Top 12 Writing Progress Meters and Word Count Trackers

Progress meters can be great motivational tools for writers and editors. They track and display your word count as you work toward completion of a manuscript, screenplay, dissertation, thesis, or any other lengthy document.

These meters are easy to set up, update, read, and pleasant to look at. Some display your current and target word counts plus the percentage complete; others show only the percentage.

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Men and Sex = The End

A novel I initially began reading with flat-out fascination in an aspiring writer’s blog four years ago has just become the last work of fiction to be added to my collection of edited titles. Today I finished editing MEN AND SEX = POWER, PLEASURE, PAIN.

I met C. Mikki at my 2006 writers’ conference in Dallas when I mistook her for one of my presenters whom I hadn’t yet met and greeted her with a hug. Some time later she asked for feedback on her novel-in-progress. I invited her to share and the rest, as they say, is history. I was hooked from the first chapter…

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Compensating Speakers With a Return-on-Investment

I’ve been asked to produce a seminar for other writers’ conference organizers to share methods for making it more cost-effective for speakers to participate where the organizer has no stipend or transportation budget. I am hearing that other organizers want speakers to come, fly themselves to and register to attend their event, pay for their own rooms, and pay a fee to sell their books or exhibit. The speakers may be granted a small percentage off, but it’s so minuscule that it’s insignificant. There is no real advantage for the speaker to participate from an ROI (return on investment) standpoint when the organizer’s mindset is essentially that the speaker is coming strictly to make the organizer’s event a success.

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Post-Conference Atlanta ’10

On June 23-27 I directed my sixth writers’ conference at the W in Atlanta. By all accounts, attendees, faculty and staff were all immensely pleased with Ms. Neecha’s choice of hotels. Since we couldn’t get the venue secured in Chicago in time, we decided on Atlanta instead. Neecha did the site visits solo and forwarded [...]

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How to Recover a Corrupt Word Doc

Have you ever begun working on your manuscript or document in Microsoft Word and gotten a string of error messages? Does the formatting change right before your eyes or have unreadable characters replaced your words? Does your computer freeze up or crash every time you try to open a certain document? When you print, is [...]

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Recovering a Corrupt Word Doc That Won’t Open

In a previous post, I listed several ways to salvage the content of a corrupted Word document if the file can be opened. If the file cannot be opened, here are three techniques you might try.

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Hot Date on a Rainy Friday Night

This is probably the last year I’ll program my own preregistration database for my conference. There are so many alternatives now that I almost feel silly for doing it anyway, BUT I don’t get to use MySQL or PHPMyAdmin much anymore and I really can’t see anything particularly wrong with a little practice. Gotta keep my skill up somehow, right?

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Writers Conference Scholarships {BWRC}

Three scholarships—awarded in creative writing—are available to any potential BWRC participant. The 2010 scholarships provide tuition for one full day of workshops and do not cover transportation or lodging costs.

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Post-Conference – Vegas '09

I’ve finally wound down from the writer’s conference I just directed in Las Vegas, and now that this one is behind me I can finally get back to some semblance of normalcy with my other projects. I was mostly pleased with the way the conference went. My staff really appreciated the “Vegas-style” adjustments I made to the program, such as starting the sessions later in the day to give attendees sufficient time to rest from any late-night outings the night before (the ones Vegas is famous for inspiring)—

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Writing Conferences–What & Why

So you’re a beginning or aspiring writer and considering attending a writers’ conference. Perhaps you’ve never attended one and don’t know what to expect, or maybe you’ve attended other literary events that offered a writing seminar or two and were disappointed that you didn’t quite find what you were looking for. Perhaps you attended a conference that offered panel discussions which stopped short of delving into what you really wanted to learn. The fact is there are numerous types of writers’ conferences, and it’s essential for you to know a few things before you make plans to attend one.

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Writer Links: Idea Prompts & Plot Generators

These links offer online tools (and two related books) designed to serve as aids in creative brainstorming.

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Fiction & Nonfiction

When people learn I’m an editor or director of a conference for writers, many often share with me their desire to write a book. Most get into a starting/stopping pattern while others have never written a word. They simply have an idea for a book in their heads, but haven’t taken the next step to get it on paper. And often, when I ask if they’re writing fiction or nonfiction, they don’t know the difference. Here’s an overview on both with genres and subgenres.

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