Scrivener has a pretty decent utility for setting goals and tracking your word count from session to session, but I really liked the system that NaNoWriMo uses in November. Unfortunately, you can’t use it outside of November or Camp NaNoWriMo, so, being a code monkey in real life, I made my own. Its called WordKeeperAlpha (wordkeeperalpha.com) and it will let you record your word counts, set goals, create projects, graph your progress and give you some handy metrics. It’s free and I’m always working on new features. Give it a try, if you’re looking for a tool to help out with writing motivation.
There are many NaNo inspired spreadsheets out there (I think you can find them in either the Artisans or Technology forums). I knocked up my own in Apple Numbers based on ideas from a few of those spreadsheets:* daily goal - easily calculated from target divided by days in month; remember that Camps allow a user selected goal and July has 31 days unlike April and November with only 30
- daily achievement
- over/under daily goal
- cumulative goal
- over/under cumulative goal
- percentage complete
- graph of daily progress — this doesn’t work too well as there seems to be a problem with stacked bar charts in the version of Numbers I have
- pie chart of completed/missing
most of the stuff is simple formulae using SUM() or averages but the really useful feature is the pie chart showing completed and missing. The stacked bar chart gives an impression of daily relative progress. The pie chart provides instant feedback on actual progress.
Creating one of these spreadsheet is a useful didactic exercise on learning to use functions and formula, graphs, and layout.