Internal Deadlines – The Climb #936

Wednesday 15th September 2021

One of my favourite thing to do is look at other writers’ processes. I love that the craft of writing is so diverse and individual, and I love hearing how someone’s process is completely different to mine.

I’ve been feeling better today after yesterday’s mysterious illness (no, it wasn’t Covid. I checked). Someone said it might have been the weather as yesterday was a very wet and miserable autumn day. I don’t think so, as whilst my energy levels have been a bit better, I’ve still been in a bit of a funk with myself where I focus on all the things I haven’t done instead of all the things I have accomplished. I usually only get like that when my body is feeling rundown.

At the moment I’m being over-harsh with myself over internal writing deadlines. Now, let me first say that when I have a deadline, such as entering a competition or a contract, I make it. But I have a deep-set belief that burning yourself out for a date that doesn’t matter seems pointless. Some people work well when they set a date and get stuff done by that date come hell or high water. Not me. It works for short term sprints but not projects that are marathons.

So when I set an internal deadline for a writing project, it’s arbitrary. A best guess. And then I overrun, and I am sad and feel ineffective.

This is one of the reasons I’ve been so busy gathering writing data. If I know how long it takes me to write a first draft, I can plan a little better (Although my estimates for word count of a first draft are wildly inaccurate, but that’s a problem for another day).

The important thing is that everything gets done, eventually. Which is fine, as there’s no-one waiting for it. Except it sometimes bothers me. I might not get bored of the story or characters, but I definitely get bored with the fact that I’m still on the same project.

So behind the scenes I’m working on this. I’m reading on the subject, I’m looking at other busy writers.

And the thing I’ve found is that most of them only actually write for a couple of hours a day, even if they have multiple projects. I’m probably a little more, but I end up frustrated because there’s real life stuff that needs to get done, and this first draft isn’t finished, and I have projects that need completing and what have I been doing all this time?

The answer is that I probably take on too much. If you remember in the summer I said I wanted to be inching lots of projects forwards. I’ve been doing that, and yes, I’ve made good progress but as we go into the end of the year and I want to be finishing some of these projects off, I’m wondering if I need a change of focus for a week.

So my plan is that next week, the focus will NOT be on the writing. I’ll still write, but the priority will be elsewhere. I want to see how many words I get written compared to a week when it is the focus. Hopefully, by doing that I’ll not only inch projects forwards, but maybe some of the real life things I’ve put off and are now stressing me can get sorted and I’ll feel a little calmer.

This year has really been pushing myself. I called it my year of productivity as I tried to write lots of different types of stories. I’ve been doing that but I want to start pulling it in for the end of the year. That means getting this first draft done, a few other mini projects completed, and reducing the variety of my workload before Xmas. Come 2022 I might expand it again.

So I guess in many ways, I have given myself an internal deadline: the end of the year to get all my current non-ongoing projects done.