Happy New Year! It’s resolutions time, and I thought I would share a little bit about what I’m doing to optimize my writing process this month with Google Sheets. I would use Excel but this project doesn’t call for anything fancy.
Why a spreadsheet? Can’t you just write a thousand words a day and call it good?
Great question, ;p
First of all, I would like to say that I don’t always enjoy trying to over-organize my writing process. You’ll find a lot of writers’ blogs out there that try to sell you stuff, usually with affiliate links. I would try to do that, but that’s not where I’m at, so now is a great time to hear a no B.S. answer from me. I don’t like spending so much time on notes documents and spreadsheets that I lose the story. I also don’t love plotting as much as discovery, so for me to come out and say a spreadsheet is a great way to speed up your output, I really mean it.
I use a spreadsheet because it gives me a finish line.
Storytime
In some military trainings, they have races where you put on a pack, usually about 35 pounds before water, and you run/walk with your rucksack. When the cadre wants to mess with your head, they don’t tell you how long the race is going to be. Unknown distance. You just put on your pack and try to stay ahead of your peers at a pace you can sustain through old fashioned grit.
Lately I’ve taken on some hefty writing projects. To tell you the truth, I’ve started to feel like I’m running one of those races.
Basically, and in full disclosure, I have three fiction projects slotted for this year, with a bonus if I can really catch my momentum.
Upcoming Works
- Thriller: 80,000 words
- Gamelit: 80,000 – 100,000 words
- Sequel: 150,000 – 200,000 words
- Literary Sci-Fi: 80,000 words
Wordcounts are estimates.
I feel a little shy sharing this, but I also think it’s good when authors are at least translucent about progress. I’m sure everyone can think of at least one time they were frustrated with a creator for unclear expectations.
You can’t rush art, but you can at least manage expectations for it.
So here’s what I’m doing to help speed things along without going nuts
Here’s an example for one of my books, one that’s not due as soon as another so the daily wordcount goal is lower. I have all my projects for the year running their functions early to keep me from getting overwhelmed and knowing when it’s time to start cranking.
The Spreadsheet Functionality
First I picked a title, a due date, and a word count goal. Novels tend to average around 80,000 words, somewhere in the upper 200’s page range, so I went with that.
Second, I created columns for the date, the days remaining until the dute date. On google sheets, I just have to drag the selection down and the cells update themselves. On days left, the function is just [current cell] – 1.
After that, the spreadsheet gets a little more complicated, but it’s still fairly basic for anyone somewhat familiar with Excel or Google Sheets. Here’s some functions for you:
Words Complete = current manuscript wordcount entered manually
Words Today = today’s words complete – yesterday’s words complete
Words Remaining = word goal – words complete
Words Per Day = words remaining divided by days left
What I pay the most attention to: Words Per Day
If a project has few daily words required, then there might be a lot of days I don’t write anything in that book. It starts to look like this:
You can see how when a project is kind of far out, the daily wordcount doesn’t increase very quickly. This helps keep me relaxed about it. However, if I start seeing the daily wordcount getting high and I know I’ll have a hard time managing it later, I might spend a day or two working on it, otherwise, the project sits and builds momentum.
What can you take from this?
I won’t claim to have invented this tracking method. I’m sure, like the wheel, many authors have similar systems, or even much better systems, but now you know what I’ve been up to.
Have any suggestions for me? What works for you? Have you read Song of Kardu yet? I’d love to know what you think.
Till next time,
Dan
Leave a Reply