In part this is a literal physical constraint owing to the fact that paper books are a) still placed on shelves and b) often placed spine out. The thing that matters most? A great story. Word count matters, but it doesn’t matter endlessly. Yes, you should go through the novel revision checklist and take out anything extraneous no matter what.īut at the end of the day, you have to write the novel you want to write. Yes, having a book that is overly short or overly long for its genre will incrementally decrease your odds of finding traditional publication. The word counts of some famous novels for comparisonīut before I do that, let me just say this: don’t overthink it.Standard word count ranges for various genres.Few elements of the book-writing process inspire such hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing as trying to constrain your novel within certain seemingly arbitrary bounds. If you still can’t get enough word count trackers, check out 13 free writing meters, progress trackers, and word counters by Tracy Lucas.Ah, word count. Overall, it’s the best one I’ve found for what I’m looking for in a word count tracker. Oh, and wait, did I mention it’s free? Just sayin’. There are also several charts that will track your overall progress, daily performance goals etc. Most trackers out there don’t let you do that. I prefer Overall Total, because sometimes I could technically write 1600 words in a day, but I had to scrap 300 of a previous total due to plot adjustments. This allows you to feel successful, and see an accurate projection of your word totals, even if you are not writing every day.Īs you are entering your word counts for the day, you have two options: Single Day or Overall Total. For example, if you are a weekend warrior and know that you’re going to crank out 3000-5000 words in a weekend, you can set your weekends to a higher weight percentage. Instead of knowing that I have fallen behind in my daily goal, it shifts based on how much you write over time. It is one of the only word count trackers out there that I could find that adjusts your word count goals as you write. So many word trackers on the internet are not free, and they don’t do half the things that WriteTrack does. After trying: Wordly, Pacemaker, WriterStat, WordKeeperAlpha, plus a few more mobile apps here is the tool I decided on for anyone out there for anyone, who like me, has a serious word count tracker addiction.Īfter searching the internet three times over for an acceptable word count tracker, and finding many that required a monthly subscription, I found WriteTrack by David S. Then I decided I needed to hop back on the word count tracker bus. For a period of a few days I went through some serious withdrawal. The NaNoWriMo word counter helped me be successful in my writing 25,317 words in 30 days.īut alas! NaNoWriMo ended, and so too did my word counter. Slowly but surely that date backed up to January 11. At first, my estimated completion date was February 7. I enjoyed entering my total word count each day, watching that graph go up up up. I wanted to get started on a story I had been thinking about for a long time, based on a classic novel that has always inspired me. At that rate, I knew it would take me two months to write my novel, instead of just one.īut I didn’t mind. I write on average, according to the NaNoWriMo word counter, about 843 words a day. I participated in NaNoWriMo this year, knowing full well that I was not going to make the 50,000 word goal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |