A novel is written in sessions of forty minutes that feel like nothing, and the reason people quit is that a day’s work looks like nothing too. Log the session as you stand up: the project, the word count, the timer. A weekly words goal makes the small days add up on screen, and the pace figure quietly separates the mornings you wrote from the mornings you rearranged one paragraph.
Opens Log App and adds this log with example entries. You can clear the examples anytime.
On a computer? Scan this with your phone’s camera to set it up there.
Which project, how many words, how long it took.
Also called a word count tracker, writing journal, author progress log or daily writing diary.
9:41●●● ▲ ▮
‹Writing⚙
writingcreative
6420
Sum Words · 8 entries
Today
Novel
1180 Words
⏱ 1h 8m“Chapter nine went down almost clean.”
Yesterday
Novel
920 Words
⏱ 55 min
Sat 24 Oct
Novel
180 Words
⏱ 1h 2m“Rewrote the same paragraph all session. Should have skipped ahead.”
Fri 23 Oct
Newsletter
840 Words
⏱ 1h 11m“Wrote it in one pass, edited after coffee.”
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What you’ll track
The Writing log, out of the box
One entry per session, with the timer and location always available. Add or rename variables any time in log settings.
Variable
Type
Stats shown
Project
Choice · tracked individually
Own stats per value
Words
Number
Sum, Avg per week, Max
Timer
Built in
Total time, per entry duration
Location
Built in
Pin or place, shown on the log map
Notes, photos, sketches, voice memos
Built in
Attached to any entry
6420
Sum Words
4494
Avg per week Words
1180
Max Words
How it works
From install to first entry in a minute
1
Pick “Writing” during setup
The log is created with the variables above and a few example entries so you can see how it works. Clear them with one tap.
2
Log as you go
Tap plus, fill in what you have, save. Timer, location, notes and photos are there when you want them, hidden when you don’t.
3
Let the stats accumulate
Sum words sits on the log card, with the rest one tap away. Set a goal if you want a nudge.
Why this log
Built for the way you actually do it
A weekly words goal, not a daily streak
Set the goal on the sum of Words over seven days and the log shows a rolling total against it. A bad Tuesday stops being a failure; it becomes something the weekend can absorb, which is how drafts actually get finished.
Each project counted on its own
Mark "Project" as tracked individually and the novel, the newsletter and the short story keep separate totals. The week you wrote four thousand words and none of them were the novel is a week worth being able to see.
Words per minute, from the timer
The log divides words by session length. Nobody needs to write fast, but the pace figure is an honest record of which sessions were drafting and which were editing in disguise — and they feel identical at the time.
Everything else in the app
Not just a form. A logbook that thinks with you.
The Writing log is one log among many you can keep. Every one of them gets the same tools.
💡AI analysis
AI reads the pattern for you
Tap the bulb on Writing and get a plain-language read of your trends, what changed recently, and a suggested next goal, built only from your own entries.
🎯Goals
Goals, streaks and reminders
Set a target like three times a week, watch the rolling progress bar, keep a streak, and get a reminder at the time you actually log. The app learns that time from you.
📅Calendar
A calendar heatmap per log
Every log has its own month view showing which days you logged. Gaps are obvious, consistency is visible, and one tap opens that day's entries.
🔁Rounds
Several projects in one entry
One entry can hold a round per project, each with its own values, and the stats break them out separately.
📷Attachments
Photos, sketches, voice memos
Attach a photo, draw a quick sketch, or record a voice note on any entry. They stay with that entry and come back on every device you sign in on.
🗺️Map
Every entry on a map
Drop a pin or search for the place. Each log has a map view of everywhere you logged, and saved places open directly in Google Maps.
🔍Search
Search across everything
Find an entry by title, note or value across every log, filter by date or location, and jump straight to it.
🔒Privacy
Yours, offline first
Entries save on your phone first and sync when you sign in. No account needed to start, no feed, no one else sees your data.
Who keeps a writing log
Novelists in a first draft, where the only real question each week is whether the pile got bigger. Freelance writers juggling a client piece, a newsletter and something of their own, who need to see where the hours actually went. And people who write before work and have thirty or forty minutes, for whom a session that produced two hundred words needs to be visibly different from one that produced none.
It suits anyone who has quit a streak app. A run of consecutive days is a brittle way to measure creative work: it punishes the day you were ill and rewards a token sentence typed at midnight. Words in a week does neither.
What a month of sessions shows
The variance is the finding, not the average. Most writers have a distribution with a long tail: a handful of sessions at twelve hundred words, a cluster around eight hundred, and two or three near zero. Knowing that shape stops the bad mornings from feeling like evidence of anything, because the log says you have four of them a month and the draft still grew.
The pace figure earns its place slowly. Over a few weeks it separates by project almost by itself — the newsletter runs fast because the thinking happened in the shower, the novel runs slower, and the slowest sessions of all are the ones with a note saying you were rewriting rather than writing. That is the entry to read back when a session goes badly, because it has happened before and the note says what you did about it.
Questions
Frequently asked
Do I count words written or total manuscript length?
Words written in that session, which on an editing day can be negative in reality and zero here. Keep it consistent and the weekly total means something; mix the two and it means nothing.
What is a reasonable weekly target?
Five thousand words a week is a first draft of a novel in about six months at an hour a day, which is why the sample uses it. Set yours from your own first fortnight of entries rather than from anybody else’s.
Can I track editing and revision sessions too?
Add a project called Revision, or a tag, and log the time with zero words. The session still counts toward how much you worked, and the pace figure stays meaningful for the drafting entries.
Does this work for NaNoWriMo?
Yes. Set the goal to a 30-day window and your target, and the rolling progress replaces the spreadsheet. The log keeps going in December, which the spreadsheet usually does not.
