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.

Deadline Madness

By Annette Dashofy

As I write this, I’m approaching panic mode. My deadline for the next (10^th) book is less than two weeks away, and I’m at least two weeks behind schedule. As I wrote the first draft, I was not-so-lovingly calling it “The Book That Won’t End.” Now on the second draft (which should have been completed two weeks ago), I’m calling it “The Book That Won’t Cooperate.” I fix a plot hole in one chapter and two more open up in another.

Then there’s a little matter of the previous next book (9^th) coming out next month and the obligatory promotional efforts, all distracting me from the uncooperative one.

And then the Agatha nominations were announced. (Excuse me while I take a moment to happy dance.) Okay, I’m back. What a fabulous distraction! 

I’m as happy for my fellow Writers Who Kill—Grace, Connie, and Kaye—for their nominations as I am about my own. Have you seen the list? Check it out!

Back to the subject of deadline madness and panic mode. I keep asking myself why I chose to write this particular story. It’s too complex. Too many balls are in the air. Too many details to make the murder plot and coverup work. And as I attempt to corral those airborne balls and make sense of the details, I often stop and ask myself, “But why on earth would that character do that?” Sure, it makes the story work, but it makes the character appear stupid. And I don’t want any of my characters to appear stupid.

And that’s where I am with this book.

While I have the word document open on my computer, along with my Scrivener folder, which I use for plotting and keeping track of what happens in which chapter, I have to step away from the electronic files. I have a composition notebook filled with notes (such and such happened on page 92) so I can hopefully keep track of where I need to check for cohesion. I have a legal pad filled with notes about the timeline and lists of possible ways to solve the inconsistencies.

Without having the characters appear stupid.

I use my beloved Pilot G-2 pens in various colors to track different issues. Or scrawl across a page (in red) WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?

Thank goodness for the distractions (I need to go online and look for a dress for the Agatha Banquet and have to do it right now, because—you know—it’s only three months away!) Yes, I’m a little like the dog in the movie Up.

“Squirrel!”

But for now, I must get back to that uncooperative second draft.

Tell me, dear readers, how do you handle the stress of work deadlines?

Book Jail

by Annette Dashofy

I know there are authors out there who write three or four books in a year. The idea leaves me in awe and exhausts me at the same time. My current contract calls for a book every eight months, which sounds do-able on paper…as in the paper on which I placed my signature, assuring my publisher I’d meet my deadlines. In reality, I’m always convinced the next deadline will be the one I can’t meet.

For instance, my next release is coming up September 18. My next next book is due to my publisher roughly two weeks later. So, I’m working on promotion for Cry Wolf and completing the manuscript for Fair Game at the same time. Yes, I’m worried this will be the deadline I won’t make.

Figure in Bouchercon (a week in Florida) and several book festivals and library talks all in September and you see why I’m in panic mode.

And why I’m in Book Jail.

“Book Jail” means slightly different things to me at different times. Twice in the past, I’ve run away to a retreat house with Ramona Long and friends for a week.

My Retreat/Book Jail workspace while completing Uneasy Prey

Those windows up in the attic belong to my room during Uneasy Prey's Retreat/Book Jail

Minimal internet. No husband or cat to cook for. Just long hours of solitary writing (pages and pages) during the day followed by communal evenings for brainstorming. 

My "cell" and workspace for completing Cry Wolf

I finished both Uneasy Prey and Cry Wolf at that Retreat/Book Jail.

This time, schedules didn’t mesh, so Book Jail takes place in my own office. It’s like house arrest. I still have to cook and still have to feed the kitty, but otherwise, I’ve cleared my calendar and blocked off the last two weeks of August. Okay, I still have to make a trip to town once each week to buy groceries, but the rest of the time, I’m holing up, shutting off the internet, and finishing the darned book. First draft, at least. I’ll be struggling through my second and third drafts while promoting and traveling in September. If I look a tad frazzled at any of my appearances, you’ll understand why.

Fellow authors (and anyone else who works under the gun), do you have any tricks or techniques for meeting your deadlines?

Finishing

I’ve been writing a book under a terribly tight contract deadline, and much of the time I’ve been working on it, I’ve been afraid I wouldn’t be able to finish the book. At least, not a very good book. When first given the deadline, I marked off the last two weeks for revisions and allocated word counts for every day of those earlier eight weeks for first draft. It all looked impossible—writing the first draft in so few weeks and revising in merely two weeks. I am, after all, a confirmed reviser of manuscripts. I tell my students that good writing is inevitably re-writing. And how can I make this book good with only two weeks to rewrite it?

It’s been a high-stress time, and as real life tends to do, other parts of my life have not lain down in submission to this overwhelming deadline. Serious health issues have dogged my daughter. My youngest son needed help in returning to Kansas City from eight years in Iowa for grad school. The other freelance and teaching commitments I’d already made wouldn’t vanish into thin air for me, either. And it’s been the prime time for traveling to promote the book just out, Every Broken Trust. So I’ve had to write in the spaces around these things.

But, last week, I finished that first draft of Every Hidden Fear, the third Skeet Bannion book, and I’m solidly into the revision process now. And lo and behold! My first reader feels I’ve written a good book—with, of course, some weak areas that I’m currently working on in revision. After a couple of days off to let it rest and do some marathon freelance work sessions, I read it straight through, making edit notes, and agreed.

So now my anxiety is not about being able to write the book, but can I revise it to make it as strong and complex as my other books in this limited time. I’ve written new scenes that were needed to make it structurally stronger. I’ve cut and changed other scenes for the same reasons. I had to make substantial changes in every scene in the book where one character appeared or other characters discussed her. I’ve beefed up a couple of secondary characters. Now that the structural, big picture stuff has been mostly taken care of, I’m going through the book scene by scene, making sure all the details that bring a place, people, a story to life are in place—weather, landscape, the five senses, emotional reactions, and more. When I’ve finished with this, I’ll start at the beginning again, doing line edits to compress and tighten and make the language sing.

It’s pretty intense work, and I’ve been putting in ten- to twelve-hour days on this book since I got this deadline when I only had two chapters and a two-paragraph synopsis written. I lose track of the date and time and weather. While I was writing the final scenes in a frenzy last week, I left my house for a SinC meeting and was almost overwhelmed by the heat and sun because I’d been living and writing a blizzard so deeply that the real weather came as a shock. My email inbox is a disaster area. I wake in the middle of the night, dreaming the book. I have hardly any other conversation.

But it’s happening. Just as the draft took shape in a time frame that I never would have thought possible, so the revision is moving along. If nothing else, this experience has taught me that I can do more than I believed I could. That’s valuable information to have. I never want to have to write a book to final form in such a short time again, but if necessary, I know I can do it. That will certainly take away a lot of fear from any longer deadlines I end up facing in the future. “Heck, I can do that. I’ve done it in half that time.”

I remember Agatha Christie writing in her autobiography about the book she had to write immediately after her first husband left her and she had a nervous breakdown, leading to her highly publicized disappearance. She had a child to support and a book contract she had to meet. Even though her life had crashed down around her ankles. She never felt less like writing in her life, she said, but she had to go through with it. She always said that was the book that made her a real professional writer, and she learned a hard lesson from it—a professional writes whether she feels like it or not. I feel like I’ve learned the same lesson Agatha learned.

Have you had an experience when you learned you could do something you would have thought was too difficult? Was there a time when you knew you were a real professional at your writing because you didn’t give up and came through?