I hate accountability.
I don’t mean I ditch my responsibilities at any opportunity, or miss deadlines. No, I’m rather a stickler for the rules, so if I have a deadline, be sure I’d go a very long way to make it right.
What I’m talking about here is more of the tip a writer is guaranteed to get when he or she asks how to overcome a writer’s block and increase writing productivity: to find an accountability partner(s).
I HATE THAT!
As a shy introvert, I hate to share anything about myself, but more importantly:
Creativity is a very personal business.
It’s just the nature of the beast, and we can’t escape it. Whatever we write, it comes from inside of us.
Actually, it is so personal that even talking about your writing can feel uncomfortable.
For a shy introvert like me it means that even sharing ‘I wrote 1000 words today’ can be painful and feel like an intrusion into my private space, even though it contains nothing even resembling private information.
Unfortunately, following this feeling might really rob us of a great tool that would otherwise help us write.
That’s why I’m using this time when nobody (yet) reads my blog to start an accountability project for myself. I will probably drop it when I establish a steady routine I can follow without much thought or planning, but for now—I am trying this.
The overall goal of the project
To find out what works for me: the optimal time/place/schedule/writing goals that
- Leads to the best productivity,
- Sustainable in the long run.
My writing goals
So far I have these goals to help me make progress in my writing career:
- Write at least 1000 words/day 4 days/ week on my main project (a novel or novella),
- Edit what already written (~3000 words/day, 2 days/week),
- Write short story (a page, 2 days/week),
- Write to the blog (undefined so far),
- Do publishing preparations (undefined),
- Learn about writing and publishing (undefined).
Some of these goals are not only set, but I have some kind of schedule/structure about them (writing the main project). The rest are sort of a mess, and that’s what this project for. So far, I just piled them together with writing short stories, and I also do some of them on the main project day, but it feels so chaotic and unstructured that I must do something about them.
What I am going to do
Every day, I will write a short post that tells:
- The amount of work done that day, goals met/failed, etc,
- Some reflections on what happened that day: was it easy to reach the goal of the day, why I failed, what can I do better, etc.
By every day I mean only my working day. I reserve one day a week (it’s usually Saturday) to take a break, and there will be days when I take unplanned breaks (for various reasons).
Well, I think that’s it. I’m starting tomorrow.
