Writing History
Writing History
Reach by:
Using the Menu command Project > Writing History (There is no Keyboard shortcut.)
What Counts towards the total daily writing ie your Session Target?
The options you choose on the Project Target Panel directly affect the numbers generated for your Writing History.
What Draft Target options are Crucial?
Normally, you will only count documents to be included in your Compile output to count toward your targets. (If you check Count current compile group only, this can cause major issues if you are using a partial collection as your compile group.)
To have a Session Target you need and overall Project Target number AND a deadline sometime in the future.
What does the Session Target Counts?
1. Net Session gain - If you delete lots of text, session statistics will not start showing any progress until you have written as much again—it is perfectly possible to have a negative session word or character count! In other words, this shows your net gain during the session. (If allow negatives is checked and it should be.) The session count is a lot more fragile, since it needs to keep track of when words were added. It has some known issues when editing with Scrivener using other software such as PWA.
2. What Writing History counts - The session target only counts text that has been typed or pasted into a main text area. If you delete text, you must add that amount and more before you see positive numbers appear in the Session target window.
IF you have checked allow negatives, then this will count deletions or cutting of text as negatives for your Session word count. Now, if you paste that same text elsewhere, then the count will be rebalanced.
If Allow negatives is unchecked, then deletions/cutting of text will not affect the word count and lead to inaccuracies.
3. What Writing History Does not count/Include are Imported documents, duplicated sections, and appended text.
Writing History Options:
A: You have options to show your Writing History in Words or characters.
B: You also to have the options to count daily writing only, monthly only, or both. Pick the option that best presents the way you want to view the information and change your options here if you are not satisfied.
Your Writing History Information: (see the image above)
1. Writing Days = The total number of days the project was open and a change occurred.
2. Average Words written per day is broken down by words written in the Draft/Manuscript (#3) (or whatever name you give the top folder in the Binder) and everywhere else (#4). The Total (#5) is the sum of both numbers.
6. The detailed stats will be given as words or characters based on choice in the upper right of the Panel. You can display these numbers as:
— Months and Days with all information showed per day and then grouped into months as well.
— Months Only with only monthly summaries shown
— Days only gives a count per day.
7. You can highlight any of the individual columns to see a specific day’s or month’s summary information. You can also choose to see the average words per day, or the maximum or minimum values for a specific month.
Writing History Facts:
Scrivener’s Writing History records how many words you’ve written each day. This information can help find if you’ve met or exceeded your writing goals.
What Writing History Does not count/Include are Imported documents, duplicated sections, appended text.
Use the pop-up menus in the Writing History Panel to change how you view your statistics. Do you want to monitor your writing by words or characters? Do you want to view daily or monthly counts? (You can do both.)
The popup Writing History window can be expanded by dragging the edges to make it easier to read the stats.
Problems replacing the Project’s writing history occur if you do not delete the original file and JUST REPLACE IT with the newly edited file.
Note: If your writing history is incorrect or corrupted then deleting the history (Or saving and removing from the project folder) will reset the writing history to a new zero.
The options you choose in the Project Targets Panel will affect the numbers generated in your Writing History.
You can export this information to a .csv (comma-separated values) file, which can be viewed in a spreadsheet program such as Excel or Google docs, for example.
You cannot edit your Writing History from inside of an open Scrivener project. However, the writing.history file in the Scrivener Project Folder can be edited. It is a simple .xml document. (Remove the old writing.history file, before pasting in the edited writing history.
Time changes while traveling can confuse the writing history narrative and alter a day’s count.
Exporting Writing History-
You can also export this information to a .CSV (comma-separated values) file that you can import into a spreadsheet program such as Excel or Google docs for example.
Click Export, choose which information you want to export (data based on days or months of writing.) In the upper right corner of the panel, you set the exported output as words or characters BEFORE you hit the export button.
Choose how to present the data.
Now this will bring up the explorer window to decide where you want to save the data as a .CSV file which can be imported into a spread sheet data program.
Editing the Writing History.
There isn’t a way to do it from within the project’s writing history settings themselves.
However, to start fresh/reset on your writing days statistics, you just need to edit the writing history XML file and delete unwanted days. Or delete the file entirely to restart the Project’s writing history.
The file that stores this data is a simple XML file that can be easily edited by a plain-text editor (OR deleted).
How to edit your Writing History:
Go to where your full Project Folders are stored and open the particular Project’s Project folder.
Project Name (Name of folder holding the entire Project Info) > Files > writing.history.
3. In this folder, open the “writing.history” file in a plain-text editor (such as notepad). ((Copy and paste the writing history file to your desktop in case a problem occurs with editing. This way the original file is untouched in case of errors.))Just make sure to not switch it to an RTF mode.
4. As a precaution, label the original writing history file "Old writing" in your project folder. If something goes wrong in this process, you can delete the edited writing history file you put in your Project folder and change the Old writing history back to "writing" history to restore the original history.
5. You’ll see a bunch of lines in here all starting with “<Day…”. Each line represents an entry in the list, with the date at the end of the data string. Look for the date/dates you want to remove (YYYY-MM-DD format), and delete the line/lines.
6. You can use the Writing History XML file to see the daily writing log since start of the project.
The codes in this document mean-
W = Words
C = Characters (some countries use this rather than words)
D = Draft (not ‘Daily’) — i.e, written in the main Drafts/Manuscript folder
O = Other (elsewhere in the Binder)
Dwc = Draft Word Count, Dcc= Draft Character count
Occ= Other (elsewhere in the Binder) character count, Owc= Other Word count
Now, save the edited file. Copy this and replace the original writing history file. Close it and reopen the project. You should now see the deleted word entry/entries removed from the list in Writing History.
You can trash the backup copy you created safely after you see this function properly.
Problems replacing the Project’s writing history occur if you do not delete the original file and JUST REPLACE IT with the newly edited file.
Note if writing history is incorrect or corrupted then deleting the history (or saving and removing from project folder) will reset the writing history to a new zero.
NOTE: You could have two of these, if your project is being written on two machines sharing the same Project. Each Project folder could have a unique writing.history file.
If you want to start fresh with a new writing history, then do the following:
Find your Project Folder and go to Files and see the writing.history file.
Use the Menu command Projects > Writing History to see if your new Writing History reflects your additions properly. If it does, then decide your options to monitor the Writing History. (Words or characters, and Daily, Monthly, or both) After choosing what you want, you can close the project.
Go to where the Project folder is and open the Files folder. You should now find a new writing history file in Your Project’s Files folder. You can open it in notepad to check that the only entry is today, and the numbers entered match what you did. Also, if you use Project Targets and Session Targets, check that they are still working as you expect.
Now you are done. Save the old writing history somewhere you will remember, in case you want to review the old Writing History.