Instant Accountability with Blogging

Have you ever considered the concept of “accountability?”

Accountability is having someone to answer to for… well, anything you might consider doing. It’s like having a workout partner when you go the gym (an analogy you have heard before). If you don’t have a partner, you’re more likely to make excuses for not going. It’s raining today, I’m tired from yesterday, I need to get extra sleep, my muscles are sore, whatever — these are just some of the excuses we tell ourselves to avoid going to the gym. If you know your workout partner is expecting you to meet them and go to the gym with them, however, you are a lot less likely to make an excuse for fear of disappointing your partner.

Accountability is just as important when it comes to writing. Let me tell you something about all writers, including the writer(s) who wrote this post: writers are all self-indulgent. Left to our own devices, we will often “force things,” or write things that are too long, or take off on flights of fancy that simply do not work (but which we won’t admit don’t work because we are reluctant to “kill our darlings”). The only way to prevent these problems is to be accountable to someone else.

Accountability can take many forms, but what it means is that you’ll have instant feedback when working out material. If the material doesn’t work, the people to whom you are accountable will tell you. If it isn’t funny when it’s supposed to be, or it’s hilarious when it shouldn’t be, they’ll tell you. If it’s too long or too short, they’ll tell you. Often, these “accountability partners” are mentors or beta readers (who will give feedback on rough drafts). But when it comes to blogging, you can get instant accountability for any project, any writing experiment, and any time you want to test some material from a forthcoming book.

“Accountability separates the wishers in life from the action-takers that care enough about their future to account for their daily actions.” – John Lemme

That’s right: All you have to do is blog about it. Your readers will comment and provide you with feedback (sometimes more than you want). It’s important to remember that, while it’s good to be accountable, you also want to take some comments with a grain of salt. (Not everybody knows what they’re talking about, in other words.) Instead, look at the aggregate of the responses.

For example, if you try out some new material and the response is overwhelmingly positive or negative, you know you’re on the right (or wrong) track. If response is mixed, you know that you need to drill down a little in terms of targeted audiences, because some folks like it and some folks don’t. You may also be pleasantly surprised by the suggestions you get from your readers. Nobody brainstorms quite like a diverse group of fans.

Blogging isn’t just a means of being accountable for the content of your writing, remember. It will also help keep you accountable for the frequency of your writing. If you establish that you post every week on, say, Wednesday, your readers will notice and comment if you don’t. In that way they become your writing “workout partners” to keep you on track.

Always find ways to be accountable, especially through your blog. This is a powerful took both for exploring your work and how it resonates with your audience, and for shoring up good writing habits while discouraging bad ones.

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*This blog was written 100% by a human and contains no AI-generated written content.