Creating Accountability in Your Writing Practice

by Rennie Saunders

Can you work without a deadline? Be honest. If someone asked you to write a paper, and said you could turn it in anytime you liked, would that paper ever happen?

For many of us, the answer is no. Many writers, myself included, recognize that a deadline is one of the necessary evils of writing. Sure, it’s fun to sit down and draft without any agenda, but when real productivity has to happen, it’s time to call in the writer’s dutiful drill sergeant: accountability.

Accountability is all about setting up real consequences and outside pressure so you can get something done. But it might not be enough to simply set a due date on your calendar. Sometimes, accountability is a very real editor breathing down your neck, telling you that your work needs to be done by Tuesday or else. Sometimes it’s a friend reading your draft, begging you to keep going so they can find out what happens in the next chapter. External motivation can save the day when you can’t figure out how to trick yourself into filling up that blank page.

But what happens when you don’t have a deadline, or an editor, or a friend reading a draft in progress? How do you summon that powerful outside force of accountability when you’re writing something entirely on your own?

It’s about learning what works for you, and then making it happen. Do you just need to carve out an hour on your calendar? Make an appointment with yourself to write and set alarms and reminders. Do you work even better if you set a goal, and then ask someone to check up on you? Tell yourself you’ll write 500 words by 5pm on Tuesday, then recruit a friend to call you at 5pm and make sure you’ve kept your promise. If you pay attention to the factors that make you more likely to be productive, you can set yourself up to succeed.

Sometimes it’s all about finding the right person to support you. If you were trying to go to the gym regularly, you’d probably call a friend and set up a time to meet at the gym every week. Or maybe you’d hire a personal trainer. When you know someone’s waiting for you, you show up. And once you show up, you might as well work out, because you’re at the gym already, right?

That’s the psychology that worked best for me as a writer, and it’s why I started my nonprofit organization, Shut Up & Write, over a decade ago. At the time, I was working on a sci-fi novel, and couldn’t focus or make progress on my own. I decided to start a writing group in a local cafe with the idea of just showing up to write. We wouldn’t read each other’s work, or critique anything at all. This group would simply write quietly together in a cafe for an hour. That was all I needed to get motivated: I just needed a place to show up and shut up.

By starting a writing group, I’d not only made a promise to myself to write for an hour a week, I’d made a promise to an entire group of writers who were depending on me to show up for them. It was a setup that was nearly impossible for me to make an excuse to abandon. And so, I showed up and I wrote. Finally, I’d figured out how to crack the code and get my writing done. I just needed a hefty dose of accountability, which for me meant setting aside a regular time to write with others.

Ultimately, accountability is about making a commitment to yourself, but it’s much easier to do that when you find people in your life who will support you. As writers, we learn to seek out friends who will read in-progress drafts, editors who will set deadlines, and in my case, other writers who will just show up.

Creating an external support system shouldn’t be too elaborate – in fact, when we try and set lofty goals it makes it easier to miss them. But an accountability system is an essential piece of a disciplined writing practice, and when you bring other writers into the mix, comes with the added benefits of community and connection.

Rennie Saunders has built an 80,000 -person global writer’s community based on his simple, highly effective formula – Shut Up & Write. Since 2007, SU&W has inspired writers of all genres and experience levels to meet for weekly writing sessions, no critiquing or feedback required. With hundreds of chapters in over 350 cities across the globe, the process is proven to work.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

Seventeen-year-old Cameron Sloane, despite what the Tremont High principal declares, knows he isn’t brave for coming forward to say his algebra teacher acted in a “sexually inappropriate” way. Cam knows he lied. I had to look at this a few times, wondering at the wording. Of course he knows he lied. In fact, he had to. It was his only option. If not, Shauna, his best friend, could have gotten hurt. We need to know how his actions protect Shauna, becuase right now I don't see a connection between their narratives, and someone making false accusations like this is not going to have the sympathy of the reader. He'll need to have a REALLY good reason. Also, your original wording wastes space. You'll need to be concise in a query.

First-year teacher Brad Miller desperately wants the nightmare of the false accusation to end so he can get back to teaching algebra, a career his father rejects as being second-rate. When his principal pulls him out of his classroom, Brad suffers another panic attack, which he’s tried to hide from everyone, especially his students. When the sweat and tremors come, the principal sees guilt. Brad, in turn, sees his career and life ending. In general, narrators in YA need to be teens. There are some exceptions, but they're rare and it is usually established authors taking that leap. Also, this doesn't read as a narrative arc for Brad, just a scene - does he take any actions? What is his role in the story, other than being the unjustly, panicked, accused?

Shauna Lange, one of only four Black girls in the school, wants out of Tremont High. Like right now! Actually, she wants out of Tremont, Ohio after being targeted by classmates. a group of teenage racists. Not happening, her parents tell her. Turn the other cheek, they say. No way, Shauna responds. Changing the wording here a little bit for the sake of being concise. The fact that she's the only back girl implies that the target comes from racist, and using "classmates" insinuates that they are teens as well. Unless they stop harassing her, she’s going to find out who these bullies are and stomp them, she doesn't know who it is? Assuming it's classmates, then? Also, she's going to literally attack them? What's her narrative here, other than getting angry? Does she have a plan? Is she asking questions to figure out who it is? despite Cameron’s pleas to let him handle it. But again, how in the world would Cam's accusations help Shauna? I see no connection.

Cameron, Brad, and Shauna share the role of protagonist in What He Said, a stand-alone, realistic YA novel of 90,800 words. Chapters shift from each character’s point-of-view as the story moves to its ominous resolution. You're going to have to be more clear about how these stories intersect to create a plot, and what the arc is for each character, as well as what's at stake.

I am seeking representation for What He Said, my contribution to YA fiction that deals with racism and homophobia. Although Cameron, Brad, and Shauna are separated in so many ways at Tremont High, the events in What He Said ultimately connect them in ways they never expected. We need to see those connections in the query body itself, and understand how this forms a cohesive narratove. Cut this para entirely and get the connections into the query, instead of stating they exist here.

Racism in school hallways and sexual misconduct by teachers aren’t new. Television and the internet seem to report regularly about hate crimes and the inappropriate relationships between teachers and their students, but how often do news sources reveal later that the accusations are false? A teacher accused of such conduct rarely gains any sympathy in the media, and Brad Miller is no exception. Again, this isn't part of the query, and makes it seems like the adult protag has more weight in the story than your teen narrators, which isn't a good move.

Previously, I published my debut novel My Last Year of Life (in School) (Black Rose Writing, 2015) and ten nonfiction books, including Writing Smarter (Prentice Hall, 1998) and The Elite Wrestler (Coaches Choice, 2020). I am also a veteran English teacher who was named Ohio’s High School English Teacher of the Year in 2000.

Awesome bio!! Cut the irrelevant paras, get the cohesive narrative into the query and you're looking much better!

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman Giveaway

An instant New York Times bestseller!

From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.

In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.