Writing Accountability Experiment!

Set Weekly Writing Goals with HIBOU this summer!

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

I’ve moved HIBOU’s weekly essay to a Wednesday publication schedule to keep Monday open for a weekly accountability experiment this summer.

Experiment with me, will you?

Set a writing goal for the coming week, spend your week writing, and a week later, I’ll send a check-in so you can update your progress, set a goal for the next week, and —it’s my dearest hope—be cheered on by other Hibou subscribers.

Because this is the first week, those willing to experiment with me will set a SMART goal for work you intend to do in this coming week. I touched on SMART goals in Mood Tools Week 3, but here’s the scoop: SMART is an acronym for (s)pecific, (m)easurable, (a)chievable, (r)ealistic, and (t)ime-bound.

In other words: the more concrete the goal you set, the more likely you are to actually complete it. So if you’re setting a goal for this week, for example, “write more” isn’t as useful a goal as “spend thirty minutes working on my novel on at least three days out of the next seven.”

A quick word on tracking.

The example above uses minutes and days as a measurement, but you can track your progress with whatever metric works best for you—and what you choose to track may change depending on what whether you’re developing an idea, actively writing, or editing—but here’s a menu of metrics you might consider tracking:

• TIME—You might count the number of hours you spent writing. Or—if you’re more motivated by swelling numbers—count minutes. Time goals works particularly well if you’re developing an idea or beating your computer to untick a sticky widget. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience of anything, no:

  

• CONTENT—Identify a chapter you’d like to tackle. Better yet, break the chapter into scenes, list the first scene as your actual goal, and consider the full chapter your flex goal. You might also consider counting the number of pages or words written or revised. If you’re developing a project, you might try counting the number of pages of notes you took about your project.

• DAYS—If you’re nervous about committing to hours or content goals, simply count the number of days you worked on your book in some way.

If you’re willing to join in on the summer accountability fun, set a goal and post it in the comments. Here’s my goal for this week as an example:

Plan: By Monday May 29, 2023, I will finish a revision plan for part three, a project that has—gulp!—33 bite-sized chunks by returning to morning writing starting by 7 a.m. Monday through Friday.

Reward: Because finishing this project represents a months-long sticky widget coming good and truly unstuck, I’m buying myself the steam punk widget currently parked in my Etsy cart to mark this win with tangible proof that I CAN, in fact, unstick even the most seemingly hopeless of sticky widgets.

Then, a week from today, I’ll send in our first true check-in, and you’ll—spoiler alert—check in!

When you’re thinking about how to define your goal this week, remember this coming weekend is a holiday weekend in the US and plan accordingly! And, if you want to turn accountability into a game, add a reward about how you’ll celebrate your progress: a bath, a movie, something delicious, those tulips you keep eyeing in the grocery store—because it can’t be just me flirting with tulips ever week—or a sticky widget personified by some crafty Etsy artisan—OK, that last one is definitely just me.

So what do you say?

Will you join me on this free summer accountability experiment?

At worst, it’s a rock solid excuse to buy yourself the tulips you keep eyeing in the grocery store—that can’t just be me!

At best we may just transform HIBOU from a newsletter into a community.

Here’s a template to copy and paste for your comments:

PLAN:

REWARD: