Lord, Keep me accountable

And so let us come near to God with a true heart full of faith. Our hearts must be made clean from guilty feelings and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:22 New Life Version (NLV)

A few days ago, I joined an accountability group to help keep me on track with my writing. It's not that I lack motivation - I do try to blog almost daily; I've reached chapter 13 in my latest novel-writing endeavor; I write countless extra things each week like a Teen Sunday School lesson, letters, e-mails, and a host of other stuff.

But it is easy to get side-tracked. Oh I'll just veg for a few minutes by playing a quick computer game (or 2 or 3...) or I'll look around me and see all the household things that need doing and leap up from the computer to do them NOW! It's amazing how many otherwise invisible dust bunnies and cobwebs I can see from my computer chair.

Sometimes without realizing it, I sabotage myself, making it difficult to succeed or achieve the things I know God wants me to do. I look at the whole project and feel overwhelmed not knowing where to start - so I procrastinate and don't start the project until I feel so guilty about it I have to do SOMETHING. Then it's either done half-way or not at all. I might switch into panic mode and work hard at it to the exclusion of everything else - even biting the heads off of my family members who interrupt me. LOL!

So I need a plan of action to help me change my ways and to meet my goals.

1. Admit I have some motivation problems when it comes to my writing (and several other areas of life too!)
2. Form a plan to change that behavior by setting weekly goals.
3. Commit to working on those goals and reporting on the progress (and not beating myself up when I can't meet those goals!).
4. Finding accountability partners - in this case a wonderful group of committed Christian writers to whom I have to report each week with goals for the week and results from the previous week. It also means that I must hold the other members accountable too which is a good motivator. It's not acceptable to encourage others to do what I'm not willing to do myself.

Keep me accountable, Lord. Help me to change one step at a time, so I can eventually reach my goal of being a productive/ prolific writer for you. Amen.