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aldersprigI was going to write up a post of links to word trackers, but this site has lots of the widgets.
Do you track your wordcount? When you're doing nano, do you use their site exclusively, or do you keep your words somewhere else? A widget tracker? A spreadsheet? What about when you're not doing nano?
I like tracking things. I like tracking things a lot.
My current monthly wordcount chart looks like:
some other charts and tables of mine visible here.
It was modified in part from Svenja Gosen's awesome sheets, which I seriously recommend you check out.
While that's where I started, there are a few other sites that look good for spreadsheet templates:
This one actually looks nice, though the page itself is a bit iffy.
Nidonocu's site is a few years out of date, but their (2009) tracker includes a calculation for words per minute, which is interesting.
The Sprint Shack (follow them on twitter if you like wordsprints!) has a very stripped down words/day whole year tracking spreadsheet
Here's another whole-year tracker.
Justin McLachlan's makes good use of conditional formatting, showing you % complete and +/- goal numbers.
This form is so stripped down as to barely be worth the bother, but the tips are kind of interesting.
And this Nano Report Card has some nice journalling stuff, rather similar in concept to Svenja Gosen's but with a less pretty interface and more journalling. ("Primary Writing Location?" "Morale?")
This one comes with a big thermometer-like bar showing progress!
There are probably more; I only went through two pages of google results. <.<
Tracking is, I think, very individual. What do you want out of your tracking (if you want it?)
Do you know of other tracking resources - or even other SORTS of tracking resources? Let me know!
Bonus link: this page has some generators and some other interesting stuff as well as spreadsheet links.
Do you track your wordcount? When you're doing nano, do you use their site exclusively, or do you keep your words somewhere else? A widget tracker? A spreadsheet? What about when you're not doing nano?
I like tracking things. I like tracking things a lot.
My current monthly wordcount chart looks like:
some other charts and tables of mine visible here.
It was modified in part from Svenja Gosen's awesome sheets, which I seriously recommend you check out.
While that's where I started, there are a few other sites that look good for spreadsheet templates:
This one actually looks nice, though the page itself is a bit iffy.
Nidonocu's site is a few years out of date, but their (2009) tracker includes a calculation for words per minute, which is interesting.
The Sprint Shack (follow them on twitter if you like wordsprints!) has a very stripped down words/day whole year tracking spreadsheet
Here's another whole-year tracker.
Justin McLachlan's makes good use of conditional formatting, showing you % complete and +/- goal numbers.
This form is so stripped down as to barely be worth the bother, but the tips are kind of interesting.
And this Nano Report Card has some nice journalling stuff, rather similar in concept to Svenja Gosen's but with a less pretty interface and more journalling. ("Primary Writing Location?" "Morale?")
This one comes with a big thermometer-like bar showing progress!
There are probably more; I only went through two pages of google results. <.<
Tracking is, I think, very individual. What do you want out of your tracking (if you want it?)
Do you know of other tracking resources - or even other SORTS of tracking resources? Let me know!
Bonus link: this page has some generators and some other interesting stuff as well as spreadsheet links.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-08 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-08 08:30 pm (UTC)Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-08 10:04 pm (UTC)I have a daily goal, a monthly goal, and a blisteringly bad time dealing with the "I didn't keep track of July!" problem still hanging over my head. So... paint me at least a little obsessive if not OCD. I also split my word count goals between the blog and original fiction, and consider all of this practice for next year, when I kick into REALLY high gear and aim for 3K or more written per day, in order to write an actual MILLION words in 2016.
I don't track morale or location as the latter seldom changes and the former is to mercurial for r/l reasons to be reliable right now. Maybe next year.
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 01:32 pm (UTC)That's 83,333 words a month. That's 2700+ words a /day/.
How do you do that without burning out?
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 01:42 pm (UTC)Theoretically, I could write six decent-sized novels and still do daily blog posts, but that's just running numbers in my head to see if I want to do it.
So far, yeah.
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 01:55 pm (UTC)I've been struggling with breaking 20K/month this year... not an ideal writing year.
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 02:24 pm (UTC)June 65,705
July NO WORD COUNT
Aug 61,282
Sept 64,969
Notice that NO WORD COUNT? I wrote, at least 35k, but I DID not count it because it was too depressing. I was wearing two wrist braces for Repetitive Strain Injury. Too much typing and knitting and not enough rests and stretching!
It SERIOUSLY messed with my head, and right now that "no word count" is a twitch in the back of my head EVERY time I think about it.
Also, I've currently got something like 14 stories I'd started in June and July STILL being finished in drips and drabs, which is WAAY annoying for me.
But in terms of pure numbers, I think I could do it!
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 02:29 pm (UTC)You write a little over twice what I do. Do you write very fast, or carve out specific blocks of time, or...?
January 19,007
Februa 19,706
March 27,888
April 30,668
May 27,699
June 23,999
July 24,823
August 19,472
Septem 18,061
(defensiveness requires me to note that this year has been non-writing-life stressful and last year I was doing closer to 40-to-50K a month)
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 04:54 pm (UTC)It started as "the kids are out of school---NOW what do I do?" and one of the things I had ZERO time for was writing, for a decade! I've been struggling with insomnia for five or so years, and writing is quiet.
Everything kind of gelled without me thinking overmuch about it in specifics, which actually helped me set up patterns. I tend to suck at doing the same thing daily- a HABIT, of any kind, so I challenged myself that if I started a blog, I would write every day about something more important than what I fix for dinner-- writing I would have to WORK for. I had two glitches that meant that I didn't know something had posted on its proper day, but neither were me falling asleep for a nap and waking up 28 hours later, so I kind of cut myself some slack for them. (In other words, I don't even want to count technical glitches next year!)
Next year MIGHT be so stressful that I can't manage 500 words a week. I just don't know right now.
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 06:08 pm (UTC)Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 02:51 pm (UTC)One reason I write so much very short stuff is that, that way, I know it gets posted.
Re: Word tracker
Date: 2015-10-09 05:01 pm (UTC)Longer answer: OH, how I WISH!
Detailed answer: I actually tried Nano, and since I was avoiding the whole social bonding element OF NANO, what I ended up with is roughly 1/2 of a WAY past 60k novel, which needs finishing (it'll be a year old at the end of October! Botheration!). I've got --a whole gallery of stuff written in Ysabetwordsmith's universe, at least two novel-length stories set in original universes (both barely started, as I also default to short things when real life kicks me again)...and about a dozen in progress short stories. I can get a GOOD story written in less than a week, but I've been asking someone-who-is-not-me to help me become better at certain elements of writing, and that's an extra pair of drafts right there.
What I've also got, growing like a fungus in a very habitable cave... is an idea folder with 100-500 word starters for even MORE stories. Get them out of my brain and onto paper, then TRY to get back to the stuff that's 99% done BUT--you know those files!
The word count for the blog is roughly half of the monthly totals, and when I was ONLY doing the blog "essays"-- they really were .Some of those bad boys clocked in at 3K, and I made them shorter because someone I love reminded me that he didn't HAVE the twenty minutes it would take him to read the whole post in one sitting, most evenings!
no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 09:57 am (UTC)not so much when I can see I'm 32k behind on my goal like now- because you can see progress and find trends in months that work better for you as well as track words per day, per month, per project, etc.I'll poke at some of the other links though because I like to look at alternatives and see how other people track.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-09 01:29 pm (UTC)