5 Best Self-Accountability Tips For Writers

Are you stuck at home and struggling to write? In this post, we share the five best self-accountability tips for writers.

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Are you currently stuck at home, and wondering how to keep your writing productivity at a high level? In this post, you’ll discover the best ways to keep yourself accountable and hit your writing goals, even if your favourite café, office, or co-working space is currently closed.

It’s high time that you take things in your own hands and put in place these five self-accountability tips for writers.

5 Best Self-Accountability Tips For Writers

1. Use A Timer For Your Writing Sessions

When you self-isolate, work time and personal time can blend into a fuzzy mixture that results in procrastination and under-performance. That’s why you need to separate writing sessions from other crucial tasks like binge-watching a Netflix series or scheduling a Zoom conference with your friends. And by far the best way to keep yourself on track is to use a timer for your writing sessions.

It can be a kitchen timer or a digital timer on your phone. I regularly set my timer for 60 minutes, and during this time I do nothing but writing. As a result, at the end of the session, I end up with 800-1200 words. This works best in the early morning when both caffeine and willpower levels are at their peak.

2. Install A Habit Tracking App

This is another fantastic way to spot patterns in your writerly behaviour. I have an app called “Habits” on my phone, and every workday, I get a notification like “did you write at least 1000 words to move your writing projects forward?” Then I tick it off (or not, which is rare), and the app gathers the data.

Using an app like this is useful because once you’re surfing a productive wave, you’re inclined not to “break the chain” and keep the momentum going. Also, a habit app allows you to spot patterns across weeks and months and better understand how to write more often.

3. Record Your Daily Word Count in a Spreadsheet

You can create a simple spreadsheet in Google Sheets, list the days of the month in one column, and in the other, put your daily word numbers. In this way, you’ll know exactly where you stand, in terms of productivity, and start to find ways to improve.

If you’re a beginner (or don’t have a lot of time for writing), you can set your quota at 500 words or so, but as you start progressing, you can move to 2000 or even 3000 words a day. It all starts with measuring your progress daily.

4. Consider Hiring a Productivity Coach

This might sound like an expensive thing to do, but it’s really not. You can get personal writing productivity coaching on a service like Coach.me for as little as $25 per week. If you want to be accountable for your results, there’s no better way than having someone helping you out along the way.

At times, it’s hard to keep the promises you make to yourself, but if another person is counting on you, you’re much more likely to hit your writing goals.

5. Set Monthly Writing Challenges and Track Your Progress

At the beginning of the month, take a close look at your calendar and see how many workdays you have available. Then, set yourself a writing challenge that will push your limits.

It doesn’t have to be all about the number of words. It might be about chapters, number or new blog posts, or the number of websites or publishing houses you get in touch with. Whatever your goals are, make sure to keep them visible in your workspace at all times. This will motivate you to take action and stick to your commitments.

Are you ready to bring more self-accountability to your writing process?

In this post, I listed some of the best ways to make progress towards your writing goals by keeping yourself accountable. Pick at least one of them and implement it today. Will it require a lot of self-discipline? Yes. Will you need to double your commitment? Yes. But that’s precisely what you need to do if you want to get your work done and share it with your readers.

Do you have any other self-accountability tips for writers you use to keep yourself on track? Please feel free to share them in the comments section!

by Rafal Reyzer. Rafal is a full-time blogger, freelance writer, editor, and content manager. He started RafalReyzer.com to provide readers with great tools and strategies they can use to achieve freedom from 9-5 through online creativity.