Word Count and Verification
How do I update my word count?
How often should I update my word count?
How do I verify if I’m writing by hand?
Can I scramble my novel before submitting it to your untrustworthy word-counting goons?
What if there’s a discrepancy between what my word count said and what yours comes up with?
How do I update my word count?
You can update your word count by entering your total cumulative word count in the field on the top of your screen and hitting “update”. You can also use the novel info module to update your word count.
The word count module (and other novel info like title, genre, synopsis, and cover art) is in your profile page. You will first need to create a novel before these options will unlock for you.
To find it, go to My NaNoWriMo in the main menu, then click “Edit Novel Info”.
You have two options here:
- Word Count: Simply enter your total cumulative word count (no punctuation please, just numbers) in this box, then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click Save.
- Word Count Validator: Click “I am ready to validate my novel.” Copy the entire contents of your novel, and paste it into the box that comes up. Click submit. Our word count robots will count your words, then delete the file unseen by human eyes. We don’t keep a copy of your novel anywhere on our site.This option may be greyed out during times of high traffic. During those times, just update your count manually. After November 25th, the word count validator can be used to validate your novel and claim winner status.
All methods of updating your word count will overwrite the previous entry in the database. If you enter the incorrect word count, simply update it again with the correct one.
Note: Copying and pasting novels of more than 120,000 words into the validator usually does not work. We recommend you validate before hitting 120,000, and then update your word count manually from that point!
How often should I update my word count?
There is no set time, but it is extremely satisfying to see your stats updated, so consider a daily update. Also, your stats get added to the total for your Home Region, so do it for your fellow Wrimos!
I accidentally messed up my word count yesterday/missed the midnight deadline, and now my graph is messed up. Can I edit that day’s count?
Absolutely! No longer are you stuck with a wonky graph. Until November 30th at midnight, local time, you can manually edit each day.
To find this, click on My NaNoWriMo. This will take you to your public profile. Click on the Stats tab. There’s a big blue box on the left side, beside your graph. Under that box is a little link entitled “Edit Word Count By Day.”
This will bring you to your retroactive word count editing page! Enter the correct, cumulative total you wrote for that day, and save. Your graph should now be correct!
How do I verify if I’m writing by hand?
Invoke the Luddite Clause!
What you do is write your 50,000 words, then have someone you trust verify that it is, indeed, 50,000 words. Then using something like the Lorem Ipsum generator, submit a file of the exact number of words of your handwritten manuscript to our word count validator.
Can I scramble my novel before submitting it to your untrustworthy word-counting goons?
If you are using Microsoft Word it is very easy to scramble your novel in a way that will not affect its word count.
- Open the file and make a new copy of your novel using ‘Save As…’
- Open the Find and Replace dialog box (Edit -> Replace).
- Click the “More” button to expand the box.
- Check the “Use Wildcards” checkbox.
- In the “Find What” field, put this: [a-zA-Z0-9] (include the square brackets, no spaces before or after)
- In the “Replace With” field, put this: a
- Click “Replace All”
- Save the scrambled file as a text file, and upload away!
The procedure for Open Office is essentially the same, except that Open Office refers to ‘Regular Expressions’ instead of ‘Wildcards’. (Thanks to Peter Dudley for this advice!)
You can get the same effect in a more cumbersome way by just doing a find-and-replace on every letter in the alphabet, one letter at a time. Open the find-and-replace interface on your word processing program and tell it to replace every “b” in your story with an “a,” and every “c” with an “a,” then every “d” with an “a.” And so on.
What if there’s a discrepancy between what my word count said and what yours comes up with?
Word counters rarely agree with each other, and there is a good chance there will be a discrepancy between our counter and the one on your word processor. Some people gain words and others lose them. We’ll have the official word counter available before the end of the challenge (in My NaNoWriMo –> Novel Info) where you can copy & paste your current draft for our count.
*Please note that word counts can vary by as much as 1,000 words. Over the years, we’ve noticed that participants who are working in Open Office often find that their word count doesn’t match up with our validator. Please make sure to check your count on our validator prior to November 30th, so that you can see what your total number is.
