Deadlines and Why I Love Them

A whine, overheard while writers were at work in a local café: "Is there any cure for chronic self-editing?"

"Yes," I thought. "It's called a deadline."

How much do I love deadlines? A deadline is every writer's best friend, even when we think it isn't. Deadlines are what keeps me sane, and more important, what keeps me honest. Deadlines are sometimes the only reason a project moves off my desk (and out of chronic self-editing hell) to where it's supposed to go. Deadlines are what makes it possible for me to organize my work life, do cash-flow projections (also known as depression charts!), plan for family needs.

Deadlines might be traditional (an editor or client tells me when he wants a piece of writing, a conference sets a date when panel proposals are due), or what I call reflexive (a class begins on a certain day, which causes me to set a deadline X days ahead for getting my notes, lecture and hand-out materials ready).

Any way I can get a deadline, I'll take it. Because deadlines do more than keep me moving along.

Deadlines also force me to continue to grow as a writer, editor and writing teacher.

I get kind of nauseous thinking about all of the things I would never have accomplished (or completed) if not for deadlines.

Which is why I advise editors and clients who are easy-going, who trust me, or who maybe have flexible deadlines themselves, that I want a deadline; no matter what, there must be a deadline.

No deadline for me can translate into a project – no matter how excited I may have been about it initially – falling to the bottom of the to-do list. Often that's because the project itself, which seemed like such a good idea at the time, is something that scares me a little, something that's a stretch, maybe something which causes me to thwack my forehead and groan, "What was I thinking when I took this on?"

A deadline forces me to just do it.

I'll tell you the deadlines I don't like: the ones warning me my holiday presents won't arrive in time. That's it. All other deadlines are my friends.

A writer friend in the early stages of a (non-writing-related) dissertation, told me her (respected, lovely, supportive) faculty advisor kept saying things like, "Just get me the next chapter draft in a reasonable amount of time…." This was driving her nuts, so she proposed a deadline.

"How about January 28?" she suggested.

"No," the professor said. "January 20. Don't be late."

Was my friend happy? Of course not, she was upset that her "deadline" had been moved up.

Writers. You just can't please us.

Guest Blogger Jesaka Long on How Blogging Improved Her Personal Essay Writing

I "meet" many writers online, and mostly it's a wonderful experience. We commiserate, congratulate, encourage, pick one another's brains. I learn something, maybe they learn something. What's not to like? Sometimes we're in touch for days, sometimes for years, and along the way I usually forget how it was we first crossed virtual paths. A recent new online writing acquaintance is Jesaka Long, a fellow essayist, and a freelance brand and marketing copywriter based in Denver. She’s also a drama editor for Conclave: a Journal of Character, and her nonfiction has recently been published in American Pressings.

Please welcome Jesaka Long

"Armed with enthusiasm, the support of my fellow classmates and three polished pieces, I emerged from my first personal essay class ready to submit, submit, submit. And you know what happened next: rejection, rejection, rejection.

And then more rejection. While I was grateful to receive responses—hey, at least someone was reading—I became discouraged. More than a year after my class, I was still unpublished.

Hungry to get my words in front of an audience beyond friends and classmates, I started a blog. One of my first posts was a short essay that I’d given up on placing. Since then, my writing has improved and I’ve finally secured that first yes.

I credit my blogging with helping me improve my creative non-fiction writing—and here’s why.

· Confidence: Growing an audience on my blog has boosted my belief in my writing ability. Knowing I’ve reached readers beyond those I can count on my fingers encourages me to keep trying, even as I continue to receive rejections.

· Feedback: When people—especially strangers—read my blog posts, I can get immediate feedback, both from comments and statistics. Some posts I thought would go unnoticed have been big hits, prompting heavy traffic and a high number of long, thoughtful comments. On the flip side, headlines I expected to generate good traffic flopped loudly, echoing in the silence that followed. It helps me identify how my words are reaching—or repelling—audiences.

· Habit: Before launching my blog, I was undisciplined, often relying on classes to force me to write on a regular basis. And, although it took me several months to develop a rhythm for writing and publishing posts, I finally settled into a three-times-per-week pattern. I consider this a writing commitment and it’s helped me develop better habits for drafting essays. While I may miss a post or word count goal occasionally, I’m writing far more regularly than I did pre-blog.

