Working to Deadlines is a Winning Skill

If you’ve never worked to a deadline, you haven’t had the opportunity to build that skill into your writing life.

If you think you’ll never be held to a deadline that probably means you don’t see yourself ever writing for a magazine, a newspaper, or for any publishing house.  It means you’ll never find yourself writing a blog post on a scheduled basis, or writing a seasonal article, story, or book.  And you’ll never enter a writing contest.

Yes, life is full of deadlines.  I’ve talked about the value of participating in National Novel Writing Month as it applies to getting words on the page.  Now let’s look at what NaNoWriMo can teach us about working to a deadline.

 

1.  Major Deadline

This one is easy.  We know NaNoWriMo ends on the stroke of midnight, November 30, each year.  Beginning at one minute after the stroke of midnight, on November 1, you have a total of thirty days in which to create 50,000 words of your next novel.

Making it as simple as possible, we have to decide how to break the project down into manageable pieces if we wish to meet the deadline.  Long ago, I created a template (in Excel) for my NaNoWriMo efforts, where I enter the actual number of words I complete each day, and watch the word count rise.  (Here’s a peek at part of my chart from 2009.)

 

NANOWRIMO Challenge – 2009

DATE

TASK

HOURS

WORDS WRITTEN GOAL

WORDS WRITTEN

RUNNING TOTAL WRITTEN

% OF GOAL

11/1/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter One

1.5

1,667

2,005

2,005

4.01

11/2/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter Two

1.75

1,667

2,613

4,618

9.24

11/3/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter Three

2.75

1,667

2,249

6,867

13.73

11/4/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter Three and Chapter Four

1.75

1,667

2,353

9,220

18.44

11/5/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter Four and Chapter Five

2.25

1,667

1,851

11,071

22.14

11/6/2009

No words written

0

1,667

0

11,071

22.14

11/7/2009

No words written

0

1,667

0

11,071

22.14

11/8/2009

No words written

0

1,667

0

11,071

22.14

11/9/2009

No words written

0

1,667

0

11,071

22.14

11/10/2009

FIRST YOU SURVIVE – Chapter Five and Chapter Six

1.5

1,667

2,434

13,505

27.01

 

You can see that I log the days I don’t work as well as the days I do.  It’s all part of keeping track of where I am, and where I need to be for my word count.  And I don’t just enter a zero in the Words Written column, I spell it out in the Task column: No words written.  There’s no way to ignore that.

Without the actual numbers in front of me each day, it would be easy to get distracted by other interests for a couple of days.  And before I know it, a week has gone by and I’ve written nothing.   There’s a balance point we all have, that once reached, pushes us to say, “Well, there’s no way to catch up, I might as well quit.”  But because I’m checking my stats every day, I see right away when I need to double my word count for a few days to catch up and meet the deadline.  (And yes, I did some catch-up days later in the month and completed my final word count two days ahead of schedule that year.)

The point is that you can’t reach a goal unless you know what it is.  Only then can you make a plan that will guide you to completion.

Now apply this tool to any writing goal by asking yourself these questions:

A.  When do I begin?

B.  When must I submit this work?

C.  How can I divide this project so I can track my progress and complete it on time?

 

2.  Daily Deadline

When we break down our NaNoWriMo project, we see that by writing a minimum of 1,667 words each day we will meet our deadline, with no days to spare.

At 250 words per double-spaced page, our daily goal equates to writing just fewer than five pages per day.  So sometime between midnight and 11:59 p.m. each day, we have to churn out those pages if we expect to meet our deadline.  It doesn’t matter if we have a football game to watch, a parade to attend, or a turkey to baste – those pages must be written by the end of the day.  Every day.

Come on, it’s one month out of your entire writing life.  Surely you can devote time each day to proving you’re a winner.

 

3.  Goal-Oriented Deadline

Meeting a daily deadline becomes easier when you have a specific time of day which you set aside in order to meet that goal.

So, although it’s easy to tell yourself you’ll make cookies with the kids first, and have a lunch date with the hubby, and spend just an hour or so at the neighborhood holiday party, before you sit down to write – don’t.  Just don’t.

If you don’t plan to write, there will always be something more fun, more immediate, more pressing that demands your attention.  And I’m here to tell you that sitting down at 10:47 p.m. and expecting the words to flow just doesn’t happen.

For just this one month, make writing your priority.  Grab your calendar, or your planner, right now.  Choose a time of day when inspiration flows for you.  Maybe it’s early in the morning before anyone else in the house wakes.  Maybe it’s at noon, when you sneak away from your desk and write through your lunch break.  Maybe it’s after dinner, when you’re alone in the glow of your desk light, with all the day’s distractions behind you.

Once you’ve decided which part of the day works best for you, create a new deadline within your twenty-four hour clock.

For example:

A.  Morning writers, your pages will be written before 12:00 p.m.

B.  Midday writers will complete their pages by 6:00 p.m.

C.  Evening writers will write their final word for the day no later than 11:30 p.m.

Whenever it is, schedule that time for your writing.  Every day.  Mark it on your calendar in bold, vivid color.  And then show up at that time.  And write.

 

There’s nothing you can’t do, or write, if you plan it.

 

How do you plan your NaNoWriMo project?  Are you a morning, noon, or night-time writer?  Leave a comment and tell us how you plan to write in the month of November.

 

4 thoughts on “Working to Deadlines is a Winning Skill

  1. I’m a morning writer. I find if I get to my writing early enough the words flow onto the page and I feel really good for the rest of the day. If I muddle that up and delay it, then it impacts my mood because I know I’ve got those words hanging over me.

    NaNo WriMo is a great way to learn how writing deadlines work, a) because you realise you can meet deadlines by starting early and being methodical and b) you gain understanding of what is a reasonable and sustainable amount of writing for you.

    Hope your NaNo WriMo goes smoothly this year. 🙂

    1. Thanks, Jessica. I envy morning writers… you must feel like King of the World once you’ve reached your quota for the day. And then you have all the rest of the day stretching before you. What to do? Fill them by writing even more.

      1. It is a really good feeling, but if something gets in your way and stops your word count then the rest of the day can be quite a panic/misery.

        Hope your NaNo WriMo this year goes well. 🙂

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