Word count

I try to keep track of the amount of words I write each day. I like to keep count and it also pushes me to write everyday. I do not want to see a zero word day.

BUT... it’s almost impossible.

I write in Google docs  drive. I plot and drag cork-board stuff around in Scrivener. I write in Word for Windows. I make notes about story ideas in OneNote, Evernote and Google Keep. And I scribble in half a dozen different coloured physical notebooks in pen.

I write blog posts, book reviews for Goodreads, short stories, longer stories, fanfics and I am working on too many longer stories at once.

I found a word count script that works in Google drive, but only for documents I have stored in a particular folder. And I often forget to put them in that particular folder. I have 400 documents in the writing prompt file, alone. Not counting completed ones. When I say I have a thousand ideas, I am not joking.

Scrivener has word counts for each session in each document, but I have a dozen of them. At the moment, I have four open and I have to reset the counts each day.

Plus, I am plotting out the story I may write for NaNoWrimo in Scrivener. (National novel writing month - write 50k words in a month.) Actually, I am plotting two different stories; I haven’t decided which to write, yet. 

Each method works for different things or in different ways so there is no one product that does everything I need. I can access google drive on several different machines. Evernote is brilliant for storing (and tagging) research and webpages for fledgling ideas. And is also multi device accessible.

I'm not sure why I still use Word; habit? Perhaps. I am sometimes set in my ways. Old dog ... you know the rest. Mortal fear of online failure?

I have acquired most of these newer programs in the last year or so, so Word is still familiar to me and I am clearly clinging to it. 

I try to keep track but it is obvious that my word count is underestimated.