I wrote 1018 words in 27 minutes today.

I know this because WriteMonkey tells me this.

It also tells me that those numbers average out to give me a words-per-minute rating of a little over 37. But I also know that, during the early phases of the shift, I was spiking as high as 54 words-per-minute.

What do these numbers do for me? Not a whole hell of a lot.

They tell me that I had a pretty productive session (a heckin’ productive session actually, as my old goal back when I had lofty goals was 1200 words in an hour and I clipped along at nearly twice that). Which in turn tells me I made decent use of the time I carve out for myself when my coworkers are eating lunch (which I skip) and that that carving-out is worthwhile.

Then I go back and remember that I wrote almost 1000 words this morning in my drivel, and I’ll be punching out a few hundred within this very post. Which puts me north of 2000 words on the day, easily.

Which, you know, great, I guess? Numbers are just numbers after all. 2000 words is a pretty great day, productivity-wise, for me. It’d be a garbage day for some. It’d be almost unachievably awesome for others. But it’s just a number.

Kinda like the step counter I still wear on my wrist even though they’ve stopped being cool. (Gotta upgrade to a smartwatch so I can stay fresh, dawg.) Sure, it tells me my (approximate) steps per day (9121 so far!), and it (kinda) tracks my sleep, and it tells me (within a reeeally generous ballpark) my heart rate (61!). But what am I doing with that information?

Nothing, really. I mean, it’s there. It aggregates in cyberspace and could be used, at some point, to track trends over time. But I’m not actively monitoring it. I’m not doing anything with the information. Hell, corroborating that information was the first time I’ve opened the app at all in almost a month. I’m just not that fussed. I run three or four times a week and I’m on my feet all the time at work, so I’m not super worried about my daily steps. I sleep reasonably well (just don’t ask my wife about the snoring). So … there hasn’t really been a good reason for me to worry about these numbers.

But … quantifying things is good, right?

Well, with writing, it feels like it. The feeling that I had a productive session is a good one — and I would certainly have it after a day like today — but knowing — through hard data — that I tore the top off for a second day in a row? That’s quantifiable. That’s something I can point to. That creates a second wave of the GoodFeel I get from writing in the first place.

I am trying out WriteMonkey again for the first time in a while while I’m drafting some new stuff and toying around with some new ideas (now that the previous round of edits on the most recent novel are well and truly finished and in their graves RIP FOR ETERNITY). For the past few years I’ve worked almost entirely in Scrivener, which I love, but which has frustrated me with its endless delay of a massive update. I ranted about this, then googled my old flame, saw that it, too, had had some massive updates, and installed it again.

And you know what? It’s fun. It’s simple. And it has this lovely little carrot of tracking word count and WPM and progress and all that stuff — and Scrivener does that, too, make no mistake — but in WriteMonkey it’s there in the main window, it’s clean…

But maybe more than that is, it’s just different. I’ve been staring at Scrivener’s interface for so long, maybe I’m just a little sick of it. Maybe it’s the change that has me feeling good.

New project, new word processor, new president (WHOOPS I PROMISED I WAS DONE TALKING ABOUT THAT FOR A WHILE)…

Feels good.