In praise of deadlines

Usually if I don't have a deadline, I can spend three whole months on one sentence. I've been working on this new novel set in the 1950s for almost a year now. I was working on another novel at the same time, and then shelved it to work on this one, called The Missing Ones (at least for now. I'm not very good with titles, but that's a whole other story.) A few months ago, I realized I had no idea what I was doing and began talking the story out with another writer and finally realized what...