{"id":1861,"date":"2012-06-03T09:45:52","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2012-06-02T12:49:15","modified_gmt":"2012-06-02T19:49:15","slug":"deadlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2012\/06\/03\/deadlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tDouglas Adams, the British author of humorous science fiction novel, The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/a><\/em> and its many sequels wrote once that \u201cI love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe was, of course, being somewhat facetious. Deadlines are something that authors and publishers actually take very seriously. Really! When one signs a publishing contract, it lays out the expectations that the publisher has for the author, among those being when different parts of a given project are to be turned in. This is necessary so that the publisher has the time to edit and design the book, get galleys off to reviewers, and so they can line up the publicity and other matters. The date that a book is going to be released then winds up in catalogues and so, if the author were to be late, a lot of things would get out of whack.<\/p>\n

\tThis is not to say that deadlines are actually set in stone. Say, for instance that some tragedy arose: you had to have surgery or the IRS was auditing you because they questioned your deductions for paper and ink. In that case, you want to let your publisher know as soon as possible that something has arisen that will make you late; and you tell your editor what it is and when you think you\u2019ll be able to get back on track. The earlier the better, so that your publisher may make adjustments to the publishing schedule (after all, your book is not the only book that the publisher is working on or planning to release. You can affect more than just your own work by missing your deadlines.<\/p>\n

\tI like having deadlines, however. They remind me of the old saying about how knowing that you\u2019re going to be hanged in the morning really focuses the mind. Last year I was under contract to do two books for a certain publisher; I had clearly laid out deadlines. Then, part way through those two projects, I received an email from another publisher asking me if I\u2019d like to do a book for them, too. It was a publisher that I\u2019d worked with before. Of course I agreed to their request. <\/p>\n

That brings up another quotation about the writing business. Samuel Johnson wrote that \u201cNo man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.\u201d The primary motivation in leading me to agree to write another book on top of the two I was already writing was the financial aspect of things. It always puzzles me when someone criticizes an author or movie maker regarding a sequel by commenting \u201cclearly they only did it for the money.\u201d Well, duh. That\u2019s the same reason you go to work every day, isn\u2019t it? No matter how much you like your job, no matter how fulfilling it is, the bottom line reason you keep doing it day in and day out is the money. If they stopped paying you, it wouldn\u2019t be long before you stopped working.<\/p>\n

\tIn agreeing to work on a third book on top of the other two I was already working on, I had to carefully consider the deadlines and honestly assess whether I was capable of doing the work needed in the amount of time I was being granted. Thankfully, in comparing my contracts I found no difficulties. Was I busy? Well of course, but that was okay. <\/p>\n

\tBetween the three books I had several deadlines to meet, ranging from summaries to outlines, to the first third, first half, and last half of each book. That was followed by rewrites, edits, proofreading, responding to queries, and all the other things that go into making a book happen. <\/p>\n

\tDeadlines in the book writing world are really not a whole lot different than the deadlines you might face in other lines of work or other activities: a student must complete his or her homework, finish the term paper, and turn in his final exam at a set moment in time. Likewise, the teacher must get his grades turned in to the administration on a set day; he must finish covering the Peloponnesian War or the Krebs cycle by Thursday next. And so on.<\/p>\n

\tOh, and there\u2019s one other reason that deadlines are not really such a pain. Those deadlines are also paydays. As I met each goal, I got a piece of the agreed upon fee that the publisher was paying me for doing the work. You see, just like with any other sort of job, publishers don\u2019t pay you the year\u2019s salary all in one big piece. Instead, you get it in a lot of smaller pieces as you go along. <\/p>\n

Deadlines, and the payments are sort of your incentive to keep showing up at work every day.<\/p>\n

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Douglas Adams, the British author of humorous science fiction novel, The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy and its many sequels wrote once that \u201cI love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.\u201d He was, of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}