When I first started tracking my words, my goal was just to write something every day, even if it was a single word. My average for my first month was 557 words per day, for a total of 12,815 words for that whole month. It was huge to me at the time, and gave me a goal to shoot for the next month. Because I totally wanted to beat that count. Last year, my monthly average was 77,613 words. My highest was March with 101,532.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to see that words are doable. By dedicating time, even just a little bit of time. Some days my hour of writing was spent in two to three minute chunks over the course of the day, frantically tapping away at my phone while walking my toddler up and down the hallway. Gotta get those words in where we can! And you can.
I didn't start to feel like I was getting anywhere until I started tracking my word counts. At the time I would just keep track of words per day but once I started writing for a living I liked to separate it by project. That way I could see how much work I was putting into separate stories (and calculate an hourly wage for work projects too).
But this number at the end of the day, the week, and the month made me feel accomplished and productive. And guess what those feelings breed? Ambition and inspiration. And it gives you a baseline so you can see what your normal output is, and identify your strengths and weaknesses, like times of day or days of the week. You can see what patterns emerge and try to play to your strengths or fill in where you see is a hole.
So how do I start?
Most word processors have a Word Count feature, so you can see a total count of a document or highlighted area. This is your new best friend. What I like to do is keep a running total of a document, so that I can just subtract the total from the day before and get an accurate count of what I've done. That way I don't have to remember where I stopped the day before, or if I go back and adjust anything previously in the document my total count will reflect that.
If you're working per chapter or per article and you know it'll be easy to just count what you've written, you can track that way. But anything longer, I find that I can't rely on 'oh, I'll just remember where I started, it's cool'. Because I won't. XD
What's the best way to record my word count?
I'm so glad you asked! I'm a bit of a spreadsheet whore, so I'm all about the Google Sheets. Basically I have a tab with dates going down the left side, and project titles along the top. I have two columns for each project, one for total count, and one for daily count. So I can use the daily count column to subtract the previous day's words from the current day. That way the sheet is doing all the math for me. Because I am fucking pants at math.
Then another column tallies up my daily counts and plugs it into another tab that shows me my total monthly count, average, and high per day. This is how I ended up with all those fancy statistics at the end of the year, because I have a tab that holds all of my monthly data.
Now, for my working words, I use TechieInAK's Online Writing Log. And I would suggest this site for anyone that wants to track and have stats readily available to them without dicking around with spreadsheets and formulas and stuff. The OWL is mint. You can set goals for yourself, plug in all of your projects, and then there are timers you can use to track words and words per hour, per project, and it saves everything for you so that you can check out all these fancy graphs to show you how awesome you are.
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This was my May of 2018 for work words. I like that I can see a visual representation of the month and which days I was more focused (words to minutes ratio is smaller). The OWL is an awesome resource for keeping yourself accountable to yourself. And it's always growing! The developer is continuously rolling out new features, so there are lots of cool things to come! Go check it out!
Alternatively, some people like the tactile pleasure of doing their daily tracking in a journal on paper. Not knocking this too, but I like to be able to check stats and stuff so that's harder to do when I can't just right click and use an =AVERAGE formula to find out what my monthly average is. But if you're into bullet journaling and would rather track via pen and paper, by all means, have a go at it that way! A quick Pinterest search will drum up all kind of creative ideas for keeping track of your word counts in pretty and efficient ways.
So what do I do when I get all of this shit set up?
You write! And track! And set goals!
The best way to set realistic goals is to set a baseline. Go a week or two and track your counts and see where you're at. If you're finding you're doing a steady 100 words per day, then set a goal for 150. If you're doing 1000 per weekend day and 50 each weekday, maybe set a goal for 2500 a week and see if you can squeeze that little bit of extra in on your lunch break.
The reason I like tracking so much is because I can identify exactly where I need to improve. And when you do manage to squeeze out that little extra bit, it feels like a huge accomplishment. And then you can set your goals just a little bit higher!
My goal is usually a daily average. I know some days that I won't be able to write as much as others, but as long as my daily average in a month stays above 3k, then I'm on the track that I want to be on. When I first started out, my goal was just to write every day, even if it was just a sentence. And here we are.
So if you're struggling to produce, try tracking, and competing with yourself. Maybe seeing those numbers grow will give you the inspiration and the feeling of accomplishment that you need to kick your manuscript's ass!
Activity
Track that shit! Just for a week. Starting right now, grab a piece of paper or open a spreadsheet or get an OWL account or whatever, and track your word count every day for seven days. The kicker? You have to write every day. I don't care if you only write one six word story on a napkin and you log 6 words in a 24-hour period. Just write at least one word every day for the next seven days, and track those bitches.
In seven days, look back at your progress and give yourself a celebratory spank to congratulate yourself. Because you just wrote every day for seven days. Maybe you'll want to keep going? Either way, I want to hear about it!
Do you track that shit already? What do you use, and what are your techniques? Any questions about what I've said above? Drop 'em here!