· Family Warm Up: I’ve yet to take any type of creative non-fiction writing class without someone asking how to handle work that includes family members. It was a concern for me, too, when I first started writing personal essays, because my family tends to keep its business under lock and key. By sharing short anecdotes about people in my life I’ve been able to gauge reactions. So far, it’s all been positive and, surprisingly, my family seemed to respond with, “well, we knew you were a writer.” It’s also helped that my cousin is a mommy blogger, so I do have a partner in storytelling crime.

I originally thought that a blog would detract from my writing time and focus, but it’s been just the opposite. While I will admit to being a little casual about blog posts (ahem, drafting a post while catching up on a favorite TV show), I’m now much more dedicated to—and protective of—my writing time. And my essays show it."

Note from Lisa: You can read Jesaka's blog here.

Writer busy. Thinking about shoes. And other things.

When, on a writer's blog, things get quiet, it's usually either a very good sign, or we should be worried for the blogger.

Radio silence on the blog of a writer/editor/teacher can mean she is busy, busy, busy writing, editing, teaching. Maybe she's struck a creative vein and is on a productivity roll on her memoir manuscript, or maybe she's caught up with teaching, critiquing and interacting with the writers in her class(es), or she's prepping future lectures, or she's editing client manuscripts like mad, or fulfilling a paid writing assignment, or getting that interesting new writing coaching client launched.

Or else -- she's in a funk, is avoiding her keyboard, feels as if she has nothing meaningful to say to other writers (and maybe never will again), isn't interested in her own long-term creative projects, is letting student work pile up unread, is dangerously close to not meeting a deadline. Heck, maybe she is even looking for a job at a shoe store.

Happily for me -- although I've been acquainted with the latter scenario – it's the former which has been the reason I've been absent from the blog a bit lately. Lots going on, all burners firing on high, feeling professionally motivated, engaged, and energized. You know those weeks – everything seems to be working out at once. If you're like me though, that's both wonderful and a bit dreadful.

Oh, yes, I'm a "waiting for the other shoe to drop" kind of gal….wondering when the freelance work will slow down, if an editing client will pull a long range project, if the next class will get enough enrollments to run, whether a magazine will yank an assignment, when the older computer will crash.

Years ago, a therapist I was seeing (to deal with postpartum depression) once put a shoe next to the tissue box every time we had a session, as a reminder that most of the "shoe dropping" I kept waiting for was the product of my own outlook. Before I left, I had to pitch the shoe into the wastebasket. With enthusiasm.

I'm thinking of putting a shoe on my desk.

"So, How Does It Feel?"

"So, how does it feel?"

Every time in my life when I have been asked this question, I have never known what to say except perhaps, "I'm not sure yet. Check back in a few days/weeks/months."

People asked it after I got married, after my horse qualified for a major national event, after I gave birth the first time, after I had my first publication…..and just recently, after I finished an MFA program.

How does it feel?

How about disconcerting? Relieved. Sad. A little bewildering. Proud. Worried. Unmoored. And, inevitably, not much different.

The degree is an accomplishment, yes. But I still feel like a struggling writer, meaning not one who struggles to write, but who struggles daily with trying to write better, to write something of value, to write to a higher standard than yesterday. That struggle, I know, will -- and should – go on, regardless of any courses, degrees, publications or paychecks. So that part feels rather the same.

Yet, as I sit at my desk each morning, at least one thing does feel different.

I'm a deadline person. Deadlines are my friends. Give me a deadline and I am a productive person. Things get done. Ideas turn into copy and drafts become editable manuscripts. Deadlines mean I am in action. [OK, for those who know me, I admit yes, I am a pretty disciplined person anyway, deadlines or not. But a deadline helps, always.] And so, with the absence of academic deadlines, coupled with it being the middle of summer (translation: kids are home, and bored) I'm a bit adrift.

Which is not to say I don't have deadlines -- from magazine, newspaper and book editors for whom I'd doing freelance articles and essays. I do (thank God, I do). But a deadline for the "real world," for some insane reason, doesn't seem to have the power of a deadline for "school" – to others and sometimes, to me. Used to be, I'd close the office door, tell everyone – kids, husband, friends, relatives, the PTA -- "I have a grad school deadline," and that was that. Don't bother Mom/Lisa, she's got a school deadline, they'd say, and quietly go away. Now, not so easy.

I always meet all those real-world deadlines, just as I did with MFA deadlines, and I'm often early (I do want to keep working), always trying to impress an editor. But somehow those deadlines just don't feel quite the same.

So for those who want to know "how does it feel" to be done -- with an all-consuming two-year MFA program which took over much of my life -- that's the answer.

The same, and different.

But, you might want to check back in a few months or weeks or days.