The well has finally begun to refill and I'm back at it again.
I pounded out over a thousand words tonight, which for this story is pretty damned good, if I do say so myself. At any rate, it's productive.
Now, I've become a bit anal about my word counts, and I know some of you have been keeping track of your word counts in one way or another. If you're truly a geek like me, you may even already be doing what I'm doing. If not, and if you'd like to watch your progress, I use a simple Excel spreadsheet and a couple formulas. (Yes, Virginia, I am a geek.)
Each project I'm working on has its own set of columns. One for the date, one for the total word count, one for the words themselves each day and one to get the percentage complete. For instance, AWJ has a projected first draft count of 60K. I get the percentage by dividing the word total for the day by 60000, and Voila! Percentage. Once I set the sucker up, it's almost addictive to watch my word counts and percentages rise. For the daily words, I simply subtract each day's total word count from the day before. So, today I made 1058 words (if you're going by MS Word's count - IMO the easiest way), which put me at 17910 total for the WIP and at 29.85% of my goal.
Geeky, I know, but I like to use the phrase "The Geek shall inherit the Earth" and when you look at Bill Gates, you can almost believe that phrase is right.
(If you have any questions about how to make a spreadsheet like that of your own, and you have an Excel program, drop me a comment. I'll be more than happy to share my geek-ness with you.)
Believe it or not, I find the whole progress watching thing to be very motivating. How are things progressing at your end?
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8 hours ago
3 comments:
I keep track of mine, too. Day, time started, time stopped, total time, today's word count, running word count, running scene count, running page count. Viva geekdom. =)
I find the ever increasing numbers (even if the word count only goes up by, say, 5 g*) to be motivating.
I don't assign myself a certain number per day, because for me that would have the opposite effect. (I can be swayed to procrastination quite easily.) But by expecting progress of some type or another, I tend to produce.
Yay for writing 1000 words, and congrats on being thiiiiiis close to 30% done! =)
I feel cleverer just reading all this :D
Actually, I just write down my total each day. I don't bother with percentages. Numbers confuse me too much.
Erika: You've got me beat on the stats. You're keeping up with way more numbers than I am. I'm almost jealous. I also don't assign myself a word amount, other than aiming for more than 500 words any day I write. I'm hoping to break 30% tonight.
Alex: You're clever already. You don't need the math. Besides, I'm not all that great with numbers either. I cheat and use Excel. =oD
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