Accountability

The biggest problem I have with writing—with any creative endeavor, really—is holding myself accountable. NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy aside, I don’t have deadlines, except for the ones I impose on myself, and I find it really easy to let those ones slide. I mean… I don’t talk about specific projects much until they’re close to done. If I don’t get them finished in the time I’d hoped (or at all), no one really knows but me.

I write to-do lists, and keep track of my progress, but habit is actually my biggest motivator. When I’ve got a good routine going, writing every day for a month or so, it gets easier to ignore the little voice that tells me it doesn’t really matter if I don’t quite reach my goals for that week… I can make it up later. I’ll have the notebook or file opened before I even realize it, and once I’ve got a few hundred words on the page, I might as well keep going.

The problem with this approach is that when something happens to disrupt the routine, I find it incredibly difficult to pick it back up again.

Back in March, I reached the end of the notebook I was using to keep track of my writing progress. I didn’t think much of it—I still kept track of my daily word counts on a piece of paper, and kept forgetting to pick up a new book when I was in the store. It wasn’t a huge priority, anyway: I was still hitting about 2000 words a day. In April, Script Frenzy gave me a proper deadline to think about.

In May, I fell out of the daily-writing habit in a truly spectacular fashion, and I’ve been struggling to get it back ever since.

On the weekend, I picked up a new notebook, and I spent a few hours recording what little progress I’ve made in the past four months. It’s not quite the system I was using before, but, so far, I think I like it better. I set myself a deadline and target-wordcount for the story I’m currently working on.

And, to add a little bit of peer-pressure to the mix, I decided to put those goals on the front page of this site, along with a progress-bar, so you can see if I’m sticking to it. Feel free to nag me if the bar stalls for too long. (Though I’ll tell you upfront—I’m probably not going to be getting much work done the week of the 28th.)

I’m only a few days in, but it seems to be working so far. This is the first time in months that I’ve hit my weekly targets. I’ve written more in the past few days than I did in the entire month of June. I’ve almost reached a point where I don’t have to talk myself into writing every morning.

Maybe it’s a little early, but I think I may be getting things back under control.

Finally.