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They always run over time and then three arrive at once. 

From Michael Rosen's Nasty (Barn Owl Books edition, UK)

Idea sketches for a recent editorial feature in Wingspan magazine, about an environmental exhibition featuring the biggest paper ball in the world.

The finished illustration

Early pencil sketch for Yozora o Miage-yo. A great deal changed between this and the final book.

It's finished! Completed artwork for Yozora o Miage-yo

Whenever someone asks me what keeps me motivated to write, I only half-jokingly reply, “Deadlines.”

Over the years, I’ve become fairly disciplined about my writing; I may not write fiction every day, but I do tend to prioritize it over other things I could be doing, such as reading other books, playing video games, blogging, watching TV, or sleeping. That’s most of what it takes to be productive, assuming you don’t have other things eating up your time, like a demanding job or taking care of a new baby. But I can still procrastinate, like writers do — though that usually means I make up for that misspent time later, because no matter what else is going on, having a contractual obligation to turn in a manuscript by a specific date goes a long way toward making me productive.

One thing I’ve learned since my first novel was published is there’s a world of difference between writing and writing under contract. Before you have sold your book, or even signed with an agent, writing can take as long as it takes to make the book “perfect.” Years, even! But once you have that book deal and publishers are filling their catalogs and marketing plans are being developed, you have to not only write a good book, but you have to do it on a schedule — perhaps only a matter of months. (This is perhaps one reason why second books sometimes aren’t as well reviewed as debuts, even if the author theoretically should improve with each subsequent novel.) Sure, sometimes writers miss their deadlines and the world doesn’t end, but in general, I like to follow through on my commitments, and I want to be viewed as a professional so people will want to keep working with me.

Leonardo da Vinci famously said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” This rings true for me when I’m on deadline because no matter how pleased I am with the “final” product, I always feel like it could be better if I only had a little more time. Most recently, at the end of July I turned in my first draft of Against All Silence, the sequel to The Silence of Six — mostly on time! Although I had a reasonable deadline, when I was supposed to be working on it I was also:

• Taking care of a baby
• Doing freelance writing to pay bills
• Packing an apartment
• Moving to a new city
• Unpacking
• Stripping wallpaper and painting our new home

With time running out, I made up for months of low productivity by writing every day in a library — averaging 5,000 words a day. (On a good day, I can write about 1,000 words an hour. Drafty words!) Nothing focuses me like a looming deadline! Fortunately, I had a detailed outline that only derailed towards the end (which I was anticipating), my previous day job had a heavy workload that forced me to write as fast as a journalist, and I had a new writing process, as I mentioned back in January.

My usual approach to drafting is to keep moving forward until the end, because the momentum keeps me going and I don’t want to waste time revising earlier scenes or chapters that I might change repeatedly or ultimately cut. This time I tried something new: I wrote on my Alphasmart Neo, a standalone word processor with just a keyboard and a small screen that displays only four lines of text, transferring completed chapters into Scrivener. And rather than stopping to research every little thing as I wrote — a time waster! — I left placeholders: “TK” wherever I needed to look something up or fill in missing text. (There were a lot of those, from looking up street names to particular models of cars.)

I never could have met my deadline without these time-saving tactics*, although the end result feels like a rougher draft than I usually like to share with anyone. I often refer to my first drafts as the “zero” or “vomit” drafts, but my tight schedule meant I couldn’t clean it up much or research everything before hitting Send; yes, I had to abandon my unfinished work to meet my deadline. Which led to me Tweeting:

Writers, how rough are your first drafts? Like, the ones you turn in to your editors? Asking for a friend.

— E.C. Myers (@ecmyers) July 20, 2015

Of course, because all writers are different, this prompted a range of responses — from very polished first drafts to drafts about as rough as mine, which someone pointed out leaves room for editors to help guide the revision. I like that. It was important to remind myself that this is still only the first draft, and I will have time to make the book better in subsequent drafts and editing passes. It’s not like we’re publishing Go Set a Watchman here. But yeah, I’m still nervous about the edit letter that’s sure to arrive any day now…

So now I put the question to you: How rough are your first drafts? When do you feel ready to share your manuscript with your critique partners, writing groups, agent, or editor? Also, do you have any tips and tricks for meeting deadlines and/or writing quickly? Please share in the comments below!

____________________

*On the flip side, it took a long time to format the novel in Scrivener and Word because the Alphasmart Neo only spits out plain text. Bah!

.
Howdy Campers!

