Earlier this year I won this little notebook by sheer chance from (wonderful)  Pen Addict blog giveaway.

The notebook is a Word Standard Memorandum notebook and the cover is a Word Standard Memorandum cover in black.  It’s tiny, and much longer than it is wide — so it’s not in any standard format. Inside it looks like this:

So you’ll notice that there isn’t very much writing room there. At first I wasn’t so sure what to do with it. It was too small to be useful as a planner, calendar or an exercise log (not that I didn’t try). But I liked the notebook too much to just let it languish on my desk.

So on a whim I started using it as a word count log. At the end of each day  I write down how many words I’ve written, for which piece, and whether I am happy with my progress or not. On quick drafting days, I just note that I did some brainstorming and produced a quick draft. Since the notebook is so tiny, I use little smiley faces to note whether I made good progress that day or not.

Here is a sample page, filled in:

This new little habit has been a great boost for my confidence as a writer, and has boosted up my daily word count considerably. It introduced not only a way of viewing my progress, but also a gamification of kind into my writing.

If you are writing anything, whether it’s a seminar paper or a novel, I highly recommend that you keep a word journal to keep tabs of your progress during those long writing hours.