I am back on my Excel spreadsheet

I used to do this a lot more (through all of DEMON ANGEL and DEMON MOON) — have my daily and weekly word count/goals updated in a spreadsheet, along with a graph (that is terrible to see when you have less than half the book done), percentage done (I set it high — 150K — because I know myself too well, and I’d be an idiot to consider myself 50% done with 50K) and how-many-words-per-day-until-deadline sections, and cells with lots of red and parenthesis when I didn’t meet my requirements.

I didn’t do it for my next two books, because I was struggling with word count every day even when I was writing all day, and it was just too disheartening.

But over the next couple of years, I think it’ll be more and more necessary. Deadlines right after each other — writing all day doesn’t cut it; I have to produce good, countable stuff. And so it’s back to the days when the only two windows open on my computer are the manuscript, and the spreadsheet that reminds me how much I’ve still got left to do.