Accountability for the Wannabe Writer

In sections 3 and 4 of James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers I found some accountability for the wannabe writer that I am.

First, I’m reminded that I need to focus more on improving my skilz. It’s not that I’m always thinking, “how can you improve on Awesomely Awesome?” It’s that I’m afraid to discover that my writing as it is now is as good as it gets. And maybe I’m a little lazy and afraid of how much work it will be to improve.

The good news is that one of the best tools for getting better exists brightly in the second bit of accountability: I need to write almost daily. Consistency is part of the reason I’m trying to blog through AOWFW. At this point, writing anything consistently is an improvement for me.

Bell introduces Anthony Trollope’s method of tracking the number of words written each day, with a weekly quota. I love playing with numbers, and the trap here is that I’ll be distracted and waste time playing with dismal numbers rather than improving them. To avoid that trap and gain the benefits of actually being disciplined (productivity and mad skilz – Tangent! There’s this relationship between organized and organic, discipline and creativity. Discipline makes space for creativity! Monkeys need monkey bars. Tangent over.), the quota system has to be kept simple. Just the naked numbers.

Well there’s no time like the present to look at naked numbers, so here goes. No fear. Today’s word count, in terms of fiction: zero. DOh!

But… the day isn’t over. Do I have the passion to stay up and crank out some more words when I’m end-of-week-tired? Do I have the courage to face the crappiness of what I write, and the faith to believe it will get better if I do?

[edit: For the record, Friday night I wrote 926 words, the second half of a short story draft.]

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