Writing tracking form

Do you want to track your writing with an easy-to-use form? I’m providing it here in two formats: MS Word and PDF. (If you use the PDF one, you’ll need to recreate it yourself in whatever word processing software you use.)

Here’s how to go about completing the form:

  • In the first column, enter the day’s date.
  • In the second, enter your feelings about your writing that day. (Over time, you will see that on some days you may have felt fantastic about your writing, but accomplished little and on other days you may have felt terrible but accomplished a great deal. I include this column only to demonstrate the utter unimportance of feelings.)
  • In the third column, enter the amount of time you spent.
  • In the fourth column, enter the number of words you wrote.
  • In the fifth column, enter your cumulative total — that is, all the words you have written to date for this project.
  • In the sixth and final column, calculate the number of words you have remaining to write. Do you see the number 75,000 in the top right-hand corner? In my case, this represented the total word count goal for my writing project. Each day I subtracted the cumulative total from the (desired) grand total and knew exactly how many words I had left to write.

My forms include text I have entered myself, to give you an idea of how to go about using this form. Please delete it (if you’re using the MS Word version). When you need more rows, add them by using Table/Insert/Rows below. (Or consult the Help menu for whatever your word processor requires.

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