The Pleasures and Perils of Word Count Tracking

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I’ve been on a roll lately with my WIP. I’m writing every morning at the ridiculously early but also wonderful hour of 5:30, and racking up the words. My goal is to hit 1,000 words in each session and I’ve been doing that plus a little more. Man oh man, nothing feels better than piling up the words regularly. And every day, after I finish my writing session, I note how many words I wrote on a 3 by 5 index card.

(Brief aside: I’m the most unorganized human on the planet and 3 by 5 cards are my latest bid to become the most organized person on the planet, or at least on my block. I used to write notes on post-its, sometimes long, important notes, and promptly lose them. With my new plan, I have a cute little box to put them in. So far, so good.)

This is the adulting equivalent of getting a gold star for turning in your homework in second grade, but boy, does it work. At least most of the time. Yes, in my usual style I must offer caveats. Mostly because I believe to the very depths of my creative that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing that works. (That cute dress that purports to be one-size-fits-all is probably not, either. Just saying. Don’t ask me how I know.)

Moreover, the size that fits you now in your writing life might not fit you for your next novel or when you want to write an essay. And me being the fickle beast that I am, tracking my words is working for me now, but I may decide come October that it is totally cramping my style. And I reserve the right to let that be okay.

So let’s take a look at both the pleasures and perils of tracking words.

Pleasures

—It’s motivating. Knowing that I’ve reached my main goal before most people in my time zone have crawled out of bed makes me happy all day. And motivates me to get all the other crappy life things done.

—I often write more than I would if I weren’t keeping track because I push to get those 1,000 words, even when I’m lagging.

—When I note my word count on my little green card, I also write the circumstances, ie “Got up later than usual, but still got my words in.” Or, “It’s Sunday and I'm feeling lazy so it took all day and going back to the manuscript here and there to do it today.” And that’s a nice record and reminder that this writing thing is not always a straight shot.

Perils

—Sometimes I stop as soon as I reach my word count—when if I weren’t counting words I’d keep going. I end up doing the bare minimum, when I actually have the bandwidth for more, just because I’ve met my goal and I really want to go eat breakfast.

—I have been known to, ahem, pad my sentences to reach my word count goal. Doing things like spelling out words instead of using contractions and adding in as many “thats” “justs” and other extraneous words as my little heart desires.

—If I can’t reach my word count for some reason (such as: life) I feel bad. I feel like a failure. And we writers get plenty of those feels out in the big wide publishing world.

How to do it

—Anyway you want! I’m currently using index cards, as noted, but in the past I’ve made notes on a calendar (which is nice because you can include stickers), in a word doc, or a journal. Yes, the logical way to do it is on a spreadsheet but those are inventions of the devil as far as I’m concerned so I don’t do that.

—Some writers keep a word count along with noting the conditions under which they were produced. This was popularized by fantasy writer Rachel Aaron, who writes about how to increase your word count and the speed at which you write. She notes her time started and stopped, words written, and where she was when she wrote them. This helps her to see what conditions are best for good writing results. She does this on a spreadsheet (gasp) but I’ve seen other writers make simple handwritten graphs i their journals to follow this idea.

—The key is to get in the habit to do it! Once you do, it becomes a self-motivating habit loop. I look forward to noting my word count. Very satisfying.

Do you keep a word count tab? I’d love to hear how! Leave a comment, even if you think the whole project is totally nuts.