Accountability Systems

After a conversation with Olivia yesterday, we talked about accountability or lack thereof and why we can’t seem to keep a proper daily discipline of writing habits. Several conversations in the last month has revealed how close our personalities are in terms of how we view life, work, and craft… along with risk/reward systems, etc. So we got to talking how if we could potentially help each other again with keeping up good daily habits.

Here are three questions I threw at her (and for myself to answer):

1. What made previous accountability partners or systems fail?
2. What made them work? Is there one that’s still working but maybe in another aspect of your life? Why? (Rewards/punishments)
3. Based on the above… what are some ideas of how you’d want this for work?

Previous Systems

• Garage Fiction 1.0 was Dogwood, Nicholas, and I. The forcing function was a podcast episode where we had to have one piece done, submitted, and we had to critique each others’ pieces (1000 word limit per submission). Because it was just the three of us, the critique load was low. The podcast was exciting because it was new. The writing was also exciting because it was something I had not done since the 2006-2007 attempt at writing fiction (which produced the grand total of one novellete. So a lot of “newness”, a lot of figuring things out, a lot of built-up energy from not having done it for almost a decade. Unfortunately, it stopped abruptly the moment we took a break when I went to Tokyo for my annual family trip in October 2015. We had a 36 week run there. Every week, we had to submit a flash and jump on a podcast to talk about it. I think Dogwood and I were also obsessed and truly thought we could/would break into the Kindle market, which was getting really hot in 2015.
• I think in 2017, LJK and I did something where we tried to hold each other accountable with a shared spreadsheet. She was working on her ecommerce site and needed to produce daily content to keep the SEO train going. I was, I dunno, I think I was dealing with copywriting stuff. THis was after I abandoned Garage Fiction 2.0 because it was getting too much, and I needed to start generating higher levels of income again. Trying to overcome procrastination. I think this only lasted for two months because, one, there was no common purpose. Two, there was no check-in aside from text messages and emails. And three… there was no consequences or benefits. Like, if LJK didn’t do her thing for the day, it didn’t mean anything. She reported it to me. And I was like. Well, that sucks. I’m sorry you had a bad day. And on my side, she would also say the same nice things about how hard I work, and how I have a family, and I’m doing too much. Maybe it was personality fit?
• In 2012, I did something similar with KB. It was a daily check-in. Like a text message at a agreed upon time. And that one, just like the LJK one above, didn’t really do much. If you missed a text or call, so what? Eventually I just ignored his calls. Also, KB was such a huge flake and never delivered anything on time, and in some cases, didn’t deliver at all, so he was a shitty partner to model after. He was also a Master of Apologies. You literally felt bad about his situation everytime you got on a phone with him. And yeah, maybe he was going through tough times, but that’s not how a business functions. I’m sorry.
• Garage Fiction 2.0 got very little fiction actually written if I recall. I mean, I tried to do the whole 1000 words/day thing but I didn’t have a plan, and I just felt like I was throwing words at the wall. Ultimately, I did finish three stories: Founders, The Aquarium, and I wrote a LOT of words for the Gregory-Time-Machine story that I had no idea if it was going to be a novel or what. What didn’t work here was, I don’t think I had a clear idea of what the metrics were for getting a story done, nor a clear structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Despite spending a shit ton of time analyzing short stories in 2017… or at least, the beginning of that year, I felt like I was floundering and circling whenever I had to write. I’d like to think that with MRK’s guidance now, and seeing her process, I can actually write and complete short stories.
• But going back to accountability… I think the late 2016/early 2017 period of Garage Fiction 2.0 was overall, NOT productive. Olivia and I spent way too much time organizing, running, and designing the podcast, the covers (omg, we spent so much time and energy on the covers in Canva), keeping everyone together, holding everyone accountable. And what really killed that group was that one writer dumped us with 2-4k of words EVERY WEEK. He was just dumping his pre-written chapters on to us from a novel he’d already finished. Another writer was really new and we had to slog through thousands of words that made no sense. And we ended up critiquing more words (on top of running the podcast) than ACTUALLY doing the work. (Which is why Garage Fiction 3.0 (2023-????) is simplified to mental health check-ins and not critiques).
