PiBoIdMo Idea Meter

I am all set up and ready for PiBoIdMo (that's Picture Book Idea Month) to start tomorrow. Ok almost ready. I still need to decide how I want to record all these ideas, but I have a few options. Notebook, index cards, cork board and pins. I think I'm going to end up with a combination of all three to be honest. Over the course of the challenge (30 PB ideas in 30 days) maybe one of these will win out. Stay tuned to find out how they are all working!

November will be all about the ideas! So to keep visual track of how things are going I added a progress meter over there on the left. In case you are participating in PiBoIdMo (or NaNoWriMo) you can add this to your blog too!

Here's how I added mine.

First I Googled and found a progress meter I liked at http://honorless.net/progressbar.htm.
It was the first one I found that would let me go as low as 30. Most of what I found are for novel writers for NaNoWriMo and didn't like being set below a few thousand. (Any programers out there want to make a snazzy meter for us PB writers??)

This is a screen shot of the website. All I did was change the goal number from 50,000 to 30 and picked the font. Then click Refresh Code and copy all the text in the box.

Now the next part will be different depending on where your host your blog. But here's how I did it in Blogger.

From the Blogger Dashboard, go to the layout page and click add gadget. Choose the HTML/JavaScript Gadget.

A smaller window will pop up. Enter a Title for your meter then paste the code you copied from the website box in the Content box. Save and you're done!

There's mine!

You could save the website with the progress meter and repeat the process each time you update your meter. That is every time you add ideas! Or you can change the code by editing the gadget.

From the layout page on the dashboard, click EDIT in the bottom right hand corner of the gadget box. The following window will open.

Your total number of ideas is the BLUE box (here 10) and the RED boxes are the percentage you are finished. To find that number divide your number of ideas by 30 and multiply by 100. (I rounded a bit here. :) )

Then save and you're done!

I think I got all of it.

Here's to many great ideas in November!!