My Favorite Writing Tools 2: Writing Trackers

If you haven’t figured out by now that I’m a hopeless nerd, this part of the post ought to clarify that point. I *love* trackers. I find them motivating, and I need all the motivation I can get. I own a FitBit and obsess about my standings in the Workweek Hustle Challenge (I was even more ridiculous about it during quarantine). I track my habits (exercise, personal development, and about six others) in Toodledoo. And of course I track my writing. I’ve tried a few writing trackers and settled on two that I like:

Online Writing Log (OWL)

OWL lets me track word count and time spent by project, set goals, and participate in challenges (though the user base is pretty small, so please sign up for OWL and join a challenge so I have more competition). It also provides me with a dashboard to show my progress by month and year and includes timers to track how long I’ve been writing or to time a sprint.

The screenshot above shows the Activity Log. Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard:

Please ignore my pitiful word count. I’ve been focusing on revision this year.

OWL is available via a freemium model. Options are:

Free: 1 goal, 1 project, and 3 sessions per day.
Premium ($4/month): unlimited goals, projects, sessions, and more.
Pro ($8/month): same as premium but includes billable projects.

I use the Premium version and find it well worth the cost.

Writing & Revision Tracker from Jamie Raintree

Author and writing teacher Jamie Raintree offers a fabulous tracker built in Excel. You can set goals for projects by month and year and see your progress by day and percentage as well as in a lovely bar graph. If you’re an Excel geek, this is the tool for you.

We’re looking at February for this screenshot, because somebody (can’t imagine who) has been slacking about filling out her tracker.

Ms. Raintree used to sell a new version each year, but she has now created an undated version that you can purchase once ($19 for 5 projects, $29 for 10 projects) and use year after year. When I’m writing or doing line edits, I love this tool and use it faithfully. I find it less useful when I’m doing big-picture revisions (story structure, characterization, etc.), because those don’t always happen in a linear way, and this tool is designed to track pages revised rather than time spent.

How about y’all? Do you use a writing tracker? Which one?