Missing a Week!

It's always embarrassing when you're trying to keep in schedule and you end up missing a week, or forgetting a deadline. Fortunately, this is a minor hiccup in my case, as all of you in reader-land are but a dozen or so. I hope you'll forgive me.

But this does bring to mind an interesting thought. Writers often (if not always) face deadlines of some sort, and it usually involves working our fingers to bloody stumps to make them. And if you're trying to make a living as a writer for a company as well as writing fiction... your brain is fried by the end of the day. Trust me, I've done it. I worked as a technical writer while defining freelance and novel writing. I understand.

Professional writing, like where you have an office, puts a lot of pressure on you because you have to complete the work on time. There's no wiggle room, and it has to be just right.

Freelance work is a bit more forgiving, but not much. At least in my experience, I received a certain number of assignments per week, and I could work on them as time permitted. The main problem is that it doesn't have benefits or reliability. One week, I might have ten and another week I might have three. Very inconsistent.

But novel writing is the one that suffers most when scheduling becomes an issue. For example, my wife has us doing two major remodeling projects at once, and I've had several seizures in the last two weeks, so I've not gotten anything done. However, when you're under contract for a book and you have to turn it in by a certain date, you have to get it done. It's like being in the private sector while still freelancing.

Anyway, that's my take on it.
Thanks for reading!
Jeff