Deadline Jolt
By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin
As a writer and editor in
publishing, I have many different deadlines. Some of these deadlines are
self-imposed and others come outside of my control. One of the keys to
professional writing is meeting these various deadlines with quality and
on-target submission (what the receiver is expecting and needing). I use the
reminders portion of my cell phone to make sure I meet a number of those
deadlines.
Last week I checked my email late
one night and got a short reminder about a deadline. I'm not going to tell you
the specific deadline but talk about it in general terms. It was something that
I've been doing faithfully each year for at least six years. My part is one
aspect of a complex system with many different pieces in the process. Normally
I'm aware of this annual deadline and process the information during several
hours on a weekend. This year I knew about it on some level but totally forgot
getting it done. This experience was my deadline jolt.
My first inclination was to
apologize and say I would do it in the morning since there was only a few hours
until their deadline. After sending that brief apologizing email, I
reconsidered, decided to go ahead and meet the deadline. I sent a second brief
email saying I would turn in my paperwork in a few hours. The task is complex
with lots of pieces and parts to accomplish. While intense for a couple of
hours, I completed it and sent in my assigned work—and was about ten minutes
after midnight when I hit the send button.
This sort of sheer panic is not
something I face often these days in my writing life. Yet I have certainly felt this sort
of pressure many times in the past. As a young journalist, I worked at a daily
newspaper in the pre-computer days. Yes we used a standard
old-fashion typewriter to create our stories. Our story and assignment meetings
would happen early in the morning and my deadline would be 11 am for my story.
Sometimes I would have to interview a number of people, gather my thoughts and
crank out my story before the deadline. Then my writing would be published in
the afternoon newspaper—normally around 3 pm. These experiences called for a
fast turnaround and provided excellent training about the importance of
completing deadlines.
Now it was in the evening and
normally a time when I curl up with a good book and relax. Instead I faced
another jolt deadline—something that was due in a few hours and I had not
handled it. I made a decision to not delay until tomorrow but to dig in and do
the assignment. I knew my delay would cause likely cause problems for my
colleagues. In the process of meeting the deadline, I tapped into my experience
of meeting deadlines in the past and pure determination to get it
done.
If I get the opportunity to do
this task next year (it's something that we recommit to doing annually), this
deadline will definitely be on the reminders in my phone. If I handle it with
greater deliberation and planning, I will not have another deadline jolt.
Like most of us, I'm only using a
small portion of the tools and power in my cell phone. Every phone comes with
reminders. Are you using reminders in your writing life? I do but sometimes I
have missed something and have a jolt in the process. Have you had a deadline
jolt? Tell me about it and how you handled it in the comments
below.
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Labels: Deadline Jolt, deadlines, journalist, persistence, publishing, Terry Whalin, The Writing Life, training
