Albert Einstein is the father of relativity. He said time is
relative to the observer. “A few minutes spent with a pretty girl,” he
explained, “goes by much faster than a few minutes sitting on a hot stove.” It’s
hard to argue with logic like that.
Writers experience “time dilation” when immersed in the shadow of a deadline. For some reason the hours and days pass far more quickly in the last few weeks before a project is due. Such pressure creates deadlineitis. Here’s how to know if you’re on deadline:
- You open your calendar program five times a day and count the remaining days to the deadline.
- At least once a day, you divide the number of pages needed by the number of days left to the circled date on your calendar.
- TUMS has become one of your basic food groups.
- Television is no longer a source of entertainment but a reservoir for possible solution to your plot problems.
- You visit monster.com to see how difficult it is to post your resume.
- You envy magazine writers who only have to produce 2,000 words (less than what you have to write today).
- When you wake up you say, “Good Lord, it’s morning,” instead of “Good morning, Lord.”
- The cat looks infinitely more kickable with each passing day.
- You wonder if your editor will believe that you’ve been stricken with Ebola.
- Your great outdoor adventure is picking up the mail.
- When you go outside, you ask your spouse, “What’s that big burning sphere in the sky?” She tells you it is the sun.
- You step from your office or writing corner and your spouse introduces you to the kids.
Deadlines can be awful things, but in the end, it is a far better thing to have one than not. No matter how tough the final days of writing, I feel blessed to have a contract, a publisher, and an opportunity to write one more project.
Now, where’s that cat.
Al

