There were two separate and unconnected events that triggered this post. The first was a post by Dean Wesley Smith about deadlines helping overcome the fear of finishing a work, or submitting it, or publishing. The second was a comment on my sister’s blog where she talked about having several pieces of tapestry in her studio, all not quite finished and how having deadlines for exhibitions and contests provides the driver to make us finish.

I think it’s a multiple step process. About two years ago, when I decided I really needed to take my writing seriously I had six or seven short stories in various stages of completion. It was about the time I discovered, or maybe re-discovered, Heinlein’s Rules and it’s the second rule that applies here: You must finish what you start. I may come back to Heinlein’s Rules, but a lot of writers better than I am, and with more experience have written pages about those rules, so don’t hold your breath. Anyway, I spent a month going back and finishing those stories. They’re in a folder on a hard drive somewhere, and that’s where most of them should stay.

As I mentioned back in November, I began the short story challenge back in April. The weekly deadline of Sunday Midnight Pacific Time to get the story delivered is a powerful motivator, especially when linked to a long running streak. There’s been more than one occasion where I’m literally dozing over the keyboard after midnight Central Time (still got two hours because the deadline is Pacific 🙂 ), to get the story finished, read through and sent off.

I finished story forty-one this past weekend. Now I just have to apply those same principles to the novel I have in progress because there’s no external deadline. And that can be the real challenge.