I’ve started using an online writing tool to up my word count: 4thewords. You can find it here if you want to take a look.
Right now I’m outlining, but it forces me to sit down and work on it daily. There’s a one month free trial, and after that a month’s worth of their currency is $4. What’s nice is that it doesn’t auto renew. If you want another month of playtime? You need to manually purchase the gems needed.
I’ll be honest; it’s a game. You ‘fight’ monsters by writing, and as your work count climbs, so do your rewards. It tracks your writing live, and it has quests and other fun things to explore. There’s multiple areas with different monsters, drops, and quests in each.
The quests have their own menu that shows progression.
As an example of a few of the monsters you can fight, here’s a screenshot:
Monsters come in two categories: those who give you a time limit and a word goal, and those that require you write continuously for a set amount of time. I find the second type stresses me out WAY too much, so I stick to the first.
You write in their writing area, and it tallies up your words as you write.
You can see a little bit of my draft for the second Ocooch book I’m planning here. (Its working title is Murky Waters just in case you’re curious.) It’s not a first draft yet, but the outline words count as words!
I’m also revising Still Waters using this. I tend to go for monsters with very low word count requirements because revising, while it takes longer, doesn’t produce words as quickly as drafting.
There are drops! If you know me at all, you know that I’m a drop monkey and LOVE THEM. They go into your inventory, and you can collect items to dress up your character.
All in all, it’s a really well put together program. I moved my entire Still Waters novel over into it to work on scenes. It’s especially nice since this is a browser based client, and you can access it from any computer that has Internet. This is helpful because it means I don’t have to haul my revision notes, revision books, revised pages AND my computer everywhere I go.
Instead, I just log into the website wherever I am and work on my current scene.
The files are sorted into scenes which go under one menu. You can choose the icon for them, pick the symbol from an approved list and pick a color.
You can assign scenes to different projects, which are under a different menu.
I have green for scenes in revision right now, and red for outlines, notes, theme, logline, etc. Purple is my Blog file where I’ve been writing my blog posts recently so I get credit for those words. I also have a purple junk file where I drop comments, other things I’ve written, to get credit for those words as well.
I highly recommend this site, especially if you have problems motivating yourself to write!
What do you use to keep yourself writing? What things help your daily writing routine and self discipline? Inquiring minds want to know!
I’ve started using an online writing tool to up my word count.
