Word Sprint is for those of us that write lots and need to hit some sort of daily word target. Scrivener has a feature like this that shows you the word total for a specific writing session. I used it to finish a few books because it was a motivator to just keep going. I knew if I wrote about 2500 words a day I would finish my book in a timely fashion.

I’ve even seen numerous other writers use some variation of this idea. Maybe it’s 800 or 1500 or 200, but if you just keep writing daily then you’ll start finishing content that can be published in some form.

Word Sprint provides a number of settings for you to use.

For those that love Pomodoro Timers, it has one built-in and sets its default timeframe to 25 minutes of continual writing.

Word Sprint Pomodoro timer
Word Sprint Pomodoro Timer

Word Sprint can even prompt you if you’ve stopped writing.

Word Sprint nag warning
Word Sprint nag warning

The default setting is to remind you to keep writing after 10 seconds without activity, which feels too naggy to me. Sometimes I just need to think a bit about what I’m writing so I’ve set my warning to 30 seconds as I test out if that’s a better option.

It also has a total word count goal. I did use this when I wrote books in Scrivener, but I’m not sure it makes sense in the context of how I use Obsidian. Is the word count for my entire vault, a single folder that is going to be a book or…what? I don’t feel like this is clear from the settings and in my testing I wasn’t able to see a good way for this to work with a document.

When you finish a Word Sprint the plugin will give you a summary of what was accomplished during your sprint. I like this because it’s putting your accomplishments right in your face as you finish.

Word Sprint session summary
Word Sprint session summary

For those that are involved with a NANOWRIMO project Word Sprint even has integration with our account. If you link the two systems you will get automatic updates to your NANOWRIMO account based on the writing stats you produce in Obsidian that Word Sprint detects.

Finally, Word Sprint can encourage you as you’re writing. By default, it’s going to encourage you after writing 250 words, but you can customize that as needed. I don’t think I’ll ever use this feature, but if you need encouragement it’s there for you.

I do think that Word Sprint should be in your toolbox if you’re a writer using Obsidian for your manuscript. Unfortunately, the sprint doesn’t span different notes in Obsidian so if you’re jumping around in your manuscript to work on sections as ideas come to you, Word Sprint won’t track that work like Scrivener would.

If you could apply Word Sprint to a specific folder during a working session then the overall goals work would, assuming a folder contains a working manuscript, and maybe it could track the different files against your writing total as you go.

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Getting Started with Obsidian

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