Missing the Deadline

Image credit: Mohamed Hassan on Pixabay

I set a deadline for completing the second draft of my novel: I would finish Draft #2 by January 31.

As of today, February 2, I have not finished it. Nor will I be able to do so this week, or probably next week.

In all fairness, I’ve had many things to do this week, primarily work. Still, when I set the deadline, I knew I’d be working, and it seemed reasonable anyway.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan of things like planning, scheduling, and setting deadlines. Having a deadline is what lights a fire under me. Otherwise, I’d meander along life’s path, talking about how I’m going to do this or that “someday”—which, of course, rarely comes.

So why didn’t the deadline work for me this time?

I could point to a number of causes, but probably the main one is the simplest: I failed to plan for delays.

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Anyway

Photo credit: Koushik Pal on Unsplash

Nothing is convenient.

The sooner we learn this fact, the better. (By “we,” I mean me.)

Case in point: my workload was slow for the first half of May. Scary-slow. The kind of slow that makes you think, “Well, this is it. I had a good run, but it’s over.” Like Blockbuster, or the people who made 8-track tapes.

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I Wrote a Book

Sixteen years ago, I was going in for minor surgery, and it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I didn’t come out of it. General anesthesia carries that risk. The funny thing is that I didn’t regret not marrying or not having kids. As I filled out pre-op forms, I realized that if I died, what I’d regret most at that last moment was that I’d never written a book.

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