How To Use NovelPad's Goal Setting Feature
Ollie Ander
Is probably just a couple cats in a trench-coat—the hair shedding and sunlight napping are highly suspect.
As we progress from the eager naiveness of being an "aspiring writer" we soon learn that the hardest part of writing…is actually writing. Of course, we love it—the bursts of inspiration, the flow of our fingers clacking away on the keyboard—but unfortunately, sometimes writing is less about passion and more about planning.
With NovelPad’s Goals feature, it’s easier than ever to set your writing goals, and keep yourself on track to achieve them!
How to Use NovelPad’s Goal Tracker
After clicking into your manuscript, along the left side bar, you will find the Goals icon at the bottom of the upper list.
NovelPad’s Goals are extremely versatile and can cater to the type of planner you are. You could set a simple goal of how many words you want to write per day, week, month or altogether. For those of you who would rather focus on time spent writing over a specific word count, you can set the goal to monitor that instead—numbers aren’t everything!
If you’re a long-term planner with a lot going on in your life, the Goals feature is amazingly adaptable and can help you customize your writing plan over the course of your whole manuscript.
After choosing your word goal, you can set a "Start On" and "Finish By" date, and Novelpad will plot out how many words you’ll need to write each day along that journey to successfully hit that goal.
But what if I can’t write consistently every day, you might be asking? NovelPad’s got you covered! Below the Start/Finish dates is a "Weekly Writing Schedule'' where you tick off how much you will be able to write on any given day of the week. You can change the workflow from normal, to something lighter, more intensive, or take the day off if it’s just not in the cards for you. NovelPad will take this information into account and adjust your word count goals per individual day, to suit your schedule and still hit your overall writing goal on time.
On top of adjustable workflow on certain days of the week, NovelPad has the option to "Add Sprint"s or "Add Vacation"s to your schedule. Feeling extra ambitious? Plan to do a sprint and put in extra words when you have some spare time. Alternatively, if you’re going on a vacation, give yourself a break. It’s hard to enjoy your time when you know you’re growing further behind on your writing, so work your vacation into your writing goals instead!
Last but not least, NovelPad has the option for you to "Adapt Schedule to Progress". We don’t all write in perfect round numbers of words. Some days we’ll put in more than our word count goal and some days will be a little less. NovelPad’s schedule can adapt to the ongoing number of words you’ve put into your project, constantly updating your goal’s required output.
Tips for Using NovelPad’s Goals
Goals is customizable to everyone’s personal writing preference, but here are some tips to utilize the feature as the power tool of your dreams.
1. Weekly Tweaking
Set a day every week (or month, depending on how long your project might be) to reassess how well you’ve been hitting your daily goals. NovelPad shows your Progress words in blue, and your Expected words in pink. If you are consistently not hitting your goals on a specific day of the week, you should tweak your schedule to better reflect what you’re capable of doing.
2. Host Sprints
Feeling like going all-in on writing one day? A great way to motivate your writing is to invite others to join you in doing a sprint. Watch your word counts fly together!
3. Celebrate Milestones
If you’re starting from scratch writing a manuscript, that’s a lot of words and a long journey ahead of you. Looking at the big picture can be daunting, so don’t forget that you can make your goals a day-by-day thing and not for the project overall.
That said, regardless of how you track your book’s progress, make sure to celebrate milestones along the way. Hitting the ten thousand mark is a huge goal, so don’t let its significance be minimized by the total words you need. Pick a number that you think is impressive to your own progress, and make sure to give yourself a pat on the back every time your blue Progress bar hits that interval! You deserve it.
NovelPad has even more useful settings than the Goals Feature. If you’d like to try it out, click here for a$ free trial of NovelPad!$
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