I love deadlines

[dougspice]

Maybe you remember a year or so ago I wrote a script in 8 days on a bet, from no concept to 90 pages. Well, needless to say, it wasn't genius, but it was surprisingly solid. But I more or less forgot about it after sending it around to a few friends.

Fast forward to the present, when I've just spent the last two days doing a page one rewrite on the thing to bring it up to standard and get it out to people who have expressed interest before they leave town. The whole thing got turned upside down... stayed up until 7am last night on a 10-hour marathon. Basically I've done 50-60 pages in the last two days. I'm buzzing right now.

I think this is the main reason I don't consider myself a writer, primarily: I don't have that discipline, in the absense of deadlines, that's so necessary to the craft. But give me a deadline, and I'll meet it, usually beyond my own expectations.

Anyone else find this is true? Do you have techniques for setting your own deadlines, and convincing yourself that they're "real"?

 

[Gohanto]

Depends how far away the deadline is. If I know something isn't due for a month, I'll start it two days before the deadline. If I get told about something that's due in four days, I would start it immediately.

Plus, there's always the philosophy that if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

 

[dougspice]

Sort of similar to "anything is worth what a purchaser will pay for it." I like it.

This isn't to say I don't like to have the time to do things right, but I find for me the writing process works best when I have a fair amount of time to cogitate on an idea in my head, poke at it without serious investment, and then really push hard to put it all together. So there's time to play... but then playtime is over.