My first job out of college was dreadful in all the usual ways: low wages, long hours, zero respect from my boss. In one aspect, though, it was the perfect job. I was a newspaper reporter for a small daily in the Mississippi Delta. As such, I had deadlines. There were daily deadlines (police report, obituaries), weekly deadlines (feature stories, business profiles, the farm report) and spur-of-the-moment deadlines (breaking news at midnight? file by 1 a.m.). There were even weird social deadlines. Blue laws prohibited the sale of alcohol beginning at midnight on Saturday. If we missed that deadline, our only option was to buy beer from the back door of an old honky-tonk, a practice that was mildly dangerous, illegal and always costly. I learned not to miss that deadline on weeks when it was my turn to buy the end-of-the-week celebratory libations.
I lasted about a year in that job and in that town, but I took with me the pressing need for a good deadline, particularly for written work. I went on to work other jobs with different deadlines, but none were ever so urgent as the ones set by my editor at that newspaper. I learned that other people often missed deadlines, that they ignored them, thought them silly and arbitrary.
It was shocking.
A good deadline is at the very core of my productivity. It’s the nugget of pressure that drives me forward, that forces me to sit down and write even when the sun is shining and I’d rather be outside, even when I’m deep into reading a book far more compelling than the one I’m writing, even when my favorite cousin is posting hysterical things on Facebook, even when I’m woefully uninspired. To quote Philip Roth, “Amateurs wait for inspiration; the rest of us get to work.” At least we do when we have a good deadline.
Now, more often than not, I’m forced to set my own deadlines. I don’t mind that, but it is all too easy to procrastinate when the only person holding me accountable is, well, me. Turns out, I’m not the sternest of taskmasters. That’s one of the (many) reasons I take workshops through Lighthouse. The submission schedule of a workshop imposes accountability, imposes a deadline. It’s also part of the reason I signed up for the novelist retreat in Fairplay this November. I have a draft of a novel: a beginning, a middle, an ending. It can no longer be considered a first draft or even a second. Scenes have been written and re-written. Characters have been plumbed to the depths. And yet, there is work to be done. There are sentences that are not graceful and scenes that don’t deliver. I know that by committing to the retreat, I will work harder to polish the troublesome scenes, to sharpen the language, to refine the characters.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll work longer and harder and with greater focus. I'll be skipping some social obligations (though certainly not this one or this one) and hunkering down in the early morning hours. I'll be sequestering myself in dark corners of the library with my laptop and a stack of notes. I'll be shutting my door. I’ll probably even enjoy it, because I will be working under the most ideal circumstances. I’ll be chasing the deadline.
