“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life,” the screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan once said. 

Sometimes being a writer feels like that. It can be hard to stay on track, and keep doing that homework so you can get your writing projects done, when you’re up against life’s challenges, scheduling difficulties, and other distractions.

How can you find success, and not be undermined by writing habits that seem to prevent you from getting s*** done? If you’re like me, this is the issue that needs to be overcome.

You need to build into your writing life some mechanism to make sure you meet your goals, hit your deadlines, and devote the time needed to get your dozen poems, your short story collection, your novel, or your book proposal written. This is what I call accountability.

But before I get to accountability. To be sure, you also need to debunk and disempower the many prevalent and misguided ideas about writing, writers, creativity, and where writing comes from. These can be powerful myths that are hard to ignore — ideas concerning romantic and tragic stereotypes of the struggle, torture, substance abuse, and deprivation needed to fire your work and drive you forward (and drive you nuts). There’s also all kinds of hokum about when and how the muse visits. (FYI: The muse doesn’t visit. You just keep working.) Don’t fall for all of these. Exorcise all those demons from your mind.

But more concretely, I think most writing struggles that keep writers from accomplishing goals — from the psychological (fear, self-esteem, taking oneself seriously as a writer) to the practical (time management, scheduling, money), also known as “writer’s block” — really stem from poor work habits. My fears about the blank page, about whether what I am writing is any good, usually disappear once I’m actually writing.

So how to make sure you log the hours at your desk? This brings us back to accountability.

Think of accountability working in tandem with incentives. If you’re fearful, lazy, unconfident, scattered, or unmotivated, make sure there’s a stake in you completing that goal, then insert an incentive to make sure that you meet it.

This might be taking a class where you must make deadlines for your workshop; that peer pressure also makes sure you do your part. This might be agreeing to share your work with a writing partner. This might be buying a weekend at a cheap hotel in a boring destination so you can knock out that draft.

Or it might be simply telling your spouse, “I need a night (or day) away at a cafe or library. Can you please watch the kids?” You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish in a three or four hour block, if you eliminate those kinds of responsibilities and temptations.

You might also try rewarding yourself at the end of your writing session. You want to watch that garbage TV show or movie, or have a bowl of ice cream. Agree to wait till you’re done writing before you treat yourself with that figurative or literal junk food.

Or: Tell someone else your writing plans, agree to write for two hours first, then tell that person how it went. Simple.

In short, be accountable to someone, something. Think in terms of small steps and achievable goals. Break up goals into specific deadlines and accountabilities. Give yourself some incentives. Then do it.

Good luck.

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