As I sit here typing to the blog universe it is finally quiet in my life. The son is in his bed pretending to sleep. The TV is off. The neighbors are not even noisy. I finally feel that breath I have been holding all day escape. That is Monday for everyone though. After a nice restful weekend it is back to the races on Monday and the constant pace until night when we sit back, relax and finally...breath.
Tonight I started thinking of deadlines. I got a bit lax in my writing this week. I say lax of course when I really mean that life and work got in the way a bit more than normal. I had been on such a nice roll with the story and the characters that when I hit a week where everything was hectic and I was unable to write I started to feel behind. That happens to me at work also. I get caught up in a project or a task that is taking so much longer than it should that my regular work gets set aside and starts to build up.
The question is how do you handle it when you are writing, or even in your daily job, when things get behind? For me, I make lists and I make deadlines. My boss often teases me at work because whenever I walk into a meeting I have to have a pen and my "crummy" notebook as he calls it. It is like my safety net though. I always say if it doesn't get written down my head trashes it into the forget pile. Granted lists can be daunting when by Friday they seem to have produced like rabbits instead of shrunk down to manageable size but they still make me feel more relaxed and organized in my chaos.
This past week though I had to give myself a talking to. (It really is not as embarrassing as it sounds. I don't do it out loud just in my head...well, usually.) I decided to set myself a goal and a deadline. I mean I am a writer so deadlines should be so common. I am like an actress in an old black and white movie playing a news reporter and I am on deadline. What is my deadline? It is to finish the next chapter by the end of the weekend. At least that was the deadline I gave myself this past week. I did pretty well too. I finished it today. I will edited it tomorrow and then file it away. I was pretty close at least. A lot closer than earlier today when I realized at 6:20 that we missed my son's 6:00 doctor appointment. That is of course because I did not write it down. That way I can just blame the list and not the fact that I got talking to the neighbor lady too long this evening.
Like I did when I missed my son's doctor's appointment, I had to learn also with deadlines for writing a novel that if you don't make them exactly, it will be just fine. There is always another day and unless you type out The End and have mailed it off, there will be more chapters to plot out. Plus, being a little late sometimes gives you extra time in thought towards your story which I also discovered today that I needed. Big day for thinking for me I guess. I did not quite make the deadline I had hoped but I have a better chapter with no holes in the story and I am also now ready to begin the next chapter. Onward and upward, chapter eight here I come. So just as the doctor will still be there next Monday, I will have another chapter in my book to write or another book in my head to discover, or another day to improve my story.
The dreaded deadline that sounded so tough and steel-like became a good way to focus me and drive me back into my story after distraction. It also wasn't so tough after all as I learned to also have a bit of leniency with the deadline just as I have to with my story and plot. I learned to finally let go of that breath I held and just write beyond the deadline.
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