. Unless of course Word count a 'space' as a word and Explorer doesn't. I have yet to find how that column is calculated in Explorer.

Just thought you should know... if anyone is interested.

I thought it would be a cool column to add, but if the percentage it's off is consent(I'll be checking that now) it could still be useful.

ETA: The average discrepancy is around 20%. At the lower end it's 18% at the higher end it 23%. I don't see too much rhyme or reason why looking at a number of files. Oh well, some more good work by Microsoft coders.

Hit word count before you leave the story and check it again.

I use 7 and word 2k. Mine used to update correctly when i closed the story but then along came a windblowes update and you guessed it, it stopped closing at the correct number on its own.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hit word count before you leave the story and check it again.

I use 7 and word 2k. Mine used to update correctly when i closed the story but then along came a windblowes update and you guessed it, it stopped closing at the correct number on its own.

The word count is on the bottom in 2007. It changes as you type. It is correct at when you file it and when you close the window.

In the column is <>20% off. All files looked at hadn't been change while in word.

I will check Word 2007 accuracy next.

ETA: Save the .doc file as a .txt file from Word.

The word count in Textpad was 89494
The word count in Word was 84775

Now I do have some HTML tags in there so... but do I have 5,000 words worth... doubt it.

But the column count is still way off at 65,145 words.

ETA: Opened it in Google Docs, 84,885 words. Almost right on with Word 2007.

 

[Hypoxia]

Word tends to leave debris in a file -- maybe the wordcount is thrown off by that revision history stuff etc. I use Jarte which can write .DOC and .RTF as well as .TXT but embeds no extraneous crap.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Word tends to leave debris in a file -- maybe the wordcount is thrown off by that revision history stuff etc. I use Jarte which can write .DOC and .RTF as well as .TXT but embeds no extraneous crap.

Nope, no debris in the .txt file. Opened it in binary mode, no extra shit in there.

Noting but the correct hex codes for everybody.