To understand my relationship with “accountability” and “discipline”, it is important to understand that I was homeschooled for most of my childhood. And not that regimented, faux-school homeschool, either; nope, I was unschooled, back in the era when unschooling didn’t even have a label yet.

It’s safe to say that while I do have a concept of what accountability and discipline are (I’m in grad school and doing well, and have, before the current recessions, always held a job) my concept of them is a little, ah, freewheeling. Flexible, you might say.

As I’ve mentioned here lately, my schedule right now is unmerciless: three grad school classes, a nearly full-time and brain-taxing job, a burgeoning career as a M/M romance writer, and several non-romance self-publishing projects.

With work hours being fairly non-negotiable (ie, don’t show up, don’t get paid) and grad school deadlines being 100% non-negotiable, it’s been the writing that gets shoved off to the side. WOE.

Today I got up very early and wrote FIRST, before anything else. I managed 1250 words. Why? Because I told myself that I would tweet to my followers (they are legion! …not. But they do exist!) how many words I got in today. And that did the trick: the threat of public acknowledgement of my output managed to get my arse out of bed. Accountability…who knew?

It’s always good to find discipline, yeah? *goes for coffee*