Word-count calculator

By David Griffin Brown

Some people use programs like Scrivener that have a handy built-in word-count calculator that lets you see your daily averages and also how far you have to go before your manuscript will be finished.  I work in Word, but I also love spreadsheets, so I've made my own calculator in Excel. 

Here's a stripped-down version that can be adapted to most works-in-progress:

[Click here to download my Word Count Calculator.]

Change the values in the green fields, but leave the blue fields alone as these contain the formulas that make the calculator do its job!

Enter your daily word-count values to calculate how many days you have left to go before your first draft is finished.

Let me know if you have any questions :)

David@DarlingAxe.com

David Griffin Brown is an award-winning short fiction writer and co-author of Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling. He holds a BA in anthropology from UVic and an MFA in creative writing from UBC, and his writing has been published in literary magazines such as the Malahat Review and Grain. In 2022, he was the recipient of a New Artist grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. David founded Darling Axe Editing in 2018, and as part of his Book Broker interview series, he has compiled querying advice from over 100 literary agents. He lives in Victoria, Canada, on the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.