"I love deadlines.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
Oh, Mr. Adams. Not only were you a brilliant and hilarious writer, but you were a speaker of truth. Deadlines can help me knuckle down and produce, but they also love to go rushing by without being met. Especially the self-imposed variety. It's too easy to extend it by a week, or a month, and then...it's been a year and you're still not finished with that novel.
I know I write slow. I always have, and while I've been able to improve some, I don't know that I'll ever write at a 2 books a year pace. Part of that is because my first drafts tend to be relatively polished. Not ready straight out of the box, but not a mess of contradicting cliches or anything. Editing, on the other hand, I feel like I can do. Felt like I could do, anyway.
Yes, the end of April was my goal to be done with novel 6. I have 34 more pages (single-spaced, 11-point font) to go, and there are some significant changes to be made in those pages. So I didn't exactly make my deadline. Oops. That's frustrating for me, as someone who likes to consider myself detail-oriented and conscientious. Maybe it's just because it is my own arbitrary deadlines. No one out there is waiting with baited breath for my book—not yet, anyway. Hopefully the next one! It's far too easy to let myself slide.
I don't really know how to change that except to try harder. It should be easier now that I am leaving my job and going into a period of unemployment. If that doesn't give me time to write, I don't know what will! So, 34 pages. I can do that in 2 weeks, absolutely. Taking into account a week-long vacation I am taking with my boyfriend towards the end of the month, I think that I can have this draft of novel 6 not only finished by the end of May, but I can also have a solid query written up and an initial list of agents. Yes, I can and will be querying novel 6 by the end of the month!
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