Time target goals

[FadedStardust]

Forgive me if there is already a similar request out there, I searched and couldn't find a relevant thread.

People who do NaNoWriMo and similar activities will have heard of word sprints, where you set a timer for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever, and then write like crazy until the ding. I like to do this exercise, even by myself and not in competition with anyone, just as a way to stop thinking and just write. I also like knowing how many words I've written in a sprint session.

What I am proposing is for a way to do this without leaving Scrivener, so I can set the target goal of x amount of minutes, write in the middle of a scene I'm already working on, see at the end how much I have written, and then continue on afterwards. A kind of third target type, so then we'd have Project Targets, Document Targets, and Timed Targets.

Currently, I have to have a separate program, FocusWriter, to able to have this functionality. When I'm done, I have to copy my newly written words over to my Scrivener project at the end of each sprint.

I know some might ask "why don't you just use an alarm app?" or similar. The point is to know how much I'm writing during these sprints. Currently to do this with just Scrivener and an alarm it seems I would have to start a new Scrivening for each sprint, which is not ideal if I want to add in the middle of a preexisting scene. I don't even care if Scrivener doesn't keep a record, just show a popup notification saying "Session finished. You wrote x words in y minutes" and let me worry about remembering the number.

FocusWriter does this. Storyist does this. Why can't Scrivener, which is overall so much better than those other programs?

[AmberV]

I think I’m missing a crucial ingredient in what you are doing here (I’ll admit to knowing nothing of FocusWriter), because to me it seems possible to couple Scrivener with an alarm clock of any kind and thus track both how much you have written against a time challenge. Or it might be that you’ve not encountered the session counter yet in Scrivener? Unlike the word count tool in the footer bar for each individual section, the session counter (use the Project/Project Targets menu command to bring the floating tool up).

All right, so in that tool you can actually set a session goal. Just click in the ‘0’ below the session progress bar and type in your writing goal for this session. Now anywhere you type within the Draft folder will be counted toward the goal. You can skip all over in between scenes, write whole new sections from scratch, it doesn’t matter, it will count every word. If you want it to count everywhere, and not just the Draft folder, you’ll find an option for that in the tool: “Count text written anywhere in the project”.

I’m not sure if you are using a Mac, but it sounds like it given the other software you mention, so in that case notification is available as an option well, either through Growl or the OS X Notification system. You’ll be dinged when you’ve exceeded the goal.

[FadedStardust]

My problem here is that I already use the project target screen to show my total word count each day (I have it set to reset sessions at midnight). What you're describing would seemingly make it to where I wouldn't get my daily word counts, because the individual sprint word counts would overwrite that session target section. So basically I would like to have three kinds of targets: overall (project targets) daily (session targets) and timed sessions.

[AmberV]

Wouldn’t a sprint be considered part of the daily goal? By that I mean wouldn’t you just leave the session counter alone, do the timed sprint, have that added to the total as you work, and then when the timer goes off you’re back to just counting how much you do in that day. You don’t have to reset the session counter, is what I mean.

[nom]

Could you create a new document (Cmd-K if you're on a Mac) when beginning a timed session and then again at the end? The word count for that document would then show you your words for that session. If you are in Scrivenings mode, you will still see everything that comes before and after, and it will compile the same as if it was all one document anyway.