A quick question for writers

[msagara]

I mentioned earlier that I have been using the equivalent of MS Word's wordcount while writing, and that this has not perhaps been very smart. I know that we're all looking at the lengths of our various books, and I was wondering: How do you keep track of wordcount while writing? Because I had an extra 45K words and an extra 25K words when looking at the page runoffs on the two books I did write in Scrivener, and this was ... unfortunate. And I would like not to repeat it if I can*.

If you need to turn in a 100k manuscript--or a manuscript of a specific maximum length--do you check the runoff count as part of your daily writing, do you format it in manuscript format so you write -to- a runoff count?

ETA: * I am aware that there might be a bit of gentle mockery at this point

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is exactly the problem :).

I am not a Scrivener power user (as must be obvious), but what I like about it is the ability to keep multiple versions of chapters in one place, with the current being the top level, and any cuts or deletions being nested. I don't actually do it often, but it's a lot easier to organize this way.

So yes, what I wanted to do was to have some idea of page count. Can I use the export format to get the page count, or would I have to write it in that font and widen the window for proper line sizing, do you know?

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

You can use the expert tool, yes.

An easier way to keep track of the page count in Scriv while you're writing is just to adjust the options in there (make sure it says Courier 12pt, and you can tell it to change if you need -- it already assumes 1" margins) and 25 lines per page. That should give you SMF count of 250 words per page. Then you can just click on the project statistics every time you want to check your page count, rather than exporting it. You don't have to change the font you're currently using in Scriv to do this, either, just tell it how to count it when you want to know.

I like Scrivener, too. I use the Snapshots to keep old drafts, though. That tucks them away where you don't have to look at them, but you can revert any time you want.