The Deadline : Friend or Foe

(This post was originally published on the CopyWrite blog.)

Douglas Adams once said “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

This week is crunch week on my monthly deadlines for Nett Magazine. Every month, no matter how much planning and scheduling I put in place, I always seem to find myself two days before deadline panicking and frantically trying to piece together articles.

Seeing as the deadline is the same every month, you’d think I would have found the right rhythm now. Yet many writers admit to procrastinating for much of the time and scribbling their work in a frantic panic as the deadline looms. Whether this procrastination can be justified as creative thought or whether writers are inherently lazy is up for debate, but it seems to work.

There is something about the deadline that is incredibly important in getting the job done. Without a deadline, I rarely produce work I am happy with. The pressure of a deadline and the belt of adrenalin that comes with it often forces some intense creative moments that turn a lifeless and pedestrian piece of writing into something vaguely readable.

With my amateur projects, such as screenwriting, I have to fix deadlines for myself to avoid constant procrastination and uninspiring writing. At the moment, I am identifying the competitions I want to use this year as motivation to complete my rewrites. Knowing that I have to complete a rewrite to a particular standard by a certain date galvanizes me into action.

So as much as writers hate deadlines and complain how they shouldn’t be forced to write to order, I find I can’t write without them. They push me to be a better as I have produced my best work when under extreme pressure.

I have one day before the deadline to produce my major article for Nett. But I know the article will be completed on time and I know it will be good.

I might start it in an hour. We’ll see.