The Special Place of No Deadlines
I’m in a unique time-burp right now: a place without deadlines. I’ve got freelance pieces on the calendar, but nothing pressing at the moment (I schedule lightly during the school year), I sent out my last due piece two weeks ago, and I just finished edits on a short piece this past weekend.
I’m living on no deadlines or obligations at this moment in time. What an odd feeling.
If I had to compare it, it’d be like being left alone in a candy store with a fifty burning a hole in my pocket–good and bad elements to this. On the good side, I can start something new. Those ideas that have been haunting me around every corner: the article on voice, the essay on cake, the memoir on Easter candy…they’re all there, ready to dive into. I can’t speak for all writers, but for myself, that moment of being able to begin a new piece, pen perched on the first line of a clean, blank page, is absolute bliss for me. I love most parts of the writing process for different reasons, but there’s a charge of electric adrenaline when I get to start something new. Also on the good side is that there’s no ‘dread’ of perfection that always seem to creep in near the end of deadlines.
On the flip side, there are TOO many choices. Do I work toward my freelance, my nonfiction or my book-writing goal? Do I start something with the potential to be published soon or that will factor into a bigger piece, a possible book down the road? There are so many questions in this candy store that I’ve just stood in the aisle for the better part of 30 minutes lost in the swirl of color and promise of sugary sweetness without making the first move toward anything in particular.
And that fifty bucks is still burning a hole in my pocket.
What about you? What do you do in those unusually rare moments between deadlines, when you’ve got a day or two to breathe before launching into something new, expected or promised? I’d like to hear that you’re as overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction as me…LOL…. So ‘fess up: what do you do in your special place of no deadlines?
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It's pretty simple, really. I'm a writer who loves writing about writing, and sharing all the tricks of the trade with other writers. And when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. I have a hunch you know what I mean :)