Why Deadlines Are Rough (Creative Writers Edition)
Deadlines can be both a blessing and a curse. Deadlines are when things are required to be due. For me, I generally do well with deadlines and can appropriately apportion my time to work on said project and have it finished by the deadline. The blessing part is that there is a “fixed” end date. There’s none of this faffing about with a project that just goes on and on indeterminately–once the deadline is fixed, you have a goal to work towards in order to hit that target date. However, all is not “peachy” and rosy with deadlines. If I personally get behind, whether it is my fault or not, usually the quality of the work suffers in order to hit the deadline. And sometimes, world events also conspire to keep you from hitting your deadlines. A small digression here, but rush-hour traffic all across the world would probably be less aggressive and road-rage inducing if we had flexible hours for most jobs–where you could come in up to 15 minutes early/late for your job, but as long as you worked the correct number of hours, you wouldn’t be penalized for it. A little flexibility in deadlines would go a long way to mitigating life’s propensity to throw roadblocks in the way.
A Tale of Two Projects
Why this long rumination on deadlines? Well, I have two projects that I’m working on and one has a deadline and the other doesn’t. I’d planned to work on the 2nd draft of Unhallowed this month. Then I saw a market that wanted you to use a starter sentence about the “Simmons Public Library,” a fictional library (to my knowledge) and they’d like to see it by August 1st (next week). So, over the month, I’ve dutifully bounced between both projects–with a stopover at Project Wall, which only has 1 of its 3 sections done.
Essentially, in trying to work on 3 projects–the one for this market and two for myself, I’m probably not going to finish the one by its deadline of August 1, which means I’ll have to strip sections out–don’t want to be accused of plagiarism as many people will probably be using that same starter sentence. It also means that I probably won’t get my own projects in order by the beginning of next month–meaning that my nice new system is already going down the drain.
This is where deadlines become a curse for me as it means that I split my time between projects rather than focusing on 1 project and getting it done the best that I can and then moving on, As the deadline seemed more important, I spent a lot of time on this story rather than the story I really wanted to be focusing on–Unhallowed.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
And this may be the true downside of deadlines–when used as motivation for writing projects. I’ve already sunk so much time into my revision for the August 1st deadline that I don’t want to abandon it even though I only have a week left and I know I won’t be able to marshal the story that’s in my mind onto the page in a week’s time.
Do I accept a (sizable) dip in quality to get the story out on time or do I go back to working on Unhallowed, knowing that the time invested in the other story is just lost and I’ll have to spend extra time later removing the “story prompt” sentences and ideas?
The Writer and the Finite Time Conundrum
As a student and graduate teaching assistant, I know my time is finite. I know there’s only going to be a limited number of hours in a day and some of that is going to have be devoted to answering student emails, working on grading, working on assignments, working hybrid instruction methods due to Covid, working my own research and writing for school.
Creative writing, while getting a boon this summer, still is finite. And I still struggle with the trying to get all the ideas that I have out there. And it is frustrating to try for a deadline and to realize with a week left, that there’s not enough time and that I should I have just stuck with my original plan.
Deadlines are like Reading Fees
I’ll close this (fairly long) rumination with an epiphany that I’ve just had: deadlines are just like reading fees. Early in my college career, I had a professor who helped inspire my love of creative writing. Her advice was to not do any of the contests that charged reading fees. Now, in the early 90s, reading fees were still considered gauche, and very few places used them, although they were becoming more common. Nowadays, it is rare (and remarkable) when there’s a contest that doesn’t charge a reading fee. Her point was that, as students, your money was finite resource. It was a “better play” to use your money to improve yourself as a writer by buying books on the craft, or attending conferences, or that type of thing, rather than using your money to enter competitions (even if there was a substantial prize offered).
I think you see where I’m going with this: my time is also a finite resource. While it seems “easy” to revise a story for a “deadline,” there’s actually just as much work involved as if I was writing a whole new story. I need to be more cognizant of deadlines in terms of my own projects and my own finite time. I recognize now that, like the lure of a huge cash prize for “winning the contest,” themed deadlines offer the lure of getting publication (and money) if you could just successfully execute the theme by the appointed time. And just like contests, I need to be ultra selective for the deadlines I take on if I don’t want to be disappointed by not finishing the story (or other stories that I might be working on) on time.
Lesson learned! I’ll let you know next week on my formal Writing Log post just what writing projects (if any) I managed to salvage this month.
Have a good weekend!
Sidney
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Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora WolfRead Childe Roland for Free at Electric Spec
Purchase HawkeMoon on Amazon.com (Paperback) or eBookPurchase Dragonhawk on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase WarLight on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase Ship of Shadows on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase Faerie Knight on Amazon.com (Paperback) or Kindle
Currently Working On (7/2020):
“Project Wall” (Science Fiction Story)
Drafting: First Draft
Unhallowed (Weird Western Story)
Drafting: 2nd Draft (Working Draft)
Childe Roland Graphic Novel
Up Next: Rough Draft (Story)
I, Mage (Urban Fantasy Story)
Drafting: 1st Revision
