Staying accountable
Well, that was unexpected.My first post of the year, yesterday, about how I was going to write something of substance every single day this year, almost didn't happen. Should I force myself to publish something, anything, every single day, even if I felt as if I had nothing to say? What if it wasn't very good? Would I be forcing myself to hit publish anyway?In the end, obviously, I decided to hit publish on that piece and put myself out there. Force myself to write every day. I shared the post on Facebook because that's what one does, right? As I'd expected, several friends showed up to cheer me on. But several other friends not only did that, but said they were doing, or thinking of doing the same thing. "Let's be accountability buddies!" I suggested. I know myself. I know I need someone else to poke me and tell me to get on with it when I feel lazy.They all also wanted accountability buddies. One friend, Khadijah Silver, went so far as to create a new account on Medium and write her first post. And blame me for it. Her post really resonated with me, too.Her title:
In which I recognize that I am suffering from the unmet need to write.
That's what this really was about. As I said yesterday, I've been a writer since before I could really write. I have these words in my head. I lay awake at night or in the morning, sometimes, writing things over and over in my head. Choosing words, changing the order. In fact, what I'm writing right now was part of the narrative I constructed this morning as I lay alone in bed, listening to the sounds of the house as my children enjoyed their last day of Christmas break before returning to school tomorrow.I smiled as my younger son opined something important in his still-high-pitched voice. When will it drop, I wondered to myself. And then I went back to these words.What would I write today? Would I have any important words worth sharing? Maybe I should just write about writing. Write about what I'm doing right now, thinking and rethinking how I structure sentences and paragraphs.I'm a writer. I do lots of other things, too, but I have these words inside me and they need to come out. They haven't been, really. I think of clever things to say on Twitter and often don't even post them. I think up a whole long thing to say on Facebook and end up writing a sentence or two. Maybe a paragraph if I'm feeling verbose.That's because no matter what they say, those aren't writer's platforms. They're social platforms. They're sharing platforms. If I'm going to write long, agonize over the choices I make, social media platforms aren't the right place for me to do it.Writing is a solitary pursuit. We often feel like the man in that image above, walking alone up a steep, long set of stairs. My new group of accountability buddies - some of whom don't know each other - will keep me in line. Will force me to write every day. Because if I don't, and they do, that means I'm simply being lazy. And that's pretty lame.Image from Death to the Stock Photo "Lonely Commute" pack, image 4, under DTTSP's Photograph End User License.