The Secret to Sticking With It: Why We Love TrackBear

Writing takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes. It’s easy for our daily routines and obligations to make us postpone writing until we feel motivated. But what if your motivation came from seeing progress throughout the entire creative journey? And what if you tracked and celebrated your progress alongside others? These features are why TrackBear has become so fundamental to the Rogue Writers community. It’s not just a word counter! We’ll show you how we use it to make the most of our creative journeys, both written and visual.

Writing: More Than Counting Words

Have you ever felt discouraged by not reaching a minimum word count goal, or felt like your hard work wasn’t worthwhile? Before discovering TrackBear, it frustrated me that everything seemed to boil down to counting words. Sure, a graph of your weekly word count looks nice, but what good is writing 2,000 words a day for a month if you end up abandoning your project?

A writer’s life includes organising scenes, creating characters, and editing chapters, among many other things. These tasks seemed invisible in my progress until TrackBear came along and showed us we could measure our advancement in different ways.

After all, numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the complete story either.

Measuring Your Way

While a physical notebook works for many, I’ve found a level of flexibility with TrackBear that’s truly game changing.

For those who work on multiple projects or goals simultaneously, the web app lets you track each one individually. The Rogue Writers are, ultimately, storytellers — some of our members’ stories are expressed in visual art, music, or graphic novels. So, the ability to measure progress with more than just words — like time, chapters, or scenes — incorporates our whole community and gives us much more freedom.

Time tracking has been especially useful for many of us. It not only provides a different perspective on your progress, but it also helps us value the hours we spend on tasks like research, editing, or even drawing. It also helps those who need to establish a creative habit — tracking and establishing a 15-minute-per-day creative habit can be life changing. This makes popular challenges that focus solely on strict writing goals, such as 50,000 words a month, just one of many options available to groups now.

Is it Safe? Is it Free?

Yes and yes! This is what the TrackBear website says about that:

“TrackBear is designed with privacy in mind and will always be free to use. TrackBear isn’t a social network, a chat platform, or AI-powered, and there is no premium tier or pay-to-play. There are no ads, no third-party tracking, and no data harvesting. It’s just a place for you to track your writing.”

Teaming With Success

Even though it’s not a social network, TrackBear has an incredibly useful social feature: leaderboards!

No matter what our individual goals are, or how we choose to measure them, leaderboards let creatives join groups and compare their progress to others’. During the RAWR months (our annual Rogue Writers challenge: Rogue’s Amazing Word Rush), this feature fosters not only our progress but also our friendships.

At first glance, TrackBear leaderboards might look like a competition, but I see it more like a relay race. We’re not trying to surpass each other — we’re supporting each other, cheering each other on, and passing the baton forward.

Rogue Writers Say

Here’s what some of our Rogue Writers have to say about TrackBear:

• “I use TrackBear every single day. I don’t track writing progress any other way since I started using it. It knows what it’s for and it stays in its lane and it does its job without crashing or deleting my stuff ‘accidentally’. Easy to use and worth my support.” – Mr Dave Writes

• “TrackBear is my favourite and most recommended tracker because everything on the site is vital to project tracking. No clutter, and the site is easy to use on your own or as part of a leaderboard – which is such a great addition to standard project tracking.” – Def13d-Jax

• “Being able to alternate between different projects and objectives has not only helped me to focus, but also to value the time I spend on them.” – Eitan Estheim

Write With Us!

Looking back on my own journey, I’ve realized that the challenges we do in Rogue Writers are so much more effective than others I’ve tried. And it’s not just because of their flexibility, but because of the amazing community behind them.

Are you tired of writing alone and ready to join us? It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out, have been writing for years, have a project halfway done, or don’t know where to begin. At Rogue Writers, everyone has a place.

Learn more about us and join our Discord to start creating with us today. Our next monthly challenge begins on September 1st, and we’d love you to create alongside us!