Awe, Writing! The Good Life.

My author friend, Susan, sent an email to me yesterday. The subject line said: Being Accountable. She talked about her Work In Progress (WIP). How she is now accepting God’s timing and she mentioned what she accomplished this past week.

The line that struck a cord in me said:

Just keeping in my mind that I should be reporting in is keeping me on track.

I replied to Susan’s email and her response: “You’re also right about having someone say, ‘how ya doing?’ I belong to a small accountability group and we’re supposed to check in every Tuesday —but if one of doesn’t, the rest don’t either.”

Did you get that? Accountability.

Not every author has an accountability partner or a critique group. Some people are loners and do just fine without a nudge, but for me, posting my goals and accomplishments made a measurable difference in my writing.

Last January I posted how much I wrote, what I sold and what I gave away. When I compared it to the year before, I could see a definite increase in production. That encouraged me. Then I posted my accomplishments online and several authors emailed me saying, “I need to do that for me.”

Unlike my laid-back-pizza-eating-lionhearted photo, being a freelance author is work. Yet when I see my work published I think, “Awe, I’m an author. Such a good life.”

This is Kat saying build some sort of system to track your work, your sales, your blogs, your newsletters, even your encouragement notes. Do it now. You’ll be glad you did.