Deadlines

Deadlines. Some writers love them, some hate them, and some don’t seem able to finish anything unless they have one. And how many times have you heard someone say (not necessarily about writing) “I do my best work when I have a deadline to meet”?

Around a quarter of the writers I know have said something like this at one point or another (sometimes it’s not “I do my best work…” it’s “I get the most work done…” or even “I can only finish things…” but it’s the same principle). It’s a comforting story we tell ourselves, but I don’t think the folks who say this think about it much. Because what it sounds as if they are saying is “I can be creative on demand” or maybe even “I can only be creative if someone else demands I do so on their schedule.” (And doesn’t that put a spoke in their complaints about writer’s block, if all it takes to get them writing is someone else to say “I need that by Friday?”)

Nevertheless, it is perfectly obvious that a lot of writers do produce more when they have a deadline (even if they’ve missed it). I know several professionals who, when I think about it, haven’t managed to write anything but a proposal all the way through to the end since their first sale, unless they’ve sold it and have a deadline. What’s going on?

After doing some considerably thinking and observation, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are several rather different things in play. For different writers, one or another is primary, which is why you get such different reactions if you try to grill someone about their reaction to deadlines.

1. The writer doesn’t want to let someone else down.

Writing and other creative professions don’t fit very well into the kind of productivity paradigm that is epidemic in our society. If one is only writing for oneself, one’s writing tends to be seen as self-indulgence, something unessential that can be put off…or that can be polished continually until it is perfect (and it never is perfect). If someone else is waiting for it, though, that’s different. If that someone is going to be inconvenienced if the manuscript doesn’t get turned in – if the agent will have to spend extra time apologizing to editors, and the editor will have to rejigger the publication schedule and the art director will have a hole in his/her plans for keeping a particular artist busy…if a writer knows that’s going to happen, they are more likely to feel guilty if they miss the deadline. People don’t like feeling guilty, and generally don’t like letting people down, so they’re willing to work harder to avoid it.

Also, a writer who is writing “on spec” (on speculation, that is, without selling the work based on a proposal) has no assurance that the work in question will sell. When one is bogged down in the middle of a manuscript and one doesn’t want to have to think about it again, ever, a spec writer can decide that the thing is hopeless and will never sell, so there is no point in finishing. A writer who has sold the book can’t do that. The thing has sold; someone is waiting for it and has in most cases paid something already. The writer will force themselves to continue working through the times when progress is slow and they’re disheartened because they feel as if they have to. And it works.

2. The writer needs the money, or the career or ego boost, or something else that will only happen when the deadline is met.

A deadline doesn’t just mean an obligation on the writer’s part; it means that other things are going to happen, too. The obvious one is money: the next part of the advance usually arrives when the ms. is delivered, and if the writer has rent to pay or cats to feed, getting hold of that advance is important. Sometimes there are other things involved that are important to the writer (for instance, the editor has promised the top spot on the spring list if the writer can get the ms. in by a certain date, or there’s a big indie publishing festival coming up that will be a huge potential sales boost if the book can be finished by then).

Deadlines also frequently provide validation. The reason one has a deadline at all is usually because an editor wants the thing one is writing – and wants it badly enough to give one money for it. That kind of recognition is extremely powerful and reassuring, especially to writers who routinely bog down because they are truly convinced that nobody will want to read what they are working on (and even the best and most well-established professionals have bouts of severe insecurity from time to time). Knowing that an editor has bought the thing can make a tremendous difference.

3. A deadline adds urgency.

According to a lot of time-management gurus, the things we have to do fall into one of four categories: both urgent and important, important but not urgent, not important but urgent, and neither important nor urgent. In case someone has been under a rock and hasn’t seen the ubiquitous matrix, it looks something like this:

People tend to pay the most attention to stuff that falls in the Urgent column, whether or not it’s important, and then kick back with non-urgent, non-important stuff. That leaves important-but-not-urgent stuff like writing at the bottom of the list, after things like buying toothpaste (which may be urgent under some circumstances, but in the grand scheme of things is not terribly important by most people’s standards).

A deadline moves writing from important-but-not-urgent into the both-urgent-and-important box, if not immediately, then certainly as the deadline gets closer. That sense of urgency is what it takes to get a lot of people to quit reading their Twitter feed, livejournal, or Facebook (urgent but not important) and write.

4. A deadline limits available writing time.

This isn’t quite the same thing as urgency. There’s a quote from Gene Wolfe about writers who require specific environments, music, pens, etc. in order to produce, which ends, “A writer with only two hours a day in which to write can write in the back of an open truck traveling down the Interstate.” In other words, a writer who has a limited amount of time in which to write, and who knows exactly what that limit is, is less likely to waste any of it dithering or noodling around with trivia like which pen will be luckier today.

What it all adds up to is this: Having a deadline gives many writers the necessary reason to really focus, and it’s that extra level of focus that stimulates both productivity and creativity. If one can find another reason to focus (or muster the discipline to just do it) then the deadline isn’t really necessary.