I’m going to show you to use Excel to track your project and always hit your deadlines, or at least show you how much you need to panic that you’re not making your deadline.
Download
This link will download an Excel spreadsheet. You may see a message like this one depending on your browser.
I suggest you click Save and save it to your documents. Once you have saved it, open it up in Excel.
It will ask you a couple of questions and then set up everything for you. It’s the best approach for someone who wants to jump in right away.
The two red cells are the only ones you need to change. Enter your word count goal in the red cell next to word count goal. Novels are generally 70,000 to 80,000 words. If you’re a Your Novel Blueprint student, you’ll notice Jerry talks in terms of pages. I prefer tracking by word count. 1 page is about 250 words.
Enter your start date which is the day you will start writing, in the red box next to Enter your start date. The spreadsheet will calculate a one year deadline.
Now all we need to do is enter our actual word count at the end of each day in the grey square for that day. If you don’t write that day, that’s okay. Your total world count doesn’t change. Just enter the same number again.
Let’s look at a typical week.
Day one, I did great. I was energized with new story juice and I banged out over 600 words! The next night was okay, I did another 500 words or so to get me to 1112. Then next night was my scheduled night off. No words, so I stick at 1112. The following night, I added almost a 1000 words to get to 1280., but the next night I was tired and not feeling it. That night ends at 1280 as well. On the 14th, I get back in the saddle, and ended the night at 1350. The next night, I managed about only about 50 words and I’m at 1399.
Be careful not let being ahead lull you into a false sense of security. I had almost twice the words I needed on the 11th, but I was behind schedule by the 15th. There are going to be days you won’t write. Real life will show up and you’ll lose a week.
As you enter the word counts, the graph to the right will build. The blue line is where you should be to hit your deadline. The second days you enter your word count, an orange line will appear. This is your actual word count. As long as the orange line is above the blue line, you’re ahead of schedule. If the orange line ever dips the below the blue line, you’re behind schedule.
Step by Step
But what if you don’t want to use one year as your deadline? In the next part, I’ll show you step by step how to build a spreadsheet like this to keep track of your progress. You can set up everything and customize it to your hearts content. These instructions will assume you have basic Excel skills.
The first thing you need to do is setup your worksheet. You need four columns. Name them Date, Projection, Actual and Goal or Word Count Goal.
Date will be the day you did the writing. Projection will show you what your word count should be on that day to stay on target. Actual is where you’ll type in your actual word count. Goal is how many words you are going to try to write that day.
You need to type in the date we want to start writing in cell A2. Let’s use July 9th as an example. You would highlight cell A2 and type 7/9/2019.
Next, you need to determine your deadline. If you are giving yourself one year to finish, your deadline would be 7/9/2020.
Be sure your first date is selected. It should look like this.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag all the way down to A366.
On the Home tab, find the Fill drop down.
Click on Series.
Take the defaults and click OK.
If you notice some of your dates look like pound symbols, stretch out Column A a little bit by grabbing the side.
Next you need to decide on your finished word count. For this example, we’ll use 75,000. Find cell B366, and enter 75000.
Go to cell B367. Since we are using one year, that’s 365 days. Enter 365 in B367.
You should now be on cell B368.
If we take 75000 and divide it by 365, we’ll get our daily word count. In cell B368, type =75000/365 and hit enter.
We need to average 205 words per day added to our novel to make our word count goal. Scroll back up to the top and type 205 in cell D2 and hit enter.
Click on D2 (the cell with 205 in it). On the Home tab, click Copy.
Select all the cells down to D367.
On the Home tab, click Paste. All the cells will fill in with 205.
Go to cell B2. Type in = 0 +D2. You should see 205 in the cell.
Now go to B3. Type = B2 + D3.
We could keep going, but its going to take a long time. Instead, let’s let Excel do the work for us. Look for the little filled in square under 530. If you put your mouse over that the cursor should change to a black cross. When it does, left mouse click and start dragging down. You should see a green box growing as you drag.
When you let go, all the formulas will fill in.
Go ahead and drag it all the way down. If we’ve done our math right, 7/9/2020 should show 75000 (or really close due to rounding. Math, man. Math.)
Now all we need to do is enter our actual word count at the end of each day. If you don’t write that day, that’s okay. Your total world count doesn’t change. Just enter the same number again.
Let’s look at a typical week.
If you’re a more visual person, you can see this in a graphical way.
Go to the Insert tab, and select a Line graph.
Click on Select Data.
Select all of July.
Here’s what the chart looks like.
As long as the orange line is above the blue line, you’re ahead of schedule. If the orange line ever dips the below the blue line, you’re behind schedule.