Writing statistics and goals

Everything on this page is worked out from your own writing and stays on your computer.

What counts as a day’s work#

FoxQuill counts net words: the book’s word count at the end of the day minus its count at the start. A day spent cutting shows a negative number. Cutting is work, so it counts.

The book’s word count comes from the active draft of every section, leaving out archived ones. So switching a section to another draft, archiving a section or bringing one back, and taking a reader’s suggested edit all move the day’s number, up or down. Deleting a scene moves it too, down by the scene’s words. Moving a scene to another section does not: the total stays the same.

A writing day follows your computer’s clock. Words are counted the way the book counts them: a word joined by an apostrophe or a hyphen is one word, so “it’s” counts as one.

Sessions#

FoxQuill opens a session when you start typing and leaves it open while you keep going. Ten minutes without typing ends it. The next thing you type opens a new one. Opening and reading sections without typing starts nothing. You never have to start or stop anything.

The Statistics page#

Reach it from the Statistics tab in the top bar. The sample book, Little Women, comes with about four weeks of writing history, so its Statistics page shows what a few weeks of work looks like.

• Today shows your words for the day, your minutes of writing, and your sprints. With a daily goal it adds the day’s progress against it, your streak, and your best streak. The progress bar is there from the start of the day, at 0 of your number, before any words are counted.
• The whole book shows once the book has a goal. It has your target, what you have written, what is left, what you need a day to hit the deadline, and when you would finish at your pace over the last two weeks.
• Progress shows once you have a weekly, monthly, or yearly goal, with a bar for each.
• Goals lists the goals you have and has the Add a goal button. See below.
• The last year is a square for every day, darker for a bigger day. Today is outlined, and a key under the wall runs from Less to More.
• Words a day is a bar for each of the last thirty days, or for each of the last 365 days under 12 months. The dashed line is your daily goal.
• Sprints shows once you have done one. It lists your sprints with their date, their minutes, their words, and their words per minute.

The page is ready as it opens, in this order, with no wait for the numbers to fill in.

Goals#

Goals live on the Statistics page, under Goals, next to the numbers they are measured against. Press Add a goal to open the small form: pick the kind, the number of words, a deadline for a whole-book goal, and whether it counts for this book or for all your books, then press Save goal, or press Enter in the form.

A goal can count for this book or for all your books. A book goal comes first where both exist. Adding a goal of a kind you already have, for the same book or for all books, changes its number rather than adding a second one. Each goal has a menu. Pause stops counting it without deleting it, and a paused goal says so until you choose Resume. Delete removes it, after asking. The first words you type each day are what count toward the goal, even before you have written much.

When you have a daily goal, a small ring appears in the bottom bar of the writing view with today’s progress. Click it to open the Statistics page. When you meet the goal it says so, in the app and nowhere else. FoxQuill sends no notifications.

A book with no writing yet shows one line on the page instead of the charts, and the goals stay on the page, so you can set one before you write a word.