Pushing to the end

On retreating and creating deadlines

Hello my friends!

I’ve been away a lot in the last few weeks. First to Sydney with two writerly friends and then Anglesea with another two writerly friends.

As I packed to go to Sydney, I felt the pressure of not being able to take all the things I usually do when I retreat to writer. The books were too heavy and who lugs a table, screen, keyboard and mouse on and off planes and trains and buses? I also felt cheeky going all that way to the shiny city to write. I mean, theoretically, I could write anywhere. And while I have a resting manuscript set in Sydney, the manuscript I’m working on is not.

The beautiful Hawkesbury that gave me the context I need for the next draft of my resting manuscript

The good things about being in Sydney, though, were spending time with Katherine and Jane; having time to explore the Hawkesbury river area for my other manuscript and going out for drinks and dinner with a bunch of Sydney writers who I knew mostly through socials. I did also move my current work in progress forward.

Sydney Writers and Melbourne Writers unite

After only a few sleeps at home (with all the indulgent feelings) I packed the car with my normal writing retreat paraphernalia and headed down to Anglesea to hang out with a very small contingent of my writing group, Kim and Venita.

My normal writing retreat setup

It’s was great that it rained most of the time while we were there so I wasn’t so tempted away from my desk, which also meant I moved the manuscript forwards about 10,000 words.

Now, with only six days left until my deadline, I am feeling pretty confident that I’ll hit my target.

Deadlines

I’m popping this here for writers who don’t have an externally imposed deadline. It can be super difficult to ever finish a manuscript when you don’t have a deadline that has been given to you. It can also be easy to slip into the mindset that it doesn’t matter, or if only they were picked up by a publisher so that they could have a deadline to work to.

A lot of things I have heard people who are in this predicament talk about are:

• why bother

• no one is waiting for this

• I want to take however it takes to finish this

• I’m too busy

• I may never get published anyway.

And it may seem simple to say, well if you want to be published, you need to finish the damn thing. It’s part of the grit of being a writer. Turning up despite the apparent lack of interest in your writing. Working on your craft with tenacity.

But it can be super daunting to try, so I’m going to give you my two cents worth (which is not really a thing as it’s been a billion years since we had a two cent coin, but you know what I mean.

Smart Goals for Writers

1. Set a deadline that is realistic by using SMART goal setting

2. Write the first draft within a season (Stephen King talks about this in On Writing)

3. Tell someone you trust with your goal to help you to remain accountable

4. Bum on seat.

It’s not really rocket science, but a lack of deadline is definitely something that trips many writers up.

We often say that we don’t have time as we are juggling work and family, but time is a wonderful thing. There is often a short grab of time that you can use on a regular basis and the more often you sit down to write, the less fear-inducing it is. If you sit down without distraction, you will be surprised what you can achieve in a twenty-minute period and the more often you do it, the easier it gets.

Some writers I know write in the car when their kids are doing sport, others leave home for work a little earlier to go to a cafe to write before work, others grab a moment at lunch, or on the way home from work. If you commit to completing your manuscript, you will find the time to write.

Setting a deadline, telling someone, circling it on the calendar and sitting with your writing more often with the goal to finishing has surprising (or unsurprising, if you think about it) results.

Some of the things I’ve done to ensure I will hit my deadline are:

• allocating time every morning before work to write

• protecting that time by ONLY writing when I’m sitting down to it

• turning off social media notifications (I’m not ignoring you, I’m controlling when and where I will check in)

• not looking at my emails in the mornings

• telling my accountability buddy in our weekly checkins

• writing it on my whiteboard

• circling it on my calendar

• broken the work down into achievable chunks

• spent huge chunks of time writing

• said no to things that are during my writing time.

I’d love to hear from others about how they push to the end of a manuscript that no one is waiting for.

Other things

• I’m drawing to improve my drawing skills with the goal to illustrating my picture books

• Feeding creativity is important and I’ve done this recently with an Australian Song Company show with Paul Capsis and Francis Greep

• I’m noticing more now, which may have something to do with turning off phone notifications, and have many heart swelling moments observing people going about their days, birds flying and swimming, nature unravelling

• I read Max Porter’s new book Shy and it blew me away, much like everything else he has written

• I’m loving this change of season to one of soups and jumpers and am knitting up a storm

• I’m doing the push-up challenge during June, which will mean I may get strong arms and core, but will also hopefully raise lots of money for suicide prevention. If you want to encourage me and support suicide prevention, you can donate here.

Until next time x Meg