Yes, I’m supposed to be writing… shh! I know.
Anyway, on to the reason for this post… I’m goal oriented. Extremely so. I love nothing more than a list, simply because I love checking things off of it. That’s why it is particularly hard for me when I have a long project, such as these three 80,000 word novels I contracted to write for Kensington. 300 or so pages is a lot to write before I can have the ultimate satisfaction of typing the words, The End. And for someone whose eye is on the finish line, it’s a long way off. I know I should enjoy the journey, blah, blah, blah. I know all that, but I need to have some sense of accomplishment. Setting a daily word count goal helps, when I reach it. When I don’t then I just feel worse.
Then there is this little tool I discovered online on another author’s site actually. It’s a  Word Count Meter and I love it. I find myself writing just so I can plug in the new numbers and watch the little bubble fill in. More importantly, just when I feel as if I’m getting nowhere, I look at the percentage and see I’m a quarter of the way done, and it inspires me to keep going. There are lots of meters out there, some really fun with little cartoons that celebrate your accomplishments with you, and I’ve used them before but what I like about this one is the versatility. I can set the total word count for any number so it worked for the last 25,000 words novella I wrote, and it works for this 80,000 word novel I am now 25% into (yay!). Best of all, the HTML works in the WordPress.com widgets in my sidebar when so many widgets aren’t compatible.
So give it a try. You don’t have to be a writer. It’s useful for college essays. And, I just thought of this, but it would be useful for personal goals too, such as total pounds lost on a diet. Or maybe number of miles ran daily when training to build up for a marathon. Or even number of books read toward an annual goal. AND you can even pick different colors as I’ve shown below. There are 8 total colors to choose from, including Pink, Purple, Gold and Cyan. What fun! Enjoy!
(25.13%)
2 thoughts on “Tools of My Trade – Word Count Meter”
I created a website with a word count meter you may be interested in. The website is http://StoryToolz.com and the word count meters there allow you to see a day-by-day history of your word count. It’s also free 🙂
That’s great! Thanks for sharing, Chuck. Writers are always looking for options.
Comments are closed.