I’ve been through a rough initiation to the reality of deadlines. In May, I learned that I needed to do a 60 to 70 percent rewrite of my second novel…in one month. My agent negotiated for an extra month, but that was all the wiggle room available. So I had eight weeks to write about 300 pages. In addition, I knew that the enormity of the second novel’s rewrite would affect the time I needed to write the third novel in my series. Altogether, I was looking at writing and editing about 600 to 700 pages in six to seven months, starting in June 2011 and ending January 1st, 2012.
For some authors, this wouldn’t be too stressful. Many professional novelists turn out three or even four books a year.
For me, it felt like a death sentence. Given the pace at which I usually write and the research requirements for my novels, I knew that the unexpected impact of these deadlines would change my life drastically.
I wanted to run away, screaming and frothing at the mouth. It took every ounce of my willpower to accept the situation and begin the long, arduous, fearsome task ahead of me.
So here I am, three days from my deadline for my third novel. I have one chapter left to write.
I have officially survived the deadlines. And I feel like a warrior returning exhausted but victorious from a battle with some horrifying mythical creature .
For what it’s worth, here’s what I’ve learned.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I’ve never felt such pure dread from a writing project as I did during the rewrite of my second novel. In grad school, I finished my papers two weeks early without breaking a sweat, and liked it! Even though my doctoral dissertation took a lot of thought and hard work, I never feared it or thought I couldn’t do it.
You know the pinprick of reluctance and fear that we writers sometimes feel when we face a blank page? Magnify that by one hundred, until it’s like a lance through the guts, and that’s how I felt for seven of the eight weeks of that novel rewrite.
At the same time, I knew that this crippling fear was my true enemy. If I could just live through it one hour at a time without hyperventilating, I could probably make it through the whole ordeal.
Deadlines are like Medusa: the mere sight of them can turn you to stone.
So don’t look directly at them, if you want to survive. Polish up your shield of faith and look only in its bright surface—let the deadline become a dim, hissing shadow while you hack off its head.
Does this metaphor seem too violent for the artistic, expressive act of novel writing? For me, that’s how it felt–like a raw struggle, nothing pretty or poetic to it, just sheer determination not to give in to the fear.
Tell me—have you ever faced this kind of overwhelming fear as a writer? What did you do to get through it?
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