I'm wildly inspired by the postings of my fellows at Poetry Friday today--see the link below.

Bobbi begins our What-Inspires-You series with Inspirations and Geniuses; Jo Ann is up next with the help of her camera: Zooming in on Inspiration; Esther offers An Inspiring Weekly Digest You Need to Know About; Carla opens our eyes to Inspiration From the Library of Congress; and Mary Ann touches us with tales about family members in Inspiration is a Blast From the Past.

So what are the top three things that inspire my daily poems?

1) Um...deadlines. 

BY MARTHA CARR

When I was a new writer and no one had commented on any of the words I’d strung together, the idea of a deadline seemed romantic. If I had a deadline that meant someone must have liked something I wrote and someone else must have asked for more.

Fortunately, all of that came true and I have had the pleasure of writing for The Washington Post and The New York Times and have had several books published.

However, a deadline also means a lot of responsibility and for writers with busy lives a due date can seem daunting, especially when talking about an entire book.

One thing became clear: Failing to turn in a manuscript on time has real-world consequences—not only for you as a writer, but also for everyone who’s waiting on your words of wisdom. There are publishing schedules and marketing strategies that are set up with the idea that you’re a professional writer who keeps your word. Miss a deadline without a good excuse and your peers will start to operate off the idea that you’re not very professional. If you’re not also a brilliant writer who says things that make everyone have to pay attention, your career may be short-lived.

But it’s not so easy to write on a deadline. You have to create a work plan, even know if you’re on time, ahead of schedule or dangerously close to not meeting a deadline. You also have to become your own project manager and figure out how to create a writing schedule that can breathe and change with your life. As you’ve probably already seen just as soon as you make a schedule someone else throws a wrench in it and you’re off doing something else for a little while.

I wrote my first three books raising a son on my own and then taking care of two elderly parents.

There were plenty of times I sat in a doctor’s office or thought about what to make for dinner for everyone while thinking about plotlines. I wanted to remain present and cheerful for family and friends, but for that to happen I had to find a strategy that would allow me to write and meet deadlines.

That strategy wound up consisting of three crucial steps:

1) You have to be reasonable with yourself and set realistic expectations.

How fast do you actually write? How much time can you realistically devote to writing in a day? How many days a week can you write without neglecting other areas of your life? Crunching these numbers will give you a framework for setting realistic expectations.

The good news is, even with small pieces of time it’s still possible to write a good book without years passing. I’ve been writing the books in The Wallis Jones series fairly quickly although I also have a lot going on in a day and even want to plan in a social life.

2) Ask yourself whether you can produce the manuscript or article in time.

Be realistic. Look at the total page count that’s needed and at the deadline, and count up the days before the deadline. Can you write enough pages per day to meet the deadline? If not, you’re going to have to either find a few extra days of writing or have a conversation with your editor, sooner rather than later. Sometimes, that’s necessary and shows that you’re on top of things and willing to work as a team member.  Not doing so can cause doors to slam closed.

My own answer turned out to be that I could write about three double-spaced pages in a day, three days a week.

3) To meet deadlines, you’ll need to glue yourself to your seat until that minimum number is hit.

If you’ve been reasonable with yourself, it may not always be pleasant, but it’s doable. In my case, sometimes, the words come so easily and I’m having such a good time working on my newest book, The Circle, that a lot more gets written. Sometimes, every single word feels like it was pulled out of somewhere murky and I struggle to hit three pages. However, I still do it and when the three pages are done, I get up and go find something else to do.

The last thing to keep in mind is something I mentioned earlier: Make sure that you’re still having at least a little fun and staying present with the people in your life. Both will feed your writing and make you feel more balanced in general. Then, writing and deadlines are a healthy part of your life, which will inevitably show in your work.

Martha Randolph Carr is the author of 4 books including The List — the first in her Wallis Jones political thriller series.  A professional copywriter and editor, she has written a weekly, nationally syndicated column on politics and life that has run on such political hotspots as TheModerateVoice.com and Politicus.com.

Her work has run regularly in such venerable publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and Newsweek.

Martha is also a melanoma survivor, a Chi runner and an occasional skydiver — not to mention a descendant of Thomas Jefferson!

BY ELLEN MEISTER

Have you ever had to tell an editor you wouldn’t be meeting your deadline? That’s an uncomfortable conversation for any writer. But for Dorothy Parker—one of America’s greatest literary wits—it was so excruciating she simply couldn’t face it, and the consequences were nearly devastating.

