How do you guys keep yourselves accountable when it comes to writing?  I have to admit, I’m not particularly good at it.  It seems like some months (or weeks) I just have better success with writing than others.  Sometimes I can’t stop clicking away at the keyboard… and other times I just stare at that blinking cursor.

One way I keep myself accountable is by the use of a Bullet Journal. I have two bullet journals that I keep with me at all times – my daily bullet journal, which acts as a planner, and my writing bullet journal, which is where I jot down notes here and there. I don’t use my writing bullet journal regularly at all and unlike my daily bullet journal, which I spend hours and hours designing, coloring, and drawing out perfectly straight lines with a ruler, my writing bullet journal is not pretty or decorative at all. Half the time I only use black pens and don’t even jazz it up with color.

It’s through my daily bullet journal, though, not my writing bullet journal, that I try to keep myself accountable when it comes to writing. Every month, I, along with many other bullet journalers out there, do a “habit tracker” where I track my habits. For me, this includes making my bed (which I have done since starting a habit tracker without fail), eating at home (I used to eat out so much – and still kind of do), flossing (eek!), exercising (which I’m also bad at doing, excluding my weekly tennis lessons), taking vitamins, and then reading and writing.

I think reading is just as important as writing. I could write an entirely new blog post on how I went from bookworm to hardly ever picking up a book. I’ve been trying to change that and forcing myself to read more and enjoy more books, so I also track accountability on reading.

Here’s where my April tracker is thus far:

As you can see, I don’t write every day.  The worst part is, I used to be incredibly strict about how I marked off for writing in my tracker – that meant I had to have written 500 words or more of a current WIP or a new story.  This month, I have changed it up a bit – if I write something, even something short, that I’m proud of, I mark off for writing.  If I work on editing, I mark off for writing.  If I draft up a query or something to that extent, I mark off for writing.  Still, we’re about halfway through April and I’ve only “written” 6 times??

The more alarming revelation from my tracker is how little I’ve read this month.  I wish I had a picture of the pile of books by my bed, all of which I have at least glanced at (and one which sustained some severe water damage – can’t wait to explain that to my librarian), but none finished.  I go through these phases where I just can’t seem to get into anything…

…that said, even though I have done a limited amount of reading this month, I have been reading more of the genre that I want to write, and while I obviously do not steal the voices from the authors in my own writing, I do feel as though reading works by others helps make my own writing stronger.  This isn’t a new revelation, but something I have to work hard to keep in mind.

Back to writing.  Another way I’ve tried to hold myself accountable is by setting a daily word goal or the like, and detailing in a calendar view how many words for that day I wrote.  Let me put it this way – this never works out for me.  Ever.  (1) I don’t like to force myself to write if I’m not feeling it and (2) even if I do write every day, I’ll forget to update the calendar.

Here’s my example from this past November, when I completed NaNoWriMo:

According to my stats from this past year’s NaNo, I reached 50,000 words by November 15, and it looks like I updated my word count every day. However, this is not revealed by looking at this calendar – which clearly just goes to show that I stopped updating.

I’ll keep playing around with ways to keep myself accountable.  I know many people have writer friends, but my writer friends and myself seem to encourage each other not to write sometimes (haha) because we know how difficult it can be.  In the meantime, my tracker is a pretty good indication to me on whether or not I need to get my butt into gear and… WRITE!

*In case anyone is worried about this Peter fellow and why my bullet journal indicates I’m traveling to see him or at his place, he’s just my boyfriend. We’re long distance – talk about interfering with my writing schedule! But, I do come up with some good ideas on the 4-hour drive to see him! 🙂