Deadlines have always fascinated me as a writer. Not the concept of them, but the idea that someone can write, and write well, with one of them hanging over their head like a guillotine.
I know me. I would succumb to the pressure. Not that I would miss my deadline, but I’d be a nervous wreck and undoubtably suffer from a loss of appetite and lack of sleep.
That’s not how I ever wanted my writing career to be.
I enjoy writing, and I’ve always wanted to keep it that way.
Back before I was a professional writer, I still did lots of writing. Technical stuff, mostly. Procedure manuals, reports, term papers, that sort of thing. I did it for school, I did it for the various jobs I had in medical technology, laboratory management, and biomedical research. There were usually deadlines associated with them, but it was okay, because the papers/documents/etc. weren’t long. We’re talking no more than 10 pages. Easy stuff; back in college I learned I could wait until something was almost due and then still produce a pretty good paper. When I got out into the working world, I found out I couldn’t wait until the last moment of the deadline because there were always multiple deadlines to handle, but having honed the ability to write fast helped me meet all of them.
The thing is, technical documents don’t require a lot of imagination. You have your data and you just have to phrase it in ways that users or readers will understand.
Fiction, for me at least, was different.
Having a deadline looming over me seemed to set up all sorts of roadblocks for creativity. I would keep second-guessing what I’d written. Or worse, not come up with anything at all.
I learned this about myself during a job I had before I started writing horror. I’d just left a laboratory management job and decided to try and make a go of being self-employed. Picked up a gig with The Princeton Review, writing test prep guides for 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade language arts. Part of that required writing 1-page reading passages and the associated questions.
And I had deadlines / milestones for each week.
I was also just starting my resume business at the time, and those first few days I put off doing the reading passages to focus on writing the resumes, which I believed would be harder and take longer.
Next thing I know, it’s the night before due date and I’m staying up late working, because I’m hitting a creative roadblock.
After that, I always made sure to get the fiction writing done before anything.
Now, as the years have gone by, I’ve gotten a lot better. I’ve written dozens of short stories to deadline (submit between this date and that date!), I’ve never been late with edits (can you get them back in 2 weeks? Guess what, I’ll do it in a week!), and I’ve even delivered a few novels against deadlines. Those deadlines might be 8 months or 12 months, but just hearing those words gives me agita.
Which is why early in my career I developed my own rule of writing: Never pitch a book unless it’s finished.
I know there are writers who can pitch based on a synopsis or idea, but not me. I can’t imagine having 4-5 contracts signed, with specific delivery dates that seem too close together, and still being able to think of a good story and put it on paper. I’d have ulcers on top of ulcers. So I don’t do it.
Write, then pitch. I’ve done that with 22 of my 24 books. (For the other two, one I pitched when it was half-written, and the other was a sequel and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.)
All of which brings me to the topic of this post.
Currently, I’m working on a novel. I pitched it to my agent back in June, and at the time it was about 1/3 finished. Agent loves it, wants to see it ASAP. Great. I start working furiously on it.
Except… things come up. I see an anthology I want to submit to. Then I see another one, this one asking for novellas, and I have this great idea. Fantastic idea. But no way can I finish the book and then write the novella before the novella’s due date. This causes a dilemma. Do I not write the stuff I really want to write, and focus on the novel? Or do I put the novel aside and do the two things that I’m really interested in?
Suddenly, it’s a real deadline vs. a self-imposed deadline (I had really wanted to finish my novel by the end of the year, just to be done with it!). Deadlines vs. desires, because I want to write them all but time is limited.
In the end, I’ve decided to do the novella, skip the short story, and get back to the novel faster. I know that next year, when I read the anthology I’m skipping, I’ll be super pissed at myself and think ‘I could’ve been in this one!’ even though there’s no guarantee of acceptance. The brain doesn’t work that way.
Anyhow, the one good thing is that if I’d signed a contract for the novel, I’d be in a situation where I’d have to skip the short story AND the novella, simply because of a deadline.
I’m much happier this way.
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