In 1929, Harold Guinzburg and George Oppenheimer—the young entrepreneurs who founded Viking Press—convinced Parker to sign a contract for a novel, and deliver it in under a year. That’s high pressure for most writers. But for Parker, who often took six months to complete a short story, it was shooting for the impossible. Indeed, she was so slow and cautious in her fiction writing that she once remarked, “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

Still, she was determined to join the ranks of the contemporaries she so admired, such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and left for Europe to work on her book. By the end of 1930, her deadline had passed and she had nothing to show for it except one long (and often hilarious) letter she had written to her publishers over the summer. (Complete letter available as an ebook from Penguin Classics with an introduction by Marion Meade. See Alpine Giggle Week: How Dorothy Parker Set Out to Write the Great American Novel and Ended Up in a TB Colony Atop an Alpine Peak.)

And so she sailed back to the U.S. to tell the young Viking founders in person that she had failed. The conversation, however, never happened. Too distressed to face them, she attempted suicide by swallowing poisonous shoe polish. Fortunately for those of us who cherish the stories, essays, poems and reviews she wrote in the years that followed, Parker only succeeded in making herself terribly ill, and several months later she recovered.

She never did deliver on the manuscript. In the 1970s, Viking reported that their agreement with Dorothy Parker was the longest unfulfilled contract in the company’s history. In the intervening years, however, they contracted with Parker to edit a collection of works by her friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. She struggled writing the introduction and simply couldn’t complete it. It was 1945, and facing her editor with this failure wasn’t any easier than it had been fifteen years earlier.

Fortunately, however, Parker found a less dangerous way to avoid the confrontation: she sent him a telegram. And while most of Parker’s papers were destroyed, this small treasure (complete with a spelling error that is probably the teletypist’s), still exists to remind us that even our literary heroes struggled putting words on a page.

PASCAL COVICI, VIKING PRESS                                     1945 JUN 28 PM 4 37 18 EAST 48 ST

THIS IS INSTEAD OF TELEPHONING BECAUSE I CANT LOOK YOU IN THE VOICE. I SIMPLY CANNOT GET THAT THING DONE YET NEVER HAVE DONE SUCH HARD NIGHT AND DAY WORK NEVER HAVE SO WANTED ANYTHING TO BE GOOD AND ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF PAPER COVERED WITH WRONG WORDS. CAN ONLY KEEP AT IT AND HOPE TO HEAVEN TO GET IT DONE. DONT KNOW WHY IT IS SO TERRIBLY DIFFICULT OR I SO TERRIBLY INCOMPETANT.

DOROTHY.

Ellen Meister is a novelist, essayist, public speaker and creative writing instructor at Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY). She runs a popular Dorothy Parker page on Facebook that has over 130,000 followers. Her novels include Farewell, Dorothy Parker (Putnam 2013) and The Other Life (Putnam 2011).

In February 2015, Putnam will publish her fifth novel, Dorothy Parker Drank Here. To connect with Ellen, visit ellenmeister.com, and for daily quotes from her Dorothy Parker, follow her Facebook page.

Note 1: No shed necessary. That's a promise!

• Deadlines are not about killing yourself--or the work. Pacing is everything! Take some days off in between writing.
• If you need to move a deadline forward--be honest with yourself (and your editor), but don't use the opportunity to change dates as a way to procrastinate and avoid completing the work.
• If a serious emergency occurs that may delay or prevent you reaching your deadline--let your editor know ASAP. Don't be embarrassed to be human.
• The best thing about assigning a deadline to your own private work schedule is it makes you STOP working on a piece before you take all the life out of it.
• Always keep a deadline calendar that is only for your manuscript or other creative project deadlines. Work out realistic stopping points.
• Try not to be too public about personal deadlines--letting everyone know a certain date for being finished with your WIP or similar, and then not being able to deliver might keep you from working with deadlines ever again.
• If possible, do your best to be a few days early with your professional deadlines.
• Don't agree to absurd deadlines unless you really, really know you can comply. Sometimes we can be so hungry for a sale or a shot at publication we'll agree to unreasonable demands--and then find we're mired in an impossible task. Better to walk away without signing if something doesn't feel "right."
• Know your boundaries and energy limits. Know your working style and how much you can (or can't) do.
• Schedule and plan out your work pace. Don't be a "last minute sprinter" working on sheer adrenaline. Just like tackling exam questions, work on the easy parts of your manuscript assignment first, then take the more difficult areas line by line, one paragraph at a sitting.
• Give yourself space between deadlines to breathe and regroup.
• Even when you finish a piece, give it 24 hours to gel. Whether it's a blog post, a query letter, or a finished manuscript, don't push "send" the second you finish writing. Let it wait.
• Whenever possible, practice working with deadlines. Finished work is the key to success; deadlines will help you get there.

