Tracking word count is an interesting idea, and I can even kinda see how it could be used (especially with single-file RTFs) to track degree of change by using a version compare setup – say, co-opting Git. (It'd be a very off-label use for Git. Which makes it kinda hacky, which is conceptually kinda appealing. Actually, I feel like it'd be interesting to compare my mental paradigms for web development with story development, even if I didn't actually end up using that sort of software in a fiction context. Hmm.) I don't really have a system to track daily wordcounts in place, even though that would probably be a useful metric. *scratches chin*

And that's interesting! I know that Scrivener allows you to take snapshots of documents at different stages, though I rarely ever use that feature; actually, aside from the fact that I do drafts in different files and sometimes email myself copies of files at different stages as a soft backup, I don't maintain much of a record of internal, in-process changes.