• OK, that went off on a tangent. Let’s summarize Garage Fiction 2.0. It was a lot of work surrounding the work, circling the work, and doing stuff to support the work… but not actually doing any of the actual work. I guess to summarize it even simpler, the actual work was not the priority. Did we have to get something submitted to each other before each episode? Yes. But I dunno. Maybe it was simply the size of the group and the way it was set up. I mean, for fuck’s sake, we had two podcast teams going at the same time. Bryan had Alex, Chris (who never did anything and we eventually kicked out), Anthony, Dave, and “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”. On my end, we had Olivia, L.L., John, and sometimes Alex. It was way too many people for a critique group, much less accountability.
• Something else I learned after yesterday’s critique session with the MRK Short Story Cohort is how MRK breaks critiques into three levels: symptoms, diagnosis, and prescription. And that framework helps you critique work much faster if you restrict everyone to symptoms only (reader reactions). But this has nothing to do with accoutability. Moving on.
• Alicja and I wrote sketches in 2022. We set aside two hours on Thursday every week. But ultimately, we didn’t write much until we hired Devin. Because it was a weekly thing and we had to go somewhere (far) and we paid Devin money… we actually got sketches written. But once that 8-week coaching class stopped, we didn’t write much and resorted to watching TV shows during our blocked time. So is it simply paying someone? Because…
• I have gone to the gym non-stop since 2017 now. Minus COVID-19, family vacations, and business trips… and the occasional sickness or bad scheduling… I have been there three times a week. What worked here? My attitude for one. I’ve been telling myself for seven years now: “I don’t love this, I don’t hate this, I simply have to do this”. But over the past couple of years… it has become more of a consequence. If I don’t go to the gym, my body just aches and hurts. My right shoulder is shot from two decades of sedentary computer work. My back constantly cracks. My lower back gets sprained easily (especially after Feb 2023 when I did one squat wrong and it still twinges once in a while). I literally have to keep this up or my body breaks apart now. Hurray for being in my forties. Yes, I pay Randy. Yes, I block time out. But there’s also very clear pain if I don’t do it now. So is pain the driving factor?
• Because if you think about it, I mean, I still work every day… like everyone who’s not financially independent. Regardless of how I feel, I still land projects, deal with clients, and make money. If I don’t, my family would be out on the streets. So does it have to be “existential”?
• What about Osmosis Weekly (2021-2023)? From the get go, I had 50 readers and it just grew from there. I felt an obligation to the readers I did have. So every week, I put out an issue. I made it a commitment publicly to this audience that eventually grew to 1200 that I would write stuff to them every week. Of course, that was until I tried to monetize it and it didn’t and I was like, fuck this, why am I doing this. The family vacation to England/Scotland really helped put the final nail in the coffin when I got a chance to take a break and actually reflect on things. I also blame Ian for making me reflect on life’s deeper questions.
• The same could be said about Ship 30 for 30 and “building an audience” on Twitter. I got my Twitter numbers up because Ship 30 was really good at making everyone in the cohort write daily. Everyone was doing the same thing together at the same time publicly. There was almost a sense of competition amongst all the people. We were all trying to keep our streak going. So I stayed up late to hit that 250 word atomic essay even if I was dead tired.
• What about tools? Did tools ever help? I had the Pomodoro app on my phone for a bit. That lasted a couple of months in 2014? 2015? I forget. I got a Timeular from Alicja in 2022? I stopped using it after four or five months… but I’m using it again right now. Not to keep a word count streak or anything… but more of collecting data so I can keep my eyes on how much time I’m spending on what and where. And because of MRK, I’m fooling around with 4thewords. I think at the end of the day, the tools themselves don’t help with accountability.

Conclusions from the Above Word Vomit

• Common elements of ways that accountability don’t work:
  • No stakes
  • Too much “work circling the real work”
  • Tools
• Common elements of ways that accountability HAS worked:
  • Paid someone or…
  • Weekly deliverable where you “show up” (podcast/forum that’s public)
  • Existential (if you don’t do it, you will hurt/lose stuff/go hungry)
  • Common/clear purpose (e.g. we’re all doing the same thing with similar goals)
  • Same level of commitment (if people drop off, let them… but the core keeps going)
  • No passion/preciousness (I don’t love nor hate, it’s just something I do)

I hate to say this, but I feel like the commonality is really a “shaming mechanism”. And the times where this has worked best for me is if there is a weekly deliverable that’s PUBLIC. With the podcast, I had no idea who was listening, but people did download it, and I could see the numbers in SoundCloud. With Osmosis, I had subscribers. Many of whom were replying back to my newsletter. Many of whom were people who I know IRL (neighbors, local friends, my freaking accountant?).

So maybe – just maybe – Olivia and I need to do a weekly podcast again and report our wordcount and struggles?