You Don't Need A Deadline To Finish Your Book

Authors know the stress that an approaching deadline can cause. It doesn't matter whether you write for a publisher or are a self-publisher - the book has to be finished at some point.

As a self-publisher, you need to know when your book will be finished so that you can hire your cover designer and editor in time. Advertising activities have to be planned and scheduled. How can all this work without a deadline?

This question misses the point of reality. The deadline is worthless if you don't have a process that guarantees that you can meet the deadline. The definition of a deadline does not say how you can match it. That is why deadlines put so much pressure on us.

Usually, we start a project enthusiastically, then slow down and begin to have doubts if we are on the right track.

At this point, we often interrupt the creative process and wait for our inspiration to come back. But the deadline is getting closer, and the stress is getting bigger. The closer the day approaches when the manuscript has to be finished, the greater our fears become and additionally paralyze us.

With panic set in at the end of the available time, we work like crazy to somehow make it. The result is then mostly worse than what we could have achieved if we had worked continuously.

Many creative people believe that they need this pressure to finish their work. They think that without a hard deadline, they would postpone the work on their project forever.

A deadline is not a goal, but an endpoint

What do I mean by that? I can see the finish far ahead when I'm standing at the starting line in a race. That's where I have to go. The finish line is there before I start running. Someone has set this finish line, and I have to get there. It doesn't matter if someone else sets the finish line or if I do. The goal is the attractor that my actions are aligned with.

So I do something to reach a goal, which means the goal is more important than the way to get there. But that's not the only way to reach the goal.

I can also reach it by running along the track without any intention at all. As long as I run the trail, I will reach the finish, whether I care about it or not.

A runner is a runner because he runs. If we were to define a runner by his finish, we would have to call him a finish-runner.

Why do we call ourselves writers? Because we meet deadlines? No, we write, and that's why we call ourselves writers.

If we orientate ourselves by deadlines, as I have described above, we are writers only at the beginning and at the end of the process.

In between, we're procrastinators, doubters, and cowards. We are slaves to deadlines instead of servants of writing.

If we define ourselves by the deadline, we can only lose. But if we define ourselves through writing, things look very different.

If we are writers every day, we write every day. We don't have to do anything more than and define ourselves as someone who writes a certain number of words every day.

"I'm a writer who writes 2,000 words every day." That's a clear and unmistakable statement. Those who adhere to it will start, advance, and finish their projects at a steady pace.

The deadline is no longer the goal, but the result. Those who go through the process of writing day after day will inevitably complete each project. The goal is then the logical consequence of the action and no longer the imperative that forces the work.

So the deadline is not the goal to which we have to orient our planning. The goal is to install a reliable process that automatically leads to an endpoint each time.

Write every day, and you'll never be stressed about a deadline again.