Back at the Beginning – Writing & Accountability

One week ago today, I sat in a coffee shop with a group of friends, and we started an accountability group. This was originally pictured perhaps as a writing group in which accountability was a major factor, but in discussions it changed to simply being about having a group of people to help hold you accountable for the things you need to get done that might otherwise slip by the wayside.

People in the group have various goals, from writing so many words (or in my case, blog posts) a week, to downsizing in advance of a move, to losing weight or eating healthier. I am, for now, sticking with just writing goals for this group. And part of that is that I have various other “accountability” groups for other goals in my life. I am in Weight Watchers, and that’s who helps hold me accountable for weight loss and healthier eating and living. I also am part of an online message forum dedicated to money issues, and that’s the place where I track my debt and my spending, and hold myself accountable for financial goals.

So for me, this group is about my writing goals, because my writing is one thing that has truly fallen by the wayside over the last two and a half years, and I miss it. I miss it terribly. My goals include writing two blog posts a week (and yes, I am barely squeaking it in with this one, the very first week of accountability, not the best start, but I blame being sick), and over the next couple of months establish a dedicated writing time for myself once a week. And then, once I have gotten back in the habit of simply writing, and dedicating time to it, my big goal is to complete the first draft of the novella I have been working on roughly a decade. By the end of the year.

Can I reach that goal? I believe I can, especially with the help of the accountability group. You see, I am a natural procrastinator. I need deadlines to be productive. I would like to claim that over the years I have gotten better about starting tasks earlier and balancing workloads so not everything comes down to the deadline. And occasionally, I do succeed at getting something done “early”. But those things still have deadlines. My writing does not currently. And I know, I need them. So, I set them, and now I have people who will hold me accountable to it.

Once upon a time, I wrote multiple blogs. I had 100 Words On, my daily, pop culture blog where each post was exactly 100 words. I had Life by Pets, which was my pet blog. I posted at least twice a week there, and then did a picture post on the weekends. There was Baking the Budget which became The Dog Ate My Wallet, which was my personal finance blog, and the place where I made my most blogging friends. I posted there regularly twice a week, often with some sort of blog round up and accountability post on weekends. I also had The Prose Passage, a blog about writing, that I posted on basically just whenever I felt like it.

And here is the thing, while I was writing all of those blogs, on self set deadlines, I was meeting those deadlines AND working on my fiction. The more I wrote, the easier it was to give myself time to write.

My life has changed considerably in the years since that was regular for me. But I have done it, and I know I can again. I need to make some changes to my life as it currently stands to get back into similar habits, but I know I can do it. And I am excited about doing it.

So here I am, telling not just my accountability group, but anyone who reads this, I am dedicated to at least two posts a week going forward. I think there will be one gratitude post a week, and then one other. I would like to start writing about personal finance again, and some things about the dogs, and sometimes pop culture or politics. But mostly I want to share what I write, to have somewhere to put it, to put my thoughts out there and let people comment if they so choose. Because even when I am not putting words on paper/screen, I am always writing. I am a writer. It is one of the core bits of my being. But I am happier (much like the purpose of the gratitude project) when I do put those words down and share them.