KSC, spreadsheet geekery, and a Sunday Write-A-Thon

Greetings, fellow writers!

Have you heard about Kaz's Summer Camp? Basically, you sign up with a goal (or two or ten or whatever) and then you work towards your writing goal over the course of June, July, and August. There are weekly check-ins to help keep all of us accountable but the environment is supportive and flexible--the idea is that it's a way to help encourage you to meet your goals, not be a punitive experience. You have until the end of the day tomorrow to sign up. Click the link above for more info!

Anyway, KSC(tm) brings me to my trusty writing spreadsheet (which will bring me to my Sunday Write-A-Thon--bear with me). A while back, I created a quick spreadsheet in Google Docs to help me keep track of my writing progress. I wanted to know two things: how many words I owed myself and, on the days I didn't meet my goals, why.

My spreadsheet, cleverly named TLOS Word Count because I am a genius at titles, has six columns across: Day, Date, Goal, Actual, Words Owed Cumulative, and Notes. The Day and Date columns should be obvious--e.g., Sunday 6/6/10. Goal is always set at 500, since that's my minimum daily word count goal (and one of my two overall KSC goals--to write 500 words a day for the next three months). Actual is where I enter how many words I wrote that day. Even if it's 21 (that glorious number appeared for one of last week's entries). Even if it's 0 (that glorious number also appeared last week). Words Owed Cumulative has a simple formula in it that subtracts the Actual from the Goal and adds it to the previous day's Words Owed number.

Have I confused you yet?

So, for example, if I always wrote exactly 500 words a day, the Words Owed column would always show 0. Let's say on day 1, I write 700 words. Now the Words Owed column shows -200 because I have like extra credit for 200 words since I wrote over my goal. But let's say on day 2 I write 0 words. Now the Words Owed column will show 300 because I was supposed to write 500 minus the 200 word credit I had, leaving a debt of 300 words.

Which brings me to the Notes column. Every time I write fewer than 500 words, I'm leaving an honest comment as to why. For example, there are two days that say "Magic Bleeds" (hee hee) and a day that says "migraine" and a day that says "had to plot upcoming scenes."

The reason I've explained all this in painstaking detail is that I'm finding it incredibly beneficial to have that Words Owed column. I don't want to get caught with my pants down a few weeks away from my target date, thinking along the way that I've been more or less keeping up with things--missing my goal some days but over-writing it others--only to find out I'm 10K short or something. In short, it's keeping me honest. If you're someone like me who doesn't have ironclad discipline but strives to, I highly suggest creating your own version of the spreadsheet. If you don't know how, I'd be happy to create one for you on Google Docs.

So! According to my magic spreadsheet, I currently owe myself 2688 words. I'm going to try to hit that goal today. If anyone would like to join me for a rest-of-the-day write-a-thon slash holy-god-what-else-can-we-hyphenate, let me know! I'll be checking in periodically.

Happy Writing!