If you want to get serious about writing, the first commitment you must make is to write every day. Sounds easy ? More than often, it's not. You will come up with excuses like "why do I need to write if I haven't got ideas ? And it's not NaNoWriMo... Why bother ?"
Soon you'll learn that procrastination is a very bad thing for your (writing) health. (But that's another story)

Tracking your writing progress is a great way to ensure you're doing your daily duty. Here are four tools which can help you, both online and offline.

Excel : numbers, cells, formulas. Do I need to introduce it ?

• Pros : you can track everything. What is your writing pace ? How many words left ? And what about a cool graph to sum up everything ?
  
• Cons : seeing all these numbers can make you focus on quantity rather than regularity.
  

Joe's Goals : a website where you can track the achievement of mini-goals throughout the weeks.

• Pros : much more minimalistic than Excel. You only have to check a little box to validate your writing day. So you focus more on your regularity.
  
• Cons : since it's a webpage with login and everything, you may forget to update it.
  

A regular calendar : get a monthly view (or yearly view) calendar and color your writing days.

• Pros : everyone can see if you're writing regularly and blame you when you "break the chain". No computer needed.
• Cons : no difference is made between days where you wrote 3 words and the ones where you wrote 3,000.

A regular logbook : buy a notebook/agenda and write down your daily wordcount.

• Pros : there's also room for comments about how you felt about your writing (or to-do lists, plot flashes... you get the idea).
  
• Cons : hard to get an overview of your monthly/yearly progress.
  

I tested these four methods (and many combinations, too) and for the moment, I'm using the regular calendar + the logbook. But what about you ? Which tools do you use to track your progress, your wordcount or your regularity ?

Web 2.0 start pages are the new hype. But the challenge consists in using them wisely. I will talk about how using Netvibes could help you to write. A novel, a short story. Anything.

What is Netbives ?

Netvibes is a customizable web 2.0 start page, much like Pageflakes or iGoogle. For non-techies, it allows you to build a private web page containing any info from the web, with drag'n'drop controls, pretty colors and everything. This article is Netvibes-centered because that's the one I use (and I will share Netvibes tabs, too). But you can use any AJAX start page service. Mashable has a comparison article on web 2.0 start pages. Check it out !

Why Netvibes ?

When you're writing, you must get rid of distractions. Offline distractions are easy to manage (power off the TV, close your door...). But if you write on an internet-enabled computer, you must cope with online distractions : flash games, instant messengers... Netvibes is a good way to sort "useful" from "bad" uses. How about a writing dashboard with writing prompts, dictionary and inspirational pictures on a single page ?

Here are 4 tabs ideas to create your own "Writingvibes". If you've got a Netvibes account, just click on the button to import the tab into your account.

Tab 1 : Inspiration
Writers get their ideas from everywhere. So try to put a bit of everything in your inspiration tab. My tab contains Ask Metafilter, One Sentence Story, Netvibes Image Search and some other writing prompts websites. But you could, for example, add the Delicious/tag/inspiration feed,a MP3 feed or a TV program feed.

Tab 2 : Coffee break
Reward yourself with a little break, but don't quit Netvibes or your 5-min-break will turn to 2-hour-random-surfing-on-wikipedia-and-youtube. My preference goes to webcomics about writing, writing forums and the very instructive Limyaael's rants journal.

Tab 3 : Language
Depending on your language proficiency, you may need quick fixs on some words or sentences. And what about foreign language words ? Ninjawords and Babylon Translator Widget are my picks, because they fit nicely in Netvibes boxes and they do a great job too. For language-specific needs, you will have to look by yourself. (Mini-tip : if you're into swedish, this translator is very handy)

Tab 4 : Quick notes
Nothing impressive here. That's just 6 blank "webnotes" widgets. Now, use them as index cards, rearrange them with drag'n'drop and change colors. Character sheets, plotting, editing notes... Be creative !

I hope that this article gave you ideas to transform Netvibes into a writing framework ! Remember that you can add almost anything you want (with a bit of "hacking", any web page or form will fit in the "Web Page" module). Try to-do lists (Remember The Milk Widget), writing podcasts... And of course, don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments !

September is here. It means I have 2 months to finish my NaNoWriMo 2006 and to plan/prepare my NaNoWriMo 2007.

Will I do a long outline ? If you read my previous post, you'll now my answer is "no". But as I'll write in english (which isn't my mother tongue), I'll prepare myself by writing long chunks of text (this blog, background info on my novel...) and getting tons of reference websites (grammar, words...).

But enough about me : NaNoWriMo is also a collective experience.

Here are 5 NaNoWriMo bloggers who are preparing for the big event !

• Gaz is doing NaNoWriMo for charity

• Moonfire is a programmer, a gamer, and a future NaNo participant !

• Dave dreamt about his NaNoWriMo 2007 !

• CornerScribe is starting a series on novel-building, NaNo in mind, of course.

• Fwengebola is forcing himself to take the challenge !

The pre-countdown has started ! And what about you ?