Here is the one issue with being a writer: you don’t know when to stop. Every word is precious and you’ll spend every chance you get reading over the same sentence, trying to structure it in such a way that you can add a stronger tone, where you could replace an adjective with something stronger – but what is that adjective? What possibly makes a word pop off of the page with such force that it makes the reader more likely to engage on a more personal level? After all, words have the power to communicate as well as sway ideas. Since language has infinite potential, you’ll be chipping away at words for so long that it becomes meaningless.
Trust me, we all have that moment. It’s why certain writers take years between projects, reaching their own level of perfection before presenting it to a judgmental public. After all, we want to present our best selves. We want to make people understand that we’re not just writing another essay for the sake of spinning wheels. We want to be respected, and anyone who is worth their merit will know that this comes at a cost. A rough draft is imperfect, but too many drafts can be worse, taking away the vitality that you once had.
To put it simply, writing can rarely be what you want it to be. You can write something great, but I don’t know a writer who doesn’t look at even the best of their work and notices the missing commas, the misspelled use of your, and lives with a pit of regret. Maybe it’s not that bad, but every writer feels programmed to always be improving, and that includes changing the past. We’re all evolving as people, learning new techniques and ideas that would make our old essays far more nuanced. The best that we can do is be satisfied that we produced something that speaks to anyone in the world.
That is why I’m deciding to dedicate this week’s column to the importance of deadlines. In a conventional sense, it’s just a moment that we can expect things to be published. If you work in journalism, it’s important to have information presented at relevant times. If there’s a swim meet coming up next Friday, then try and get it out with enough time to promote the event. If you are reviewing the latest Broadway show, you best have it in within the first week – though the sooner the better. There’s so much urgency in getting information available in a timely manner because as a society we are impatient. We can’t wait to read about something that has or will happen before our minds scatter to the next big moment.
I think that working in journalism has helped me in significant ways. I have grown as a writer because I know the value of a deadline telling me that I have x amount of time to get a story finished. That isn’t to say that we’re not above pulling an all-nighter to get that last bit done/started, but in general, it gives us a time frame.
The biggest issue with being a writer is that unless you have those deadlines, a lot of your work ceases to have an urgency. If left to your own devices, there is nothing to stop you from typing very slowly, pulling open an extra tab to see what your friends on Twitter are up to, or just make a pot of soup. The world of distractions exists because the writer’s brain is scattershot, constantly thinking of different stories.
I was once told that every writer needs to have seven projects going at once, and boy does that mess with you. On the one hand, it keeps your brain in constant motion, compartmentalizing several ideas and keeping you from being pigeonholed in one idea for too long. However, that also means that there is no deeper commitment to anything at any one time. It also means that you’re always looking for new ideas, which means that you read into your conversations, trying to turn an inside joke into a new short story, or take a recent news story and begin researching it until you understand the ground they walked on.
As you can see, having “seven projects” means that writers who have no guidance will never get anything done, and that is the folly of this profession. There is this belief that writing is painful, that it takes so much energy just to make an adequate line of text. If you have no purpose, that’s true. You’re either distracted or discouraged, not believing that you’ll get anything out of writing. I’m here to report that writing is cathartic, and you need to do it if for nobody else than to clear your conscience. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Having a deadline is essential if you want to get anywhere as a writer. Imagine if you will going to a restaurant and sitting down. The waitress comes over, takes your order. There is this understanding that your meal will return in a timely manner. There is a deadline. If it comes out too late, there will be a concern. You’ll talk to the waitress and ask where your food is, and it could cause a whole series of problems. Maybe the customer complains and threatens to never return. Because they didn’t meet the deadline, there is now this reputation that this restaurant has lousy service. If they do that enough, they’ll lose business entirely.
On a macular scale, that’s what you face when you don’t meet a deadline. You are feeding the reader. You are personally giving them something to consume that you personally believe they will enjoy. If you do it enough, they will come to trust you as this purveyor of good and soon you’ll have an audience. It’s true that quality is just as important, but that seems secondary to getting anything done at all. Finishing is the biggest obstacle of all, and that’s not just in reaching the end. It’s in knowing when to let go.
You don’t start off knowing how to handle a deadline. It’s something that you have to work on, preferably early on in your career. If you need to, get a calendar and set up mini-deadlines. If you want to write 50 pages, space it out. By the end of week one, you’ll have half of it done. By week two, you finish the rest. By week three you’re at editing and soon you have completed your goal. Space yourself out. Looking at your final deadline and seeing your final goal is ultimately hopeless if you are intimidated by the road to it.
By seeing your project not as one big picture and instead as small components, it makes something more palatable. Suddenly what seemed to be 10 feet tall is now only an inch here or there. When starting out, don’t work towards the end goal, but instead making that first inch matter. If you do your job right, that first inch will connect to the rest in ways that strengthen what’s to come. After a while, if you’re committed, you’ll find that you have gone the entire way and achieved something that you never thought that you could.
The issue is that most of us want quick and easy goals. We don’t want to run a marathon, but just an hour a day. We don’t want to read “War and Peace” when there are so many short stories out there. Writing is difficult, even when doing a research paper where you have all of the information at your disposal. How do you organize it? These are things that will take time to understand, and I hope that you become a writer so accomplished that you understand the basic structure of an essay so that it relieves some pressure.
The most important part of deadlines is that it forces you to improve your editing skills. Every line has infinite potential, and you need to do everything to present your best self. That’s what makes us intimidated to start in the first place. However, with a deadline you have no choice but to work with your instinct in rapid succession, looking at every line and making split decisions about whether that line even matters. You become more engaged with the text because you know that very soon it will cease to be yours anymore. It will enter the world and the best of us will become nervous. We know that if we had another five years to finish this article that it would be perfect, full of personal anecdotes that enrich. However, we don’t have that. We need to work with what we have now.
Having those limitations is actually freeing because it forces you to become better thinking. Regardless of your work, you’ll hone your craft and learn to adapt. Sure you’ll have those projects that require longer periods, but having short-term goals allows you to build muscle. You have no choice but to pull yourself away from the distractions because you know that this NEEDS to be done. If you truly care, it centers you.
And this applies to projects that you don’t care as much about either. Throughout our school years, we’ll have hundreds of essays that frankly don’t matter. All they do is determine our competency by academic standards. You may half-ass it, and that’s fine. If you know how to persuade with limited information, then you’ll only get so far. However, learning to put in the time allows tolerance to build which makes you a better writer instinctually. Most of all, it will make you understand the proper ways to do research. It only becomes more complicated as you get older, so why not try to pick up skills while you’re young.
To me, deadlines have made getting through COVID-19 far more tolerable. On The Memory Tourist, I have constant deadlines where I need to plan things out days (or even a week) in advance, and it’s my job to reach those deadlines. While I can’t say that everything I’ve written has come out easily, knowing that I have specific amounts of time has relieved some of the pressure because it forces me to push forward. I need to find ways to expand and create content that meets my own guidelines. I like to think that it’s keeping me sharp, but also making me stronger. In a time when I could fly by doing nothing, I am trying to find those seven projects, and it’s working out nicely.
If you don’t want to use deadlines to satisfy someone else, then I suggest doing it for yourself. If you want to write an essay, make it due by the end of the week It may not matter to anyone, but knowing that you finished it creates this reassurance that you completed something. It may not be perfect, but it’s yours. You now have something that didn’t exist before. Be proud of it. Learn from those mistakes you realize after your deadline, and hopefully, you’ll be a more expedient writer when all is said and done. As much as we want to work on things forever, there is something worthwhile about stopping and looking at it in hindsight.
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