[gmw]

Having recently been looking at software to aid in writing, and reading a couple of threads on this subject, I was curious about the emphasis on dynamic word-counts and writing goals.

Yes I check my current book's total word count, sometimes at the end of the day, sometimes every few days or week, but generally just to find out whether I've gotten too carried way (I can be very verbose, as anyone reading my posts here will have noticed already). I certainly don't watch the word count every few minutes. But then I don't write for a living, I don't have deadlines or specific publishing criteria that I'm trying to meet, so the concept of a writing goal (and pretty little graphs to show how much you've written each day over the last month) seem very strange to me. I'm aiming to finish my current book in the next few months, and the next one probably in about six months to a year after that, but that's about as far as I ever get. Which brings me to my question:

Do other writers really have writing goals? (x words per day or whatever.) What is their purpose? Do you find it helps even casual/hobby writing, or is it strictly a professional writer feature?