I feel bad.

Bad as in unhappy but also as in base, blameworthy, conscience-stricken, deleterious, delinquent ... my thesaurus goes on and on, but you get the idea.  Why do I feel this way?  Because I've arrived on the wrong side of a deadline without achieving what I'd planned.

Does it matter that the deadline was self-imposed?  Really rather ambitious?  Actually not all that likely?  Yes.  It does.  I'm serious about the book I'd hoped to have finished.  Committed.  Enthusiastic.  Passionate, even.  And yet, I am stopping working on this book because I need to be focusing on another (and, in case this other book should feel slighted, I'd like to put on record that I am serious, committed, enthusiastic and passionate about it too) - a book that also has a deadline - a deadline set by someone other than me.

Never missed one of those.* 

Then I went looking for the origin of the term deadline.  And found it in the American Civil War.  A line was drawn in the dirt 15-20 feet inside the stockade of prison camps.  Any prisoner who stepped over the line could be shot.

Blimey.

Those deadlines were definitely set by somebody else.  Those deadlines you definitely would not want to be on the wrong side of.

Think I'll stop wasting time feeling bad and knuckle down ...


* touch wood


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Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently learned that a controversy brewed about the real use of the editorial calendar. I’m new to this tool of the writing business, but I never realized that such a tool could have so many sides. Who knew that which deadline date one uses was controversial?

Here you have spreadsheet with columns and rows of items. Columns, for me, relate to the days of the week. The rows house the activities required for those days. Some people use the opposite approach. Call me traditional with calendars. Days belong across the top of the sheet.

Those activities plugged into the spreadsheet range from book chapters that must go to a critique partner/group to poem revisions necessary before submitting a packet to a magazine. Everything goes on the calendar; at least in my work world. I also need to allot for time spent on said activity. I know. I’m a bit anal due to having so many projects on the board.

The one thing that I don’t understand about this calendar debate is why it exists. Yes, some writers use a submission deadline date supplied by the magazine, publisher, agent, etc. Others like me, like lots of cushion to account for unforeseen circumstances, and plug a project into a day prior to the actual deadline date.

Isn’t it a matter of needs?

Everyone has a specific way of thinking about work and deadlines. I see deadlines as finite walls. There are no doors in those walls. If I can’t make a deadline, it’s my fault. I knew it was there. I knew what I needed to do. If I don’t make it, it’s because I didn’t prepare adequately to get the job done. It’s really that simple.

In order to make the deadline, I place a date a few days prior to that of the finite wall. In the back of my mind, I know that cushion is built in. In the day-to-day work, though, that realization tends to disappear. My calendar tells me that I need to have something done on a specific day. And that’s what I do.

Others may not need that cushion. They work better under pressure to make deadline. That’s how their creativity erupts; but a sense of immediate need.

I work on a monthly calendar and a weekly one. One gives a longer overview, especially because of coursework I need to keep in mind. The short week calendar gives me detail on upcoming work and deadlines. They operate in tandem to give me all I need to keep my activity level constant.

I haven’t been doing a calendar prior to May. I don’t enjoy the time spent creating them. For me, it’s tedious, but the hour or two I spend on those spreadsheets saves me tons in frus

Do you make writing deadlines for yourself?

The Song Remains the Same author Allison Winn Scotch urged writers to set a personal deadline, even if their editors don’t give them one. She encouraged readers to break a large project into smaller components, setting a specific timeline to complete each individual task.

Here’s an excerpt from her blog post: “With the screenplays I’m working on, I actually give deadlines to my producers…they are happy to get what I turn in whenever I turn it in, but I can’t work that way. So, for example, I’ll say: I intend to get you 50 pages by X date, and then I work backwards from there. I calculate how many pages a day I’ll need to write to meet that deadline…and I write them. Often times, I write faster than I imagined but without that date looming over me, there’s no chance I would. I think this can be a really useful tool when you’re working on a spec manuscript.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

REMEMBER: EARLY Bird DEADLINE for
New Jersey June Conference is March 1st

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

What you dream about when you have not one, but two, terrible deadlines:

- Your radio won't stop playing when you turn it off. It won't stop even when you yank out the batteries. It is still playing while you beat it with a hammer.
- A smiling woman passes you, then suddenly puts you in a headlock and jams a lit cigarette against your temple.
- You hear a baby crying in an empty house. No worries, you will breast feed it. When you pick it up, you realize there's not one baby, but two. And your milk won't come.

