Forget Creativity, Here’s What You Really Need to Write More.
By: David Pennington
Tags: Creative Process, Artist, Creativity, Writing, Writers On Writing

A decade ago, I responded to a Craigslist ad from a guy who wanted to start a writing group. Screenwriting, specifically. He knew he needed to work with like-minded writers to hone his craft and stay on point. He needed accountability.

Six of us met at Common Grounds in Denver’s Highlands neighborhood (it has long since closed down) and shared the things we were working on. Not all of us were screenwriters, but I don’t think it mattered. We all wanted to know: there are other people in this world who put words to the page. We wanted to know we mattered.

It worked. We wrote.

Well, it worked for a few weeks. One of us was always absent for one reason or another. Most nights, only one of us had anything new to share. Rare was it that anyone read the work ahead of time and thought about what they wanted to share with people. There weren’t any teeth. No dues paid, no consequences, you could come and go as you pleased. If all else failed, we’d start drinking - which is what happens when accountability falls through the floor.

On a lark (a dying breath?), the group signed up to compete in the 48-hour film festival. After all, we were screenwriters. We would own this! Forty-eight hours to shoot, edit, and present a short film - easy! I don’t remember the theme or anything about the movie. I just remember spending way too much time with five other people.

We finished the movie, submitted it, and proceeded unreasonably drunk at the Irish Rover on Broadway to celebrate. The next weekend the festival screened all of the predictably-bad films at the Gothic. I made my then-girlfriend show up to watch the end result. She was so embarrassed for me that we would marry a few years later.

As for the group, we never saw each other again. Between the 48-hour clock and intimately contributing everything we could to relative strangers, it was enough to kill the strongest of friendships. We had the truest form of accountability: people showing up for the same goal.

I guess we each hated it enough never to meet again.

Accountability is essential if you want to do anything beyond the daily malaise. For most of us, willpower and determination stops cold when the alarm goes off a little too early or if you forget to keep yourself hydrated. Everyone can run faster when there’s a tiger on their heels.

Why not give it some teeth?

Writers, artists, creative types - we’re bad at the accountability thing because who is really going to notice when you don’t publish? If there is no incentive to publish, there’s no incentive to create, or practice, or get bad enough at things you have no choice but to get better?

In July of 2019, I held myself accountable with my 31 Days of Accidental Mastery project. Every day in July, my 400ish subscribers got an email about something I had learned from my years as a freelance writer - I’d like to think most of them got something out of it.

What they didn’t see is me, on June 30th, creating 31 blank emails in Mailchimp and setting it to send one of them out every 24 hours at 9 AM. Whether or not I had “finished” that day’s email, it was going out at 9 AM.

If you got a blank email, I failed. I can’t handle that kind of humiliation - accountability with teeth.

If embarrassment isn’t your thing, money works - like the gyms that charge you more when you don’t show up.

I’ve seen apps that will delete ALL of your work if you don’t show up and write at least 300 words on your novel every day. I work accountability in with some of my coaching clients. Writing better means writing more, more often, period. If I don’t regularly see words from them, I remind them how they’re wasting their money.

Point being: if you want to show up and make something, then make something. Today’s work doesn’t have to be better than yesterday’s, but you have to do the work today or it sure as hell won’t be better tomorrow.