My daughter just finished applying to ten colleges—at the expense of ten years of my life. Her deadlines nearly did me in.
We have different styles, you see: I tend to tackle things quickly to get them off my list, while she can’t really get started until there’s no room left to procrastinate. She never misses a deadline—but she also lives constantly under the looming threat of running out of time. Except that’s when she’s able to work–when the crisis has commenced. With the screws ratcheting down.
Which is pretty much what I spend my life trying to prevent.
Yet deadlines can work either way, right?
At times—as for her—they’re just the kick you need to work nonstop. To keep yourself on task, fighting your way to the end because there are no longer options to put it off. Not without blowing your deadline. Often, when it’s over, you realize just how much you accomplished in such a short time. That the fast-and-furious pace drew out your best work.
Then there’s the alternative outcome. Where the looming deadline can keep you pushing ahead even when your project is getting off track, taking a turn into mushy netherworlds where you can no longer neatly connect the dots — so you just shove them toward one another. Because you’re running out of time, there’s no time to go back and fix anything. Said another way, the deadline can easily sabotage your best work.
We’ve all seen this in the publishing world, haven’t we? Especially on those second or third novels that come hard on the heels of a successful debut. Where the debut felt carefully wrought, perfectly polished, the follow-up gives the impression of having been rushed to the printer. We as readers feel disappointed, knowing in our bones that a great story could have been inside these covers. There hadn’t been enough time or attention to find it. It’s the case where we hear ourselves say, “This book could use an editor.”
Recently I read an interview with the author Kristin Hannah, who said she’s twice blown her deadline. Once for her mega-bestseller The Nightingale, where she asked for another year to revise because the book was complex and needed the time. Then, more recently, when she had a manuscript that absolutely refused to work, so she pitched it and started over, using the same setting with a different time period.
I would have hated this—blowing a deadline. It’s completely in my marrow to make deadlines. Except there’s a terrible risk in this, because it’s too easy to say “It’s good enough” instead of “This could be better.”
For some things, a project at your job, maybe, good enough is just that, good enough. For your own creations, though, the things on which you will reflect from your deathbed, there’s no good enough. It needs to be your best work. Which isn’t the same as perfect, because there’s no such thing. But you need to know deep inside that you gave it all you had.
For my latest project, I have no real deadline. Only whatever arbitrary one I might make up for myself. So I’m making a different type of commitment. Rather than setting a deadline, I’m setting a quality standard. My new goal is not to put out work until I’ve solicited so much feedback that I truly feel the work is polished granite. Bombproof.
Or at least that I know I gave it all I had.