Erik R. Van Asch, an engineer and published writer, was impressed by “the magic spreadsheet”, online spreadsheet file on Google Drive where people compare each other’s writing records. The problem of the magic spreadsheet is that it takes a very long time to load. So, Erik made an excel file that tracks daily writing for his own use and shared the file online. Here are his own words for the sharing. “I’m sharing my simplified word tracker with you, in the hopes that maybe it will be enough to encourage you to keep writing at least 250 words per day.”

I downloaded the file and tried it and found it to be very useful for writers. All you have to do is to type desired number of words per day, actual word count and hours of writing and the spreadsheet calculates your performance. The excel file also works on Google Drive, though it did not work when opened in Numbers on Mac. If you want to write more words on a continued basis, try this simple but effective word tracker. You can download the file here.