Hey, everybody! As many of you know, I track my writing in an Excel spreadsheet, and every year I try to share out a blank copy of it so that others can use it as well. If you’ve used a past version, grab the 2017 one for updated dates (I fixed it back to a non-leap year) and a fixed Pledges page! Go ahead now, you can download it from Drive here!
I’m including the instructions I posted last year, because I don’t want to rewrite everything.
So let’s talk a little about how I track. This might get long.
First tab is Wordcount. Here is where you will track each piece (by column) and each day (by row). For example, this is what my sheet looked like as of this morning:
The spreadsheet comes with the Dates and the Daily Total column already filled in. What you do is put the name of your first fic into D1, and the fest (if you’re tracking) into D2, and the starting word count (some of mine come out of the bunny folder with words already, like you can see that I started the year with coffee shop already begun) into D3. Then you can track the total words each day, and the total words for that day will show in the Daily Difference column (with your total for the year at the top). The Daily Total is just like Daily Difference total, only it includes the starting word count as well.
When you start a new day, just highlight the previous row from column C to the column after your last, and use the “drag down” function to copy the formulas and values down. You have to copy even the hidden columns (I hide a column when I’m done with that fic) or the totals won’t work.
That’s how I highlight, then I grab that little square on the bottom right to drag down one row.
And YES, you do see zero days. There are plenty of days when I don’t write at all. This happens. The important thing is not to let it get to you; the overall progress is what you need.
If you want to see a graphical representation of how you’ve done on a daily basis, you can go to the Daily Graph page. It’ll look kind of like this:
Do you see all those zero days? Don’t despair! It happens! Just keep writing on another day. Hells, sometimes I have almost zero weeks. I’ll post stats tomorrow for those of you who might be curious about the details.
There are also Monthly Totals and Monthly Graphs pages. The important thing to realize is that other than a very few fields, everything is calculated for you! You enter your word counts on the first page. You put a yearly goal on the Monthly Totals page, and that’s it (well, there are pledges, but we’ll get there).
On the Monthly Totals tab, you can put in your goal (I had a goal of 300k). The Words to Goal field will adjust throughout the year and you can see how close you are to your goal, or how much you have passed it by. The totals for each month fill in automagically once you keep your word count updated, and the average per day will adjust appropriately, too. And see, there’s a pretty graph by month, too.
The next two tabs might or might not be interesting to you. They involve some manual upkeep, and I did it mostly so I can compare stats from year to year. I carry my totals through each year so I can look at how my AO3 stats and how my monthly progress has changed. I’m actually kind of consistent in pattern, just not in production, by month per year (2013 was a weird year and I probably should be ignoring it).
Then there’s the newest tab, and my favorite tab: Pledges. I only did pledges for three months this year, but the new spreadsheet has space to pledge for each month (woohoo!).
On the pledge tab, fill in your word goal for that month (you can see I had a goal of 50000 for November). It will calculate what your expected daily word count should be, then will pull your actual word count per day from the primary spreadsheet and total everything up for you. It keeps track of where you are and where you should be and creates a neat graph. Yes, this is how I did that even while not doing NaNo. I like graphs. They’re pretty.
And that’s it for the spreadsheet! Yes, I’m aware that the thing makes me look a wee bit obsessive.
When I post my daily accountability, I use a goal percentage counter which anyone can access online. If you paste in the code http://picometer.writertopia.com/words=###&target=### into the URL for a photo post, with your current word count for the ### after words, and your goal for the month for the ### after target, you’ll get the cool little counter, complete with percentage. Quick and easy!
If anyone does use this, I’d love to know. And if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I’ve found that knowing that I’m still being productive and heading toward my goal helps me feel better when I hit those days where I can’t find a word in my brain at all. I can look back and see the days when I had more words than expected and it makes me feel better about things. Because I know I’m getting somewhere.
Best of luck, everyone!
2017 Writing Tracking Spreadsheet
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