Daily Word Count Goal...do you track it?

[Céleste]

I have a new system for keeping track of my daily word count goal, and I was curious to see if others have one as well. If you have a visual system (that you can photograph) like a calendar on the wall, M&Ms in a jar, whatever, and you want to share it for my blog post on this topic, I'd love to see it. Send it to me in a message. If you want to include a few words of explanation, that's fine, but please don't send me anything too detailed. I can only use a couple sentences for a caption if it will help explain your system. Thanks!!

[Caroline]

Hi Celeste

I just use a spreadsheet. I can't write every day so I have a monthly goal of 50,000 words and I manage it most of the time.

W/C Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Total Monthly Total
01-Sep 1709 3218 2731 2476 2524 300 200 13158
08-Sep 3022 3112 1335 597 3110 379 3156 14711
15-Sep 2061 2067 4107 1883 1387 1638 1413 14556
22-Sep 1788 684 889 1783 0 982 1293 7419
29-Sep 4860 1835 0 725 2104 1087 0 10611 60455
06-Oct 2898 3750 2000 2615 2869 2231 1064 17427
13-Oct 1263 3664 1266 6193

[Caroline]

That doesn't show up very well on here but the last figure is the weekly total and 60455 is the month of Sept
:)

[Céleste]

Can you send me a screenshot of the spreadsheet by any chance?

[Céleste]

p.s. I'm in awe of your monthly goal! In a four week period, my goal is 20,000! You must write fast!

[Roger]

I don't keep up with word counts. I write until the story is done. The first book I wrote ended up with over 290,000 words! I edited it down to 213,000 words and then split it into two books. It turned into my Lions and Lambs Saga and I'm now working on the third book.

[Victoria]

I don't bother with word counts while writing.

I only worry about word counts when the story is done and I'm ready to publish, and then only because the pricing system I've worked out for myself is based on word count.

The one time I did worry about word count while doing the actual writing, I spent more time obsessing about how many words I was writing than I did doing the actual writing. After that I decided to ignore the number of words, and just write, which I find works better for me.

[Abigail]

I'm working on two stories. Once I hit 1k on one, I move to the other until my writing time is done for the night.