Not Making My Deadline
If I have one big flaw as a writer (indeed, as a participant in life!) it’s that I’m terrible for deadlines. I’m the one who streaks in to work at the bell (and sometimes a couple of minutes after the bell). I’m the one who always did my homework the night before it was due (and often in the class before it was due). And making a writing deadline is a hit-or-miss prospect for me, especially if it’s self-imposed.
I received a conditional pass in the Writing class I did in high school because of my inability to meet a deadline. Impatient with it by the last term I just turned in all of the required work in a big batch in advance. This did not amuse my English teacher and I flunked the semester. This kept me from a perfect honour roll status through high school, and strongly influenced my decision to not pursue writing in university; and indeed, not to go to university at all, since writing was the only thing I really wanted to study.
I’ve gotten better at it over the years, but the truth is this is just not something my brain does well. Time and me don’t get along. I always think there’s more of it than there is. Unlike the perception most people have of those who are perpetually late, I am anything but lazy; my problem is that I’m always trying to do too much!
Also, I don’t do “short” story well. How in the hell do people write under 3000 words anyway? I haven’t been able to do that since the third grade!
My latest failure in making a deadline was in making an anthology on soldiers and an apocalypse that I wanted to make today in an Australian publication. I was trying to write a story about British Royal Navy sailors encountering a viral apocalypse during the Napoleonic Wars. Ain’t gonna happen I don’t think: it’s 7:30 pm over there on deadline date. And the story is turning into a short novel anyway as more complications reveal themselves to me.
Oh well! On to the next Wyrd West Chronicles story and my Kindle Storyteller entry!
What suggestions do you have for helping to make deadlines?
