Being a writer I live frequently with the pressure of deadlines... and have actually always managed to deliver my novels on time. In university I hardly slept the final week in April 1976 to get my senior thesis in before the cut-off date, living on coffee and cigarettes - and sleeping for around sixteen hours the day I finally delivered it (I actually won the American History Prize that year for the thesis - proof that pressure can have positive results). I stayed up the entire night - a twenty-two hour day, if I remember correctly - to finish my first play for BBC Radio in Dublin in 1979. Just as, during my early days writing journalism (which became my lifeline after I quit my job at The Abbey Theatre, determined to become a writer), I would work until 4am to finish a book review. When I moved to London in 1988 I was obsessed with getting a review or an travel essay so right for a publication like The Listener or The Sunday Times that I would lose much sleep over it. One of the greater truisms about writing is the more you do it the more confident you become about the complexities of its craft. A book review now takes me three hours tops to write (the late William F Buckley was known to punch out his column during a taxi ride in New York). And I pace myself on my novels at the outset, but frequently find myself putting in fourteen hour days as the deadline approaches. Deadlines are a sort of Sword of Damocles poised above you - and I always respect them. Because, indeed, they do focus the mind. How you relate to deadlines speaks volumes about all sorts of dense psychological issues - especially the big ‘people in authority above you’ one. There are writers who spend eight, ten years on a novel - because their creative process is a slow one, or perhaps because they are simply in a position to take their time on a book; that they don’t have the financial imperative that also drives so much of writing (Norman Mailer had so many alimonies to pay he was amazingly prolific). Personally I need the imprimateur of a deadline. But, then again, I am a maker of lists. Just as I often jolt upright after six hours of sleep if I know I have something do that day. Deadlines are a necessary source of focus, as unnerving as they can still be. What is your relationship to deadlines, and do you find them productive or stress-inducing?
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 06:01:57 +0000