Ah yes, a writer’s best (or worst) motivator. Setting deadlines for yourself is a difficult process, and today I’ve decided to talk about my experiences with setting them for myself.
Long before I was writing every single day, I had no deadlines for myself, and I was writing according to my motivation. Spoiler alert, that meant I was writing a lot one day, and then not touching my project for weeks. I then started doing NaNoWriMo, and although that wasn’t a deadline in the sense that I use them now, it at least gave me a goal to work towards every day. When I first started doing NaNo, writing 1,667 words a day seemed almost impossible, and now I can grind that out in half an hour, so I guess that’s proof that consistent writing and goals does pay off.
When I started working on multiple projects at once, it was clear to me that I needed deadlines to ensure that every project was getting the attention it needed to make progress. And so, I got a planner specifically for my writing deadlines, and I was off to the races. I would figure out how many chapters a novel was going to have, and when I wanted it done. I would then divide the amount of days I had by the amount of chapters I had, and set deadlines accordingly. For the most part, my deadlines consisted of my writing and my editing, but I’ve also moved plotting into something that needs deadlines.
For a while, having aggressive writing deadlines and multiple chapters due every week worked well for me. It kept me motivated, and gave me something to work towards every day. However, when it got to the point where I was writing one novel where chapters were due every three days and one chapter where chapters were due every four days, it got to be too much, especially the week that I had five chapters due in a week. I did manage to do it, but it was a lot, and I never want to do that again. Granted, that was a period of time when I was writing to avoid dealing with things, so it makes sense that I wanted to write so much, since it kept me from feeling things.
Nowadays, I do have deadlines every week, since it gives me a reason to write every day, and it gives my day some structure. They’re a lot less intense than they were that week, but at the time of writing this, I have deadlines set for one writing one chapter a week per novel I’m working on (so two), five chapters edited a week, and one block of the outline done every one and a half weeks. Still crazy, but a bit more reasonable.
Setting deadlines that are actually obtainable is something I still struggle with, and something I think needs to be reevaluated from time to time, since our ability to work on stuff like this changes, and it’s okay to change your deadlines along with it. I’ve redone deadlines hundreds of times, and have even set deadlines for the entire year that I’ve long abandoned. For me, it works to set deadlines month by month, since the projects I’m working on and my ability to actually complete my goals changes a lot, and this way, I don’t have to scribble out a bunch of deadlines on my calendar when I can’t meet them.
So, deadlines are something that I need and enjoy having, but there’s definitely an art to setting deadlines that are lenient enough that you can actually meet them, but challenging enough that you’re still motivated to write. It’s an art I’m still figuring out, yet it’s one that I’m going to be trying to master for the rest of my writing career.
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