This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.
The previous installment in this series was about meeting deadlines. Since I wrote it, I've had some more random thoughts about that challenge so here they are in no particular order, starting with a bit of advice…
Let's say someone calls up and wants to hire you for a writing job. He says, "I need an article written in a hurry. I have a file here with all the necessary research and I will FedEx it to you because it's too large to scan and e-mail. What I need is for someone to read it all over and distill it down to the main points in clear English." He tells you more about it, you agree on your compensation, and then he turns to the pressing question of how soon you can get it done.
It's May 1. Based on what you've heard, you think it ought to take you a week to do it. So you say to him, "I can write it and e-mail it to you on May 7."
If you do that, you have made a very big mistake, my friend. Naming any date is a mistake.
Why? Because you can't start writing until you receive the file and he has to ship it to you. What if he can't get it to FedEx until tomorrow? Assuming FedEx doesn't screw up and assuming no Sunday intervenes, you won't have it until May 3…so you'll have five days instead of the seven you expected. But he may just consider it late if he doesn't have it on May 7.
This is an error I made a lot before I wised up. The correct answer to when he'll have your draft would have been, "I will finish one week from when I get the research." Remember that when you receive the necessary material is out of your control. You should only commit to the part of the process that is within your control.
How I wised up on this: On one project, I agreed to a date and then the editor (or his assistant, whom he blamed) took ten days to get me the material I needed before I could start writing. I got it done in fewer days than I'd told him it would take but it did get there after the date I'd originally promised to have it in. The editor agreed that the lateness was his fault but around the office, all anyone heard was, "Evanier was supposed to have had this in last week." And there was that extra pressure on me to get it done quickly because of his mistake.
I'm thinking now of a writer whose career has been harmed by a reputation for missing deadlines. I may have written about this guy before. He always has a good excuse for being late…but really, he doesn't. This is the kind of thing that always seems to happen with him…
He gets an assignment with a deadline. They give him three weeks but he knows he can write the thing in two or three days, no sweat…so he puts it off. He goes to movies. He goes to the beach. If the Lakers are playing, he goes to see the Lakers. There's nothing stopping him from starting on the script other than he'd have to miss something he wants to do. If you were to suggest he not wait 'til the last minute, he'd say, "Naah…I got plenty o' time."
Then a few days before it has to be in — when he's just starting or just about to start — something happens. He gets the flu. A relative dies. His computer breaks. He gets in a car accident. Whatever. The script is going to be late.
He has a good excuse…"I'm sorry but my grandmother died!" He always has a good excuse why he's not at fault…but like I said: Really, he doesn't. That's because he has no good excuse for why he waited until he only had three days, thereby setting up a situation where a last minute problem would make him late.
If he'd started right off and then his computer broke or he got a bad cold, he could have recovered from the problem and gotten the script done on time. If I'd been his editor, I wouldn't have excused him for putting it off. Not even for a dead grandmother.
Writers have been known to exploit deadlines. "Gee, I'm sorry I can't make your party, Phil, but I have a deadline…" That's a great excuse when you don't want to go to Phil's crummy party.
I stopped by a writer-friend's home one time and heard an exchange between him and his wife. She complained that he hadn't put the trash cans out like he was supposed to. He replied, "I can't be taking out trash cans. I'm on a deadline, remember?"
And he wasn't claiming he couldn't spare the six minutes it would take to put the trash cans out. His argument was that drudge work like that would put him in the wrong frame of mind to write his script. Yeah, right.
One good reason for a writer to live on the West Coast is that it often gives you an extra, phantom day if you're working for someone on the East Coast. Suppose your script is due on Monday. Monday afternoon at 1:00 Pacific Time, you call your editor in New York. Now, remember: You're not late yet. You said you'd have it on Monday and it's still Monday.
It's 4 PM where your editor is. He or she says, "I really need it." You say, "It's done. I just want to give it a little more polish…go over it a few more times. But really, it's done."
Your editor probably wants to go home at five so he or she will probably say, "Okay, fine. Just have it in my e-mailbox when I get in tomorrow morning at nine." That means you have until around 5:30 in morning (your time) to finish it and send it off. No one would ever consider you late.
