Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Deadlines and Belly Badges

Deadlines have a habit of sneaking up on you. One minute you’ve got weeks to get that work in progress finished, and the next you’re wondering if your family will notice if you pack up and move to a cabin in the mountains for as long as it takes to finish your book. Part of me longs for my pre-published days when deadlines weren’t even on the horizon, let alone part of my writing vocabulary. Of course, after spending six months rewriting the first three chapters of my first book, having a deadline might not have been such a bad thing.

But when a deadline is looming, and chances are a million other things will fall in your lap at the same time (like edits on your upcoming ebook release and print galley checks), the best you can do is buckle down and learn from other people’s mistakes. Like mine :)

Which leads me to…

Five signs you’re on a tight deadline:

1. You’re so preoccupied with figuring out how you can cram in twice your average word count for the day, you don’t notice you’ve put regular toothpaste on your son’s toothbrush until you hear him howling that it’s too spicy.

2. Your dog has realized you spend your mornings obsessing about your character’s inner conflict and has become a pro at strategically dropping her toy in front of the pantry door, ensuring later access when you don’t remember to give her a treat.

3. You hit the word count button for the tenth time in an hour and hear giggling—the “shhhh or she’ll hear us” kind. The exact sound that reminds you why you don’t normally write during the day. Peeking around the corner, you discover your boys have decided they want to be Care Bears and have given each other colorful belly badges. Hours later you’ll wonder how some companies can get away with labeling their markers as “washable”.

4. Rethinking an action scene prompts you to seek out your husband. On the way, you notice the DVD player is missing, along with his favorite guitars. The leftover pizza you’d stashed in the fridge is now tucked in a cooler in the garage, where you find your husband getting awfully cozy. You’d ask him if wants his bed moved out there if he didn’t already look a little too comfortable.

5. While pacing the length of the hallway in hopes a solution for the plot hole you should have picked up on eight chapters ago will present itself, you sail past the playroom door, stop and backtrack. Your four-year-old is reading…but not Winnie the Pooh or Thomas. Nope, he’s currently engrossed in your copy of Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth. Ten minutes later, his nose is still planted between the pages.

If you have a deadline story others can learn from, or at least be amused by, feel free to share. :)