Zestful Blog Post #123
For professional writers, deadlines are a fact of life.
Fortunately, they’ve never daunted me. But I’ve learned a few tricks along the
way.
Deadlines fall into two categories: Those imposed on you,
and those you have occasion to impose on others. The first kind are set by
employers, clients, agents, editors, publishers, etc. Sometimes a deadline is
not negotiable. Daily newspapers pretty much have non-negotiable deadlines. If
you’re writing freelance, your editor has probably told you a deadline that’s a
few hours earlier than the real one, but if you want to keep a good
relationship with that editor, you get your piece and pictures in on time.
[You want all of your business relationships to be happy rainbows,
not crushed raccoons like the one by the side of the road I Photoshopped out.]
But sometimes, as for a magazine article or a short story
for an anthology, you can have a say in your deadline. The conversation might
go:
You: So, when do you need this by?
Editor: Well, ideally I’d like it by [X date], but [Z date
later] would be OK.
You: Let’s split the difference. How bout [Y date]? Would
that really be all right with you?
Because something always comes up, and you’re going to be
glad for those extra days. So:
Tip #1: Pad it if you can, but not by a lot. You want
breathing room, but you don’t want the job to drag on forever. Plus, bosses
like it when you make their lives easier.
Tip #2: Never, if you can help it, choose a deadline that
falls on a Monday. Once you’ve made that mistake and paid for it by sacrificing
weekend plans, you’ll never make it again. I like Thursday deadlines.
Both of those tips work when you have to impose deadlines as
well, like if you’re editing something or arranging for production work to be
done, like design and printing.
One more thing, for longer-term deadlines months away, like
your next book for your publisher. This also works if you’re the requester of
work, like if you’re editing a collection or suchlike:
Tip #3: Never choose a date at the beginning of a month. If
you do that, everybody’s like, oh, yeah, we have until February 1st to
get that done. And they think February
all the way through January, until suddenly it’s like, “Ruh-roh, tomorrow’s February,
and it’s not just February, its February 1st, and we’ve screwed
ourselves.” But if you pick January 31st, everybody at least starts
to bear down in January. “Oh, yeah, January deadline on this one.”
All of this works for self-imposed deadlines as well. It’s
all psychological, but real.
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