That deadline you confidently agreed to because you were absolutely certain Future You would be organized, disciplined, and completely undistracted?
Yeah. Future You lied.
I’m exposing deadline hell. How writers get here—and how we get out.
Deadline Hell Exposed: How Writers Get In—and How We Get Out
No, I haven’t disappeared.
I’ve been in deadline hell.
And since I’m currently working my way through it, I thought I’d take a moment to explain exactly what deadline hell is.
Deadline hell does not necessarily mean you