Targets & Writing History
A calm progress view that counts committed prose, not noisy keystrokes or autosave retries.
Updated
Open Targets & Writing History from the progress icon beside Chapter History in the main toolbar. Set a daily or weekly habit, a destination for the whole manuscript or one chapter, a dated sprint, or a target attached to a revision pass. A goal can count new words, words touched, characters, or minutes at the desk. The tool opens as a right-side drawer; opening another right-side drawer closes it, so manuscript tools never stack over one another.
Targets That Mean What They Say
- Daily and weekly targets count new prose committed during that period
- Manuscript and chapter targets measure the current size of the actual text, and can carry a finish date
- Sprints have an inclusive start and finish date, including sprints planned for later
- A target can measure words touched — everything written plus everything cut — so a day spent revising counts as the work it was
- A target can measure minutes at the desk instead of words, for the days when the words will not come
- A target can be attached to a revision pass, so it runs from the day that pass started and counts only the chapters the pass covers
- Only one active target of the same kind applies at once; replacing one keeps the earlier target in history
Today's Pace
- Give a target a finish date and ChapterMuse works out what each day has to carry
- Tell it which days of the week you write, and the maths only spreads work across those days
- Miss a day and tomorrow’s number rises; write past it and the number falls — and the panel always says which of those just happened, so a figure never changes without a reason
- Take today off with one press; a rest day is absorbed into the days that remain rather than counted as a day you failed to write
- A line shows what you have written against the pace you needed, and a projection names the date you will actually finish on at your pace this fortnight
An Honest Ledger
- Typing, paste, and snippet work can advance a goal and a writing streak
- Today’s work is shown as words written and words cut either side of a centre line, with the two added together as the headline — a heavy editing day reads as a heavy day
- Imports, restores, Find & Replace, undo and redo, and automated fixes are named as tool changes and excluded, rather than quietly dropped
- Sessions separate after a natural period of inactivity, and each one is listed with how long it ran and how many words an hour it moved
The Year
- A calendar of the last year, one square per day, shaded against your own writing days rather than a fixed word count
- Revision passes are drawn as bands beneath it in their own colours, so you can see what you were working on and when
- Totals for words written, days worked, and time at the desk across the whole book
- A breakdown of where the words went, chapter by chapter
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A writing target is a compass, not a judgement. Archive it whenever the book asks for a different rhythm; your manuscript and its writing ledger remain intact.