Deadlines

accountability and silliness

For days I was ruminating on the idea. Was October too soon? Did January give me too much time? Would I build in an escape hatch just in case? A contingency plan for if things go awry? Should I even ask them in the first place? Was I imposing?

Like many decisions I make there’s a long period of rumination followed by quick movement that feels impulsive. A dormancy is chased by brash action. Before I knew what my fingers were doing I had already hit send. The question was asked. It sat there on our group thread, unable to be unsent. A wave of nervous excitement trickled through my veins.

I asked my bookclub, a most trusted group of six literary brains, if in the coming months we could forgo reading a published book and read a draft of my book manuscript instead. The response was enthusiastic and immediate. One by one people offered a resounding yes! They were excited to read my words or at least acted as though they were excited. There were a few follow-up questions. When should this happen? What type of readers do you want us to be? How much feedback do you want? I had a little more thinking to do.

I started to look at when this could happen. Last year we finished out 2023 with a white elephant book exchange as well as sharing our favorite articles/podcasts/poems we came across in the previous 12 months. That meeting was a major highlight for us as a group. It was also one of the best traditions we’ve come up with, in addition to martini night and The Snack Gremlin, and one I’m hoping we do again this year. Because of that, December isn’t an option for manuscript reading. I doubt the manuscript will be in readable-enough shape to hand over any earlier than that. Which leaves us January at the earliest.

That means I will be handing over a draft of my book to six people at the beginning of next year or in 145 days (give or take). Twelve eyeballs will look over tens of thousands of words I have poured myself, my personal story, my time, and my craft into. It’s what I imagine handing over one’s child to a daycare or a nanny for the first time might feel like.

The most immediate gulp-inducing thought is “will I have this damn draft completed by January?” It’s a legitimate question and concern. Right now I’m at 45,000 words. I’m feeling good about that progress though it still seems painstakingly slow. My current goal is to lay down 1,000 words a day for 30 days which is lofty given the type of writer (slow) that I am. It’ll be a nice burst if I’m able to stick with it though.

In any case, let’s say I pick an arbitrary final word count goal (bearing in mind that all word count goals are arbitrary) of 90,000. Hitting that number does not mean the draft is done and ready to be sent off. In fact I would argue that once those words are down, then the hard part begins. Next comes the shaping and molding of those words. Next is where the actual story starts to emerge out of a sea of raw material. Right now all I’m doing is getting the marble out of the quarry. Then I will have to take finer tools to carve, chisel, chip, and sand away the sculpture that lay underneath.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, timing is critical when handing my art over to someone for critique. The work needs to have legs but not be so polished as to be unchangeable. Fingers crossed I can get this manuscript to that point in 145 days.

There are several pieces of encouraging news here. The first being that the six people I’ve asked to be my initial readers are extremely generous, infinitely curious, wickedly smart, and deeply appreciative of the written word. Some of them are also writers. So in the event that this manuscript isn’t 100% ready for critique, I doubt they will cast judgement. Regardless of where me and this book land in 145 days, their feedback will certainly make the work better. So there’s no losing.

Secondly, I have a lot of practice with putting my work out into the world. For better or worse, sometimes consistently and sometimes inconsistently, I have put out my writing on PDW for 7 years. That has amounted to hundreds of essays, poems, articles, and musings that I’ve published.* Some weeks have been extremely polished. Some weeks have been seriously half-baked. And most weeks land somewhere in the middle. Regardless of an essay’s level of doneness, I have made a commit to myself and my audience to post every Friday morning. Even though I fall short some weeks, the habit of putting my work out for consumption has only fortified my ability to continue putting it out there.

Lastly, self-imposed deadlines are silly. Creating pressure and anxiety for oneself is silly. Art making is also silly. Spinning on this rock in outer space is silly. It’s all silly. At the end of the day, no one is going to bleed out on my operating table if I hand over a mediocre manuscript to some friends. This book, should it even get published, will not change the world because books don’t really do that. At least not any more. Whether my book becomes a New York Times Bestseller or never even gets the attention of a literary agent, it’s all kind of the same. I will have made a thing that has meaning almost exclusively to me. So why not take a big swing and give myself a scary deadline? Why not be vulnerable and brave in a pretty low-stakes environment? If nothing else, it’s just one more silly thing that might bring me a little encouragement, a little joy, and a little excitement.

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*As my friend Michael pointed out to me earlier this week, my body of work is part of my legacy. It’s a beautiful thought to be reminded of whenever I’m discouraged that I don’t yet have David Sedaris’s career.