Deadlines — A Must-Have — Achoo!
My life. The last 72 hours, I’ve been fighting a beast of a cold.
Coming into Day 4, I feel like the cold has won the war to take me down.
Chills, fever, coughing. Neo Citran tastes yucky. Orange juice is stinging my throat. I pray the juice acid will magically eat into my coughing reflex.
But hey, I have a writing deadline. This article here.
Yes, I could feign all kinds of excuses, like my watering eyes can’t clearly see the screen or my synapses are firing well below kindergarten grade.
But a deadline is a deadline. You promise something as a writer. Then you had better damn well deliver. You’re a pro, not some schmaltzy, beret-wearing wannabe who sips Absinthe on the Champs Élysées.
Writing is your métier. Not some half-baked dream you talk smack about with your tribe to make yourself sound cool. This is your art, your passion, your trade. In other words, it’s your biz, man.
My Rule: Unless I’m bleeding out and the EMS peeps say my being unconscious could hinder surgical word choice, I’m making my deadlines. Rain or bloody shine. Good hair days or…
Oh, my word.
Note To Self: Do NOT look in the mirror when you’re on the front lines of a Cold War.
See, I can sort of slay me when I’m half-baked in body sweat.
And what the heck is this on my sweater? Pineapple bits? Geez Louise…
So, despite coughing and wheezing like a 90-year-old chain-smoker, I will pound the keys and get this baby out the door.
Deadlines–A Must-Have. If you plan to STOP the Not Writing Now.
Nothing gets humans off their backsides better than a deadline.
By nature, we bipedal creatures are a lazy sort, but if we’ve committed to something for others, our ego, our moral code, and our dedication to our craft will get that piece out the door even if we have to crawl to that door and shove it over the threshold with our icy-cold, tremor-ridden hands.
So, let’s return to you, and your not writing… Have you set deadlines?
· Your story research.
· The book outline to be 75% fleshed out before you pound one key.
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· Scene(s) in your book to be fully drafted.
· Chapter(s) to be self-edited.
If you have not, then you’re losing the book-writing battle before you begin. Fact.
The only way you will step up to the plate and produce is by setting deadlines throughout your project.
You can use whatever project app you wish. Heaven knows there are loads out there. I’m partial to ColorNote (No, I am not getting a kickback. I simply like their app.) It’s simple, straightforward, and can be set up as a text page or a calendar. I enter my daily writing to-dos for the next week. Each morning, over coffee, I look at the day’s to-do list and one-by-one I conquer those beasts ’til the list is done.
Yes, sometimes certain to-dos can take up more time than you gauged for, and in that case one or two may be moved over to the next day to be completed. But as each day’s micro to-dos gets done, you move ever closer to those major deadline days and finally to the completed manuscript itself, ready for publisher submission or self-publishing. On ColorNote, I highlight the major deadline dates, so I know I’m completing enough of the daily micro to-dos to get me there.
And after a while, it just becomes habit.
· Morning coffee.
· Look at list.
· Have breaky.
· Deal with domestic whatevers.
· Work at list.
And as each little to-do gets done, they quietly pile up to get you to the big deadline finish. Whether that be so many chapters in a month or so many books in a year.
Without daily to-dos — micro deadlines — your completed book will never see the light of day. You know what wise hyenas say? “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Without this daily micro-deadline list, you will let yourself off the hook 9 times out of 10, proffering excuses as creative as the plot scenes in the book you’re NOT writing.
One. Moment. Please. Coughing fit. Brb…
So, my dear non-writing writers, download a simple writer’s daily To-Do app and let’s get this elephant nibbled. You know what mothers the world over say. “Feed a cold!”
Oh, how I slay me.
That’s all I’ve got for today, folks.
The message typed, the post posted.
Pardon me as I curl up into a quivering, sneezing, wheezing ball.
Deadline made. * cough, hack! *
