(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:24 am)
National Novel Writing Month AKA NaNoWriMo is about to start this November 1st; the goal is to bang out 50,000 words of a rough draft novel in 30 days. I declared that I would do it this year, having been inspired by several friends who have done it in the past. This is my first year, and I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to go, so I just made a tracking calendar to help me visualize just how many words I need to write every day.
It’s a full-sized piece of paper (US Letter 8.5 x 11 inches) that has some instructions at the bottom. The basic idea is to fill-in boxes that represent 250 words of writing. The boxes are shaped like a pyramid; you fill in at least 7 of them to get to the first plateau of 1750 words, which is enough to comfortably finish in 30 days if you are writing every day. There are a couple higher boost levels: 2250 for writing just on Monday-Friday, and 2500 for people who want to fill-in that last block. Every week, there’s a review worksheet that helps me assess the week, which allows me to compute a new minimum word count. For example, if I somehow wrote 25,000 words in the four days, this would lower my minimum word count from 1667 to 960 words per day. Not that this is likely to happen, but the review will be a good way of keeping tabs on my progress.
Since this is the first year I’m doing NaNoWriMo, I’m not sure how useful this form will be. But it certainly was fun making it :)
Download NaNoWriMo Tracking Calendar
Download NaNoWrimo Calendar PDF (Portrait, US Letter)
The calendar covers half the sheet, with instructions
Download NaNoWrimo Calendar PDF (Landscape, US Letter)
Download NaNoWrimo Calendar PDF (Landscape/Binder, US Letter)
The calendar takes up the full sheet, with no instructions
Having trouble saving? Right-click or option-click and choose “save link as” if you are having trouble saving the file.
This is free to use for non-commercial purposes. Enjoy!
17 Comments
David –
You create productivity candy. Stunning.
I love this. I have done NaNoWriMo in the past and I normally end up jury-rigging a calendar on some graph paper. It helps me to be able to use checkboxes to visualize if I have hit my word count for the day. I especially like the recalculation bit at the end of each week. It strikes a nice balance between not making any course corrections on the fly and recalculating every single day (which I succumb to all too frequently)
Avrum: Thanks! :)
Valery: Glad you like it! I’m going to try to not think too much about daily word count…so long as I’m hitting my daily I think I’ll be OK. But I am wondering if I need a special tracking folder now as well! :)
Yay! :D This will help so much! I think I’ll finally be able to hit the goal with this…
This makes me want to buy a color printer! And do NaNoWriMo!
Okay—maybe it just makes me want to buy a color printer. :-)
Yay Dave! I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for years and this is definitely an awesome calendar that will be quite useful. One suggestion, for a US-specific version– write Thanksgiving on the 22nd. I have yet to write more than a handful of words that day and it’s nice to see it as a reminder to write more on other days.. sigh
love it. wish there were something like this to track results of Concrete Goals Tracker over a month/season/year!
Awesome!
Good luck with the novel!!
I like the look of this. Thanks, Dave. Maybe it will help motivate me.
Hi David – this writing tracker/calendar is terrific! Do you think you could do one to help dissertation/thesis writers track their writing? It’s really difficult to stay motivated over the course of a long-term writing project and something like this that would be for each month of the academic year would be so helpful!!
I was going to suggest the same as Robin Sakowski… Could you do a generic version for PhD/MSc dissertations/thesis? That would be awesome indeed! It could be one with space for month and year where the person had to fill the days of the week accordingly, but it would be great! Please, do think about it!
Well… I just made one… Maybe it isn’t perfect, but it is working ;-) You can see it on my blog: http://ladydoctorbug.blogspot.pt/2013/01/weekly-and-monthly-progress-trackers.html
annette: That’s a good idea. Others have asked about a week-focused form. I’ll look into that.
Robin: I’m thinking of a generic version that goes from 0 to 100% in 10% increments, which maybe is a way to do it. However, I migth be able to make it so the increments can be customized easily here. Will think about how to automate the production process.
Joana: Nicely done! I hope you report how it works out for you.