Lizardfic the novel is currently 15,635 words. According to my spreadsheet metrics, I’m 19.54% of the way towards an 80,000 word goal, and will reach 80,000 words on May 5, but the novel itself is guesstimated to end up being 89,646 words, which would make me 17.44% done. My rather wimpy daily wordcount goal is 500 words, but I average 579.07 words. If I pick up the pace I could certainly finish sooner, but I’m more interested in it being good than fast.
How do I know these things? I actually have two metric spreadsheets.
One is of my own invention, and I call it the motivational spreadsheet of doom. All the motivational spreadsheet of doom does is takes the daily wordcount and date and coughs up new words, words over goal, days since last written, words under goal, and percent goal completed, with a bit of average wordcount and a finished on date.
The other is Cameron’s Outline Helper, which I tweaked to give me more data. (The guesstimated final wordcount is average complete scene length times number of scenes, for example.) For some reason, I found plain text easier to work with in the earlier outline stages, but by the time you list the scenes you expect to have and get to the next page, that’s some tasty spreadsheeting.
I could combine them, but the motivational spreadsheet of doom is dumb enough to open in any spreadsheet program, while Cameron’s Outline Helper only seems to love Excel and Open Office. I may, anyway, to get a better finished on date.
Metrics motivate me. *shrug*
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