As I normally do with these blog posts, I’m going to take you behind the scenes in regards to my planning. And before you get too worried, no, this is not how I set deadlines, since there’s a post from last year about that. No, what we’re talking about today is what happens when those deadlines don’t work as well as I hoped they will.
Now, something that’s quite common with me is that the last week of a month and the first week of the following month are usually pretty heavy for me. I like having things due at the end of the month, and I like to start a month strong by getting a lot of things done. January into February was no exception to this, since I was trying to finish up some backplotting on a few projects so that I could focus on the next ones. I’m also trying to edit a novel to have it out by the end of the month, so it was kind of crucial for me to get a good start on that in January.
As I’m sure you can imagine where this is going, the universe decided to throw a wrench in that plan in the form of my wisdom teeth. The final week of January, I was in excruciating pain and could barely eat, let alone write. Then, I had urgent surgery to get them out right at the end of the month, and obviously, I was more concerned about recovery than editing. All in all, I was not working on my projects very much for about a week and a half. Which really isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, but with the way I set deadlines for the end of the month, I’m horribly behind now.
Okay, that’s dramatic. I will be able to get caught up with a couple hours of work, but it just goes to show how easily my deadlines can be skewed. It’s also making me realize that perhaps I’m setting too many deadlines for myself, but I’m choosing to ignore that. Instead, I’m just trying to focus on getting caught up.
The biggest thing that has suffered as a result of me having to get surgery is my editing. As I’m writing this, I have eight chapters to edit over the next two days to stay on track to publish my book on time. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, and is really only going to take me around two hours, but I’m also in the round of edits where I’m pulling content from it and also, I hate editing. Couple that with the fact that I have a lot of other logistics stuff to plot, and it’s safe to say I’m going to spend this weekend sat at my computer, hopefully getting closer to keeping my deadlines in tact.
Am I surprised that the deadlines I set a few weeks ago aren’t working as planned? Not even a little bit. Because I don’t write full time, there is never a month that goes by without me having to change my deadlines. Sometimes it’s by a couple days, sometimes the entire schedule that goes out the window. However, because I’m completely independent and answering to no one but myself when it comes to my writing, it honestly doesn’t matter if something is a couple days late, or I have to push my publishing deadline by a few days. The only person that actually knows my deadlines are me, so when I have to change them, it’s perfectly okay.
So, what do I do when my deadlines get completely skewed? Well, it depends. Since I was only out for a week and a half, I should be able to just play catch up and not have to redo the rest of my deadlines for the month too much. On the off chance that I do need to rearrange the rest of the deadlines, I’ll just have to shift all of my deadlines later. Everything that I wanted to get done this month still needs to get done at some point, even if it gets done a couple of weeks later.
There you have it. A strange look into the aftermath of deadlines. Not really that much about writing, but something I’m actively dealing with at the moment, and something that is repeatedly coming up for me.
That's all for now, folks!
-C
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