Sometimes, You Just Can’t
When do you know to let go of a deadline, or a project for that matter? When your stress level has hit the ceiling, or when despite your best efforts, you’re just not going to make the deadline. It happened to me.
I’m still working on a huge project. It’s still due in mid-October. I’m now more convinced than ever that I’ll never make the deadline. I even employed the help of other writers to chunk away at this. It’s just a massively big project, bigger than the clients or I have imagined.
I’m the type who’s hell-bent on meeting deadlines. I’ve been known to lose sleep, miss the kids’ functions and shut off the rest of the world just to get my project in on time. I’d rather die than let down a client. Deadlines are challenges to me, and I test myself on how proficient (and how solid) my writing is by those deadlines. So this missing-the-deadline thing had me riddled with anxiety and angst. I never stopped to ask myself what would happen if I couldn’t hit deadline – I merely upped my production. Instead of creating 5 pages a day, I began creating 8 or more. And these are less-than-single-spaced pages, folks. Original content, no less. Forty-four fabulous lines per page (the average single-spaced page holds about 36) for me to sweat over, fret over and labor intensively over in all the name of the almighty deadline diety.
Yesterday, I whined to writing friends. I even convinced two of the best to pitch in. Then my husband said something that stopped me cold – “What happens if you don’t reach the deadline?” As a duty-driven writer, that hadn’t occurred to me. Moreover, he said, “What’s in it for you to meet that deadline?” Well, a paycheck. Yes, but I’d be getting that anyway. “Then why are you killing yourself when the deadline is clearly unreachable?”
Silence. My brain was scrambling to make sense of this new concept – not meet a deadline? Can one do that? It was at that moment I got my epiphany. The project deadline was still far enough away that if I informed my clients now of the impossibility of reaching it, there was time for a contingency. Okay, that would work. They won’t be happy, but the world won’t end and Lori won’t die (or dye, as this causes gray hairs) from the stress of trying to do the impossible.
I’ll tell them tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m going to try exhaling. And I’m telling you to try it, too. Sometimes, despite anything you can do, you’re just not going to reach your goal. It’s okay. You can accept it and move on. It’s okay, and the world will still spin if you can’t be Super Writer.
You go, girl. You’re an inspiration to recovering over-achievers everywhere.
Kristen
Excellent perspective! I am very deadline driven myself and recently had to disappoint a favored client. I knew that he wasn’t too thrilled about it, but it was clearly a schedule that I could not keep. Just today he contacted me about more work; I know that I did the right thing then as you are doing now.
Deadlines freak me out. If I have to meet a deadline it worries me to death until the story is done.
I’ve learned to build extra time into deadlines and let people know when meeting the deadline isn’t possible. I nearly lost a job because I didn’t meet a deadline but I didn’t die. That’s when I learned to build in extra time and allow myself the luxury of taking a day off or breathing once in a while.
Good for you.
Actually, you are Super Writer when you realize the reality of a project and take the necessary steps, like you are doing, to make it work within a reasonable time frame instead of an unrealistic deadline.
Good for you!