Weekly Accountability Post

For Monday, June 15, 2026

Hello!

This week I finally got into the groove on my new schedule, which I posted about a month ago. And I’m pleased to report that it’s mostly working.

The best thing about the schedule is that it gives me the freedom to flake on things, which really works for me.

It’s set up like this: My Reminders app sends me notifications when I’m supposed to be working on a particular project at a certain hour of the day, like an alarm. The rule is, if I’m dilly-dallying, I have to obey these reminders, but if I’m in the groove on a different project, I can opt to stay in the groove.

This simple innovation seems to have broken through whatever ADHD barrier was preventing me from meeting my productivity goals for a while, and it led to an unusually productive week, at least based on recent averages.

Novel

Completed three chapters of my Nothing Civil About It alternate-history novel about the second US Civil War. They’re copied below.

After scrapping the 11 or so chapters I’d already written, I’m happy with my new direction, though it’s still rough. The previous chapters were in standard limited omniscient voice, and I’m retelling it now in the highly unusual “editorial third-person objective” voice.

Started sketching a cover too, which is always motivating for me to look at while writing.

Also talked to my agent about this book, and he’s eager to send it to publishers. Somehow, telling him about it makes it more real. I decided this book would be best published traditionally. We’ll see how that goes.

Screenplay

Wrote about 10-20 new pages of my Patrick Stoodle’s Completely Awesome Army of Killer Robots screenplay. Sadly, this didn’t add new pages to my overall progress, since most of the pages were rewrites as I make further changes, adapting it from my novel draft.

Six of these pages of are attached below (any more and Substack gives me a warning that I’m over the space limit. I like when this happens, because one of my top productivity goals is to write so much that it doesn’t fit in these updates.)

App

Finished the beta-test version of the Comedy Mastermind app. It’s a chatbot that helps you write comedy, trained on all my books, courses, and videos. So far, feedback has been great:

“This really sounds like you. I just asked for some feedback on a piece I wrote and put in front of the people in my writers group. It discovered the same disconnect they discovered, but gave me a more technical rundown on what wasn’t working than the writing group did. Very well done.”

“Holy FUCK* this is awesome! Will I have to wear a t-shirt on stage that says “This set directed by AI Dikkers” … *I’m not one to swear indiscriminately.”

“I just ran a sketch premise through the mastermind and was impressed at the insight it had about the character archetypes, subtext and lengthening the escalation ramp.”

“AMAZING! It’s like I’m talking to you, the writing room, anyone that will listen. The advice does make sense too.”

I’m charging $29 for monthly access to the app, $199 for annual, and $499 for lifetime. I’m giving free lifetime access to paid subscribers of this newsletter until the end of June. That’s a sweet deal. And the reason I’m doing it is because I want you to skyrocket your productivity. Grab it while you can! It’s at comedymastermind.com.

Workshop

I planned a satire-writing workshop with Marc Warzecha from the Sketch School, which we’re launching this week, Wednesday. It’s called “How to Turn Headlines Into Comedy.” Free webinar is at 7:30 CT. Here’s the link to register if you’d like to join.

Other

I “lost” another day this week going to a Lilith Max concert at First Avenue, Prince’s old favorite venue. It was a great show. Her music, especially this song, has been quite meaningful to Dandelion.

Hoping to stay in the groove and increase my productivity next week.

What did you get done? Let everybody know in the comments—it feels amazing!