Deadline Madness Ramblings

By AnnetteDashofy

As I’m writing this, I’m in the midst of Deadline Madness. On steroids. While working through the edits for the 10^th Zoe Chambers Mystery, I’m promoting the release of Under the Radar, which is the ninth. Daily, I ask myself two questions:

11)    Whoever came up with having a major deadline hit at the same time as a release?

22)    What book am I supposed to be talking about today?

I don’t know about you, but when I have a deadline looming, my brain gets frazzled. I get totally immersed in how to change a scene or how to re-weave a thread throughout the tale. And then I go to a book event and someone asks about the “new book.”

Except, to me, that’s the old book.

The gears in my brain grind from fifth gear to reverse.

The part that gives me nightmares is the fear of revealing a spoiler. Seriously, I have a recurring nightmare that I drop a bomb from the book I’m writing or revising without realizing, in my reader’s mind, that hasn’t happened yet!

Oops.

It’s the equivalent of having a friend tell you about last night’s episode of your favorite television show—the one you’ve DVRed and not had a chance to watch.

The real issue, though, is time management. I have so many pages in the book and so many days to complete the edits. Simple division should work, giving me a daily page goal. Once I meet that goal, I’m free to spend the rest of my day on other writerly business.

In theory.

In reality, I’m happily buzzing along adding description or trimming too much or fulfilling whatever requests my editor has made when bam! A beta reader sends me a comment about a major issue. The foundation of my plot.

Basically, it doesn’t work.

At which point the page goals explode in my face. Unfortunately, the explosion hasn’t done a thing to push back the deadline.

Now what?

In my case, I step away for a few hours. I do the laundry. I run the vacuum. I rearrange the furniture. All the while, my brain churns on the problem at hand.

Did I come up with a solution?

Yes! Is it a good solution? Maybe. Right now, I’ll be happy with it being “plausible,” because with that firm (and fast approaching) deadline, I don’t have time to rewrite the entire book.

We write fiction. But we also have readers who are smart. They’ll call us on a glaring error.

However…

I repeat. We write fiction. Frankly, I don’t want to provide a textbook, especially one that tells precisely and accurately how to commit murder. I keep remembering the old MacGyver. Not the new one, which I have mixed feelings about—a subject for another day. 

In the old series, MacGyver could make a bomb out of anything. Except, the writers left out one or more key ingredients. They didn’t want some high school kid mimicking the show and blowing up his bathroom. Or worse.

So if I fudge a little on the murder method, I hope my readers don’t call me out on it.