WWN19: Doin' The Dreaded Deadline Dance

Back in my uni days…

…longer ago than I care to mention…

…the recurring staple of student events was the ceilidh.

For those who have the misfortune of being foreign, a ceilidh is an exuberant Scottish folk dance.

More about the energy than any real skill.

Lots of foot-stomping, yelling, spinning, fast celtic music and firing your partner from one person to the next as you bounce around the hall.

That last aspect came to mind last night.

The all-time favourite dance?

“Strip-the-willow!”

Strip-the-willow involves neither willows nor stripping, but instead, two long lines of folk. Men down one side, women down the other. A couple starts at the bottom of the line, spinning each other vigorously for a few beats. Everyone claps.

Then our plucky pair proceed up the line, the man taking the arm of each woman in turn, the woman taking the arm of each man, spinning, then returning to the middle and onto the next person.

You weave your way up the lines in that fashion, dancing with every single person of the opposite sex as you go up.

It’s exhausting.

And when the dance is made up of energetic twenty-somethings with something to prove it can get a little aggressive.

You find yourself careening across the dancefloor from one partner to the other, flung at increasingly high speeds until someone hits the floor or you make it to the end bruised but unbroken…

…just like writing.

The reason it all came back to mind is that lately I’ve been doing what I call:

The deadline dance.

You can perhaps guess what that involves.

You get up one morning and think “right, it’s time to draft out the basics of Voice Box” so I can get that out to pre-orderers asap. You do it, put it down to sit while you think of ways improve it and realise…

…Round two of the Ghostletter Seminars needs to happen soon, so it’s time to start building a waitlist, you draft emails for that and then…

…those reader’s guides for the Crossway study bible are due in a couple of months so better get them outlined this week so they have time to percolate and then as you careen into the end of the week …

…you realise that the latest batch of Dwell audio guides are due in a few days so you record those…

…Then as you spin out of that, it’s time to open the cart for round two of the Ghostletter Seminars…

…which opens tomorrow by the way so the last chance to join over 100 people on the waitlist for the only 10 spots we’re offering at this price is by clicking this link before tomorrow at noon EST…

…but also takes up a chunk of time getting the admin sorted, making sure the cart shows how few spots there are etc…

…then the next set of Dwell audio assignments is on your desk, the reader’s guides need drafted, and it’s time to set aside a few days to work on Voice Box again.

And before I know it Ghostletter Seminars round two will be upon us.

It is exactly like a good Strip-The-Willow.

Exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure!

But that’s what it takes to make it as a real writer, a craftsman writer, instead of a content creatooooor hack.

You’ve got to be willing to juggle things like crazy, turn in your work to the deadline and still make space to think ahead, plan and work on your own personal creative projects.

(Something we’ll help our Ghostletter Seminarians with, Wade has nailed the system for how to deal with client deliverable deadlines while also freeing time for creative work.)

Not for us the siren call of “five easy templates to create content in ten minutes so you can sip margaritas on the beach all day”. Because what would be the point in that?

We’d get bored.

At the stage I’m at, every penny from projects like the reader’s guides, or running the Ghostletter Seminars is a “nice to have”.

(Admittedly very nice to have, but the lights stay on either way.)

Truth is that earning money from freelancing and coaching are not my focus points right now. They don’t matter in that sense. But then…

I never say yes to these things for cash.

I say yes to them because it helps me hone the craft.

You’ll never reach your craftsman’s potential doing the bare minimum. Nobody ever had fun at a ceilidh by doing a staid Virginia Reel and then standing in the corner with a lemonade for the rest of the evening.

You’ve got to throw yourself in, take on a little more than you can handle.

And then handle it. It’s why I created courses like Speed Daemon Secrets after all. And why the Ghostletter Seminars sessions will be focused on stuff like writing fast, avoiding burnout and juggling deliverables.

Because if you’re really pushing your craft, you need to be working fast and doing a lot.

And the truth about the dreaded deadline dance?

Careening from one thing to another, knocking things off the list with efficiency, keeping the important focus right (more on that in Craftsman’s Corner for subscribers) and getting through it?

The truth about all that is that…

it’s actually fun!

That’s why we dance after all.

Isn’t it?

So attack your writing projects with exuberance, leap from deadline to deadline, take them all as they come and keep progressing up the line.

And until next week, may your pipe smoke dance merrily above your dancing pen and deadlines hold no terror.

Yours,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

And for Craftsman’s Corner, an important thought on how you know exactly which deadline to focus on, courtesy of an old saying…

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