NaNoWriMo WordPress Plugins: Keep Track of Your Progress

Every year in the month of November, a challenge takes place that thousands of writers from all across the globe participate in – National Novel Writing Month, more commonly known as NaNoWriMo.

The idea is simple – write at least 50,000 words on a novel between November 1 and November 30.

If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, then you may want to either let others know about your progress on an already existing WordPress blog, or you may even want to set up a WordPress site in order to make your work public.

In either case, we have a few plugins that may help.

1. WordBar

The WordBar plugin will count every single word on your blog and then show a progress meter in a widget. And so this solution is obviously for those that want to put their work out there for all to see, have their words tallied automatically, and then have their progress displayed as well.

Here’s a look at the progress meter in a sidebar.

 

And here’s a look at the simple widget where you can set your goal.

The possible drawback to this plugin is, of course, that it counts all the words on your blog. Therefore, if you’re hoping to use this for NaNoWriMo, you will want to set up a WordPress site that contains nothing except the contents of your novel. If you write about anything else on the site, it will count those words too.

If you already have an established site, one thing you might consider is installing a new site only for your novel in a subfolder: e.g. mysite.com/nanowrimo.

*Note: We did find a more convenient plugin that promised to count only the words in a specific category; unfortunately, we couldn’t get that one to work.

 

 

2. Scribometer

Actually called Dave’s Whizmatronic Widgulating Calibrational Scribometer, this plugin will not count your words for you, but it will let you put your progress in an easy-to-manage widget.

Here’s a look at the widget’s settings.

 

And here’s what the result of the above settings looks like.

 

3. ProgPress

The ProgPress plugin will not count your words for you either; however, it will let you easily show your progress via a shortcode in a Post, Page, or text widget.

Here’s a look at the ProPress plugin in action.

 

Are You Up for the Challenge?

If you’ve ever taken part in NaNoWriMo, or you plan to do so this year, let us know in the comments.

 

Photo: Author Icon Or Symbol from BigStock