But don't count on this too often. It's one of the reasons, as I explained in the previous chapter, that you need to learn the difference between a soft deadline — where you can get a few more days if you need them — and a hard deadline when you can't. If it's a hard deadline, your editor may just say, "Okay, do as much as you can in the next hour because I'm going to stay here and wait for it."
So suddenly, you go from having seventeen and a half more hours to having one. Type fast.
Some editors and producers don't mind you being a little late if when it does show up, it's perfect or close to it. Obviously, they're better off if you hand in a really good manuscript two or three days late, as opposed to being on time with something that's going to need a week or two of editing and rewriting by them or you. But don't presume that you can be late because you know it'll be wonderful. For one thing, just because you think it will be doesn't mean they'll think it is.
But also there's a certain professional courtesy here. Editors and producers can get real nervous if they thought they were going to have your script on Wednesday and then Wednesday comes and goes with no script and no word from you. I've had producers and editors send me off on my assignment with the plea, "If you can't make the deadline, for God's sake, call me." One told me a story about a writer who'd turned in a script weeks late and had been incommunicado until he was done with it. The producer said, "People in the office kept asking me, 'Isn't that script in yet?' and I looked like a real ass when I had to say I had no idea when or if we'd get it."
So don't disappear. Don't hide. Don't make your editor worry about the problems he's going to have if you hand it in late. He may already be worried about the problems he'll have if when you do hand it in, it's awful and he has to pitch it and find someone else to write it overnight.
Don't make him look like a real ass.
Also, sometimes you think it's a soft deadline but it isn't…or it turned into a hard deadline unexpectedly. On one of my first comic book writing assignments, I delivered the script right on time. Delivering on time is always good form but it matters especially when you're in a new situation and need to prove reliability. There was an old pulp writer I knew casually named Frank Gruber. When I was starting out, he said to me, "Don't get a reputation for being unreliable. You will never lose it!" Wise words.
In this case, the editor was especially jubilant. When he'd assigned it to me, he thought it wasn't going to go into production immediately but then another script fell out and mine suddenly had to take its place on the schedule.
One of the ways to endear yourself to an editor or producer is to come to their rescue when they get into a bind. That editor gave me a lot of work after that.
Don't be afraid of deadlines…and especially don't let fear of missing the deadline make you so anxious that it's difficult to work. That guy who went to Lakers games instead of starting on his script had a little bit of the right idea. He just went too far with it.
Unless it's one of those "we need it yesterday" jobs, you probably don't need to start immediately. If you have any experience at all, you should have some sense of how long you need to do the job right. Personally, I need to feel like I'm not a prisoner of my assignment; that I'm working on it when I feel like it, not because I'm manacled to my keyboard and doom is imminent if I don't torture myself a little. I want to pace myself so I feel I'm in control and also so I can stop and put it aside for a little while if I feel it might be going awry.
If you can afford to take a brief vacation from a script…well, that can be a great way to figure out where and when you made a wrong turn. Let it sit for a few days if you can, then go back to it. Read over what you wrote, not as the guy who has to pick up where he left off and continue but more like another person reading it for the first time.
You may solve some problem more easily then. I almost always find at least a few places where I could have phrased something better. Sometimes, I get a better feel of what it is I'm writing. Sometimes, I realize I took a very bad wrong turn on page 14.
This is another reason for not waiting until the last possible minute to start writing. You forego your vacation time. You may even lose your ability to toss out everything you wrote after page 14 and take a different approach.
I must admit not everyone works like this. I used to have this great friend named Steve Gerber and we talked about this a lot. I can write with or without a looming deadline. Steve always had to turn it into a crisis, going with little or no sleep, chain-smoking incessantly, putting a symbolic gun to his own head. I am not faulting him for this. He believed he did his best work that way and his best work was pretty damned good.
But at least try it my way before you try it his way.
And I have one final thing to say here: There is such a thing as an impossible deadline. Once in a while, you do need to say no. There may be a temptation to be a big hero and agree to write more than you can write in the time they have for you to write it. The money may be an even greater temptation.
You should have a sense of what you can and cannot do, and you should not commit to do what you cannot do. Being able to meet your deadlines starts with only accepting the ones that are humanly possible. If you want those who buy your work to treat you as a human being, you have to start by not pretending you're a machine.