~
Howdy, Campers!

Before you read today's post, be sure to check out JoAnn's interview with Donna Gephart last Friday. You'll want to enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Donna's acclaimed (and funny!) novel, How to Survive Middle School.  The entry deadline is tonight, August 26th at 11 p.m. Central Standard Time.

The topic rumbling around TeachingAuthors lately is, What Are Your Writing Fears and What Do You Do About Them?

Fears? Who me?

Okay.  I do have a fear.  But only one.  And it's a teeny-tiny, gentle, kindly, whispering voice in my brain:  ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? YOU CAN'T DO THIS!  YOU COULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS DO THIS!  YOU ARE A COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT IMBECILE WHO DOESN'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SPELL THE WORD IMBECILE WITHOUT ASKING GOOGLE "HOW DO YOU SPELL IMBOCILE?"--NEVER MIND WRITE A POEM OR A STORY OR A BLOG POST!                                 

Almost every author, at one time or another, struggles with getting her book in on time. It happens, but the absolute worst thing you can do is hide. When trouble arises you need communication more than ever. The minute you know you're facing a missed deadline or having trouble of any kind, let your agent know. For some reason, too many authors go underground and refuse to answer email or phone from agents or editors. I think they get tunnel vision and decide if they work frantically to get things done no one will notice. Not true. When we don't hear anything, and we know things are late, panic sets in and that only makes matters worse.

Jessica

Deadlines are good things. They make you stretch yourself. You achieve things you thought were impossible. Sometimes things are even better because you have to work quickly. I relish them and - I dread them. But I know I am happier when I have them, than when I don't. I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy working in the illustration field. Mostly you are working for a client, and that client has expectations - after all they are putting food on your table. I often hear freelancers (in all kinds of work) saying that they have a hard time getting motivated. My advice: get yourself a deadline. And if you don't have one, create one for yourself.

The reason I am rattling on about deadlines is that there's a few on my calendar. This is excellent, means I am busy. Who doesn't want to be busy? I handle my deadlines by making a written calendar, right now it goes until August 31. I have 2 manuscripts to illustrate by then (the next two books in Anastasia Suen's cheerleader series for Kane and Miller publishing). Before you 'gasp' they are black and white with colour cover, so it's not colour double spreads!)

Mid way through this is wham bam ... SCBWI Summer Conference in LA. Just to make things difficult for myself I've decided to redo my portfolio with totally new pieces. So that's F-I-V-E weeks away. Plus I want to take 2 dummies with me. I will be entering the Portfolio Showcase again ... this year I feel like I know what I am doing. Well, more than last year anyway!

As I said, nothing like a deadline ... here's one of the new pieces with a more whimsical style than usual.

I have a very pressing deadline, and the pressure is almost paralyzing me.

Today I ran across something Robert Sheckley said in an essay [Aside: I wish I could find the full essay online or figure out how to read it] called "On Working Method." In it, he suggested telling yourself that you're not really writing a story but only a simulation of a story. A simulation has action and characters and tension just like a real story, but since it's not a real story, the words you use aren't crucial. You don't worry about it, you just write it, working "rapidly and with a certain lightness of touch, as one would do a watercolor rather than a painting." He found that his "simulations" looked pretty much like first drafts of his regular stories. He could "only write as I write, not much better or worse."

Today I'm going to write a simulation, not worry about it, just write it.

Here's something I wrote about Robert Sheckley and I once taught a class together: http://aprilhenry.livejournal.com/88610.html

I'm so behind in my writing. I haven't gotten past chapter 3 of novel #2; I haven't even started revising novel #1; I have EIGHT books I need to review...Argh! Sometimes, I just wish I could put life on pause, just so I can WRITE. Since that won't happen, I gotta make do with what I've got. I'm working on catching up. You know what I didn't do that I need to do? Make deadlines. I'm not sure why I didn't give myself deadlines this time. I'm thinking I let life's struggles get in the way. Doesn't matter. I need deadlines, so I'm gonna give myself deadlines. Ooh! What if I posted my deadlines...put it out there so people can see. Then, I'd HAVE to adhere to them. So, yeah. Deadlines it is. Deadline post coming soon...