I’m over at Word Whores today, shedding light on the shadow side of my writing process. Which is *nothing* like the ordered linearity of my tracking worksheets.
Shadow Side of the Spreadsheet Queen
//Tag: spreadsheets
//Lessons from the Spreadsheet Queen
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At the invitation of the lovely Alexandra Haughton (and Lindsay Emory, who I’m sure is also lovely, though I don’t think we’ve met), I’m participating in their Get It Together Blog Hop.
Because I am, you know, the uncrowned Spreadsheet Queen.
I began my love affair with Microsoft Excel as soon as it hit the market, using it in various day jobs. It was the tinkering with it for personal use that led me to understand its arcane inner workings. I love the formulas, the conditional formatting, the logic tests. I even make Gantt Charts! (You don’t know what a Gantt Chart is? Stick with me, Grasshopper.) I have my three favorite Excel Workbooks open at all times. In fact, here’s a shot of my screen as I draft this post.
You might have to blow it up to see the tabs at the bottom – but there’s Walking Goals, To Do List and Progress Count. Welcome to my world.
Walking Goals
I use a treadmill desk and keep track of my walking goals daily. I’m part of a Writers Who Walk Facebook group and our goal for the year is to walk at least 1,000 miles. You can see from the screenshot below that I’m at about 780 miles so far for 2015, or 78% of the goal. As we’re only about 67% through the year, conditional formatting shows that green Yes! I am on target. Actually I could do zero walking until October 12 before we hit the red No.
To Do List
I keep a running To Do List. If I don’t finish tasks set for one day, I move them to the next. My list is rather shockingly empty this week – and thank all the gods for that! I’ve finally caught up on a slew of things. Some days I have twenty task on there. I delete as I go, so you can see that “spreadsheet post for tomorrow” listed for Tuesday will vanish very soon. I love deleting!
Sharp-eyed readers will note I also track carbs, shows people recommend, books I’ve read and other sundry topics.
Progress Count
The Progress Count workbook is where I really geek out. I’ve been using some version of this workbook for easily twenty years, with continuing refinements along the way. The first tab is Priorities, where I track my deadlines, all of which have interconnected formulas. That is, start dates for the next project are calculated off the projected finish dates of others.
I track every step – drafting, cooling (which usually corresponds to crit partner reading time), revising, and all stages of editing for my publishing houses. I preserve these histories, too, and use them to project my finish dates. Right now this tab only projects out about six months, though in the past it’s been as long as two years.
The next tab is Commitments, in which I use all of those dates to make Gantt charts, like this one.
I love these because the let me visually process what I’m loading my plate with – especially those dreaded periods of overlap. I also plug in workshops I’ll teach, as you can see. There’s another chart with release dates, too, for visualizing that periodicity.
Then there’s my Overall tab, which counts my daily word count on everything. This is the origin page, which spawned all the others. I track how much I write – including blogging like this – on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. Those are the numbers from Monday, as I hadn’t yet reset it for today. The Words Today section counts from all the ensuing tabs, which follow, one per work in progress.
For example, here’s the tab for THE PAGES OF THE MIND. I finished drafting it, sent it to my editor and now I’m working on developmental edits. Over to the right of the page you can see my revision goal, which is predicated on pages/day, instead of wordcount. I count the words added anyway, for my overall goals.
Finally, I keep charts of my weekly,
monthly 
and annual counts!
I’m happy to entertain questions in the comments!
Meanwhile, feel free to join the blog hop Rafflecopter giveaway – many prize packs to be had!
Tools to Track Your Word Count Goals and Averages
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I’m over at Word Whores today, giving a Power Point presentation to the bordello on my tools for tracking word counts and writing goals. Stop by and comment to get a copy of the presentation and/or my spreadsheet template.
Jeffe’s Five Tricks for Juggling Multiple Projects and Deadlines
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This time of year, all of my flowering vines blossom, like an end of summer special treat. They’ll be the first to go when we get a frost, so they are all the more fleeting for that. Transient and precious.
Speaking of which, Dear Author is giving away three copies of Ruby.As of this writing, the giveaway ends in 36 hours, so hie on over if you’re interested.
I’m over at Word Whores, as I am every Sunday, come holiday or foul weather. This week we’re looking at Juggling Multiple Projects & Deadlines: How to Do It Well.
Getting Sidetracked – Knowing What Knocks You Off Course
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I’m over at Word Whores today, talking about which season sidetracks my wordcount the most. Warning: contains graphs. 😀
Setting Goals – and Sweetening the Pot
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I’m over at the Carina Press spec fiction authors blog today. And because our Here Be Magic blog schedule coordinator, Veronica Scott – known affectionately as BLOGZILLA – is a big fan of my cat, Jackson, I had to throw in a pic of him.
Upping the Wordcount and Keeping the Faith
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Jackson, in a post-breakfast stupor. Not that any of us can relate to this.
Regular readers know I’ve been plugging away on the Phantom e-Serial. I’ve got another month to finish it, which sounds like a lot that way, but when you realize that’s 31 days, it sounds much worse. Still, I have it in hand, I believe. I’ve been working fairly steadily at about 1,675 words/day. That puts me finishing around March 24 – with a week to spare for revising. Fortunately the CPs all took a look at the first half – while I took a week-long break and wrote a new Facets of Passion story for a Christmas anthology (I hope) – and they all liked it! They really liked it!! (Cue Sally Fields Oscar gif.)
For you math whizzes out there, that rate is, yes, around NaNoWriMo levels. A while back, I never thought I could steadily produce at that rate while working full time. Amazing how things change! Last month – ooh, on February 1, even! it’s like a recurring THEME – I posted my cumulative wordcount numbers. I’ve been tracking my weekly and monthly numbers lately, to better understand how I work.
Here’s the chart of my weekly wordcounts. The first and last “weeks” of February are a bit artificially low, as they were partial weeks. Still, that second to last week of February, I hit 20K, which might be a personal best. (I haven’t been tracking weekly counts long enough to be sure.) I got there via a vacation day and a holiday, plus a solid weekend of work, to write that new Facets of Passion story. I like how I can see my rate increase through the month, however. This week was down, due to dealing with family illness and travel. I was feeling kind of bad about that, until I saw my monthly stats.
Yes, I just made 50K for February, which I’ve only done once before. Plus, as the lovely Laura Bickle generously pointed out, it was a short month. It will be interesting to see what March and April bring. I predict March will be another high month and April will drop considerably, because I’ll be revising two novels in that month. Editing time makes for poor metrics – even if you count pages revised and you’re clipping along at 30/day, that looks kind of pitiful. I need a way to weight that. Hmmm…
Oh! And the other fun news is that a spin-off story from the upcoming fantasy trilogy (The Twelve Kingdoms) has been accepted to a sword and sorcery anthology! Former Word Whore James R. Tuck is editing. CP Marcella Burnard will have a story in there, too, so it should be loads of fun. Turns out they’ll do two volumes of the anthology. She and I, of course, wrote very female-centric stories (not usually the thing for sword and sorcery), so we’re curious to see if Tuck divides the volumes by male/female, which would be interesting. It should be out in June, so we’ll keep you apprised!
Training to Increase Daily, Weekly and Monthly Word Counts
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Jackson isn’t old enough yet to go outside by himself. So, he just watches Isabel from the window, envious of her Big Kitty privileges.
In the past I’ve used the analogy of being in training for producing wordcount.I continue to be amazed at just how well the principle applies. But if you’re sick of this topic, feel free to move on.
(Not that you aren’t always free to move on – I’m just warning you that this might be repeat. I’m like the old auntie who traps you at the family picnic and asks if I’ve ever told you about my trip to Japan. She won’t let you run. I will.)
One of the things I’ve learned about exercising is that it really pays to keep track of what you’re doing and use that record to increase your effort incrementally. I say this as a person who is NOT an athletic type. I hid in the bathroom during gym class. Was always picked last for ANY team. The high school coaches would kind of curl their lips up when they saw me in the hallways. I used to brag that I never broke into more than a fast walk, for any reason.
Now I run on the treadmill three days a week and lift weights the other three, alternating upper and lower body. This is because I, um, got fat. And I’m vain. Plus I have a lot of books I want to write and I’d prefer to live a long and healthy life.
So, you guys know I’m a methodical person – and that I love my spreadsheets. I studied what I should do and started tracking. Knowing how much weight you used to lift and how much you’re lifting now gives you a really good sense of perspective. Plus, when I don’t exercise for a while – due to a business trip or vacation or stuffing my face with Christmas cookies – then I can really see the impact of that. I have to build back up to where I was. It’s a very real and marked phenomenon.
And it happens with writing, too.
I’ve long been tracking my daily wordcount goals and progress. For the last few months, I’ve been tracking my weekly and monthly progress as well. I want to know my patterns and what I’m capable of.
Thus, I have not only spreadsheets, but graphs! 😀
These are my monthly wordcounts for the last four months. October was a big push. I finished a couple of projects by Thanksgiving and then moved into doing a lot of editing. And stuffing my face with Christmas cookies.
I’d planned to hit things hard again in January, but you can see that I did not match my October performance. In a stunning coincidence – I am just now getting back to my pre-Christmas body fat and endurance levels physically, too.
Go figure.
But I think this is even more interesting.
This graph shows my weekly wordcount for January. The first and last weeks were both five day weeks (only counting January days), so they’d be likely lower regardless. Still – look at how I increased each week! This was immensely heartening for me to see, because I’d been focusing on not hitting my October levels and feeling like I wasn’t performing well. But each week, I did more. Even the last week of January, with the same number of days as the first week, shows a much better output.
The other thing these charts show me is that being in training really does matter. I can no more step into producing a high level of wordcount productivity after time off than I can jump back on the treadmill and expect to run as far or as fast as before all that cookie/face/stuffing.
Good to know, huh?
Now, go get your auntie a bottle of wine.