Deadlines

In the strange world of being a writer, happiness and sadness are generally decided by the whim of the day’s productivity. When I’m productive, I’m happy, more gregarious, and I’m all active blogging and tweeting every day. When I have a rough day or *gasp* a string of rough days where the word count only inches upwards, and painfully at that, I wring my hands, cry, and am a veritable black hole when it comes to social media.

I imagine there are healthier ways to balance all this, but I’m a debut writer just trying to figure it all out and manage to get a manuscript written on deadline.

I used to boast: I never have writer’s block. Yeah. That was before I faced professional deadlines. Now that I’m on deadlines, I write slower and rougher, and it all feels far more painful to eke through.

I realize, these are privileged problems to have. I know just how lucky I am to have a book deal with all it entails, including deadlines.

But perspective is lacking a bit while I’m in the middle of writing book 3 with a due date at the end of the month. I feel like my learning curve is straight upwards, so many days I take steps backwards instead of forward, eat way too many overly salty chips, and generally freak out on a regular basis.