Word Counters

After yesterday's post on 'how many words make a novel,' here's a handy tip on word counters to help you keep track of them all.

6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word Count Obsessed

After spending the first half of this year on the road, I'm nailing myself to the desk and cracking on with my New Year's oath. I've actually opted for a different project: a work of historical fiction rather than fantasy, about thirty thousand words less developed.

Here's how my project stands at present:

Meter: NaNoWriMo Word Meter

10432 / 70000 words. 15% done! 

Really easy to set up, though you might find an HTML colour chart useful.

Meter: Curious Device 'Another Little Progress Meter'

10432 / 70000 (14.90%)

There are some things about this one I really like, and a couple of things I don't.

Negative: The site looks a lot more complicated, even though it's basically the same as the NaNoWriMo one. When you click in the code box and 'select all' it selects the entire page.

Good Stuff: Piquing my geek, you have a lot more control over appearance. You can choose a background and a foreground colour. When you choose the colours, it automatically calls up the colour chart for you, so you don't have to be an HTML expert. You can set it to 'overflow,' so that, if you do reach your limit, it'll keep counting. You can resize it and even choose the font.

It is a lot smaller, which is either annoying or discreet, depending on how you view it.

Meter: Writertopia Progress Meter

Standard:

Mood enhanced:

Heh. Good fun, and easy once you get the hang of it. Only tricky part is that it's set to 50k by default. If you want to up your goal and change the mood you need http://wordmeter.heroku.com/meter/ then:

words=<number you're at>&target=<goal number>&mood=<mood code 0-9> 

Example:

http://wordmeter.heroku.com/meter/words=5000&target=20000&mood=8

Then copy/paste the picture to your blog or website. Perhaps a little complicated for tech newbies, but worth getting to grips with.

Another thing I've noticed is that they each have a different way of rounding your word count for the percentage. The NaNoWriMo meter is by far the most encouraging, rounding my 10,432 words up to 15% Curious Device's curious device was very exact about it, rounding to two decimal places: 14.90% Whereas Writertopia sort of burst my bubble by rounding down to 14%

Figure out how much encouragement you need in order to feel good about your writing before you decide which one to opt for.