Why Spleen has no word goals

A word goal can tell you how much you wrote. It cannot tell you whether the writing got better.

Writing is not filling a bar

I understand why word goals are popular. A blank page is hard, and a number gives you something clear to aim for. On some days that may be exactly what gets you into the chair.

But Spleen does not have them, because I do not think the number says much about the work.

You might spend a day turning two thousand words into eight hundred better ones. You found the point of the scene, removed everything that got in its way, and made the whole thing easier to read. A counter only sees that twelve hundred words have gone missing. If your goal was to write a thousand, it calls that a bad day.

It was not a bad day.

Reaching the goal is not the same as getting better

Writing a thousand words does not make you a better writer just because you reached a thousand. Maybe you found a scene that mattered. Maybe you also kept writing after it was finished because the progress bar was not full yet.

That is what I do not want Spleen to push you towards. Once the goal is there, it is easy to start writing words for the sake of the number. The last two hundred words exist because the app asked for them, not because the story needed them. The goal gets met, but the writing does not get better.

If a daily target helps you write, there is nothing wrong with using one. I just do not want Spleen to decide that reaching it means you succeeded, or that missing it means you failed.

If you need something to work towards, I think it is more useful to write a few paragraphs and share them with a good friend. Not for praise, and not even for a full review. Just to find out whether what was in your head reached someone else.

A word count can only tell you that there are now more words. A friend can tell you where they smiled, where they got lost, or where they wanted to keep reading. That seems much closer to what writing is for.

What Spleen does instead

Spleen does not hide the word count. You can see it on the project overview page, because it can be useful to know how large your project has become. It is shown as information, not as a target.

Your project also has a shape, a structure, and a place where you left off. You can see where you are without being scored.

There is no streak to protect and no little celebration for adding enough words. You decide whether the day moved the work forward. Sometimes that means writing a lot. Sometimes it means deleting half a chapter. Sometimes it means fixing one sentence and going for a walk.

That is why Spleen has no word goals. It is not a missing feature. Leaving them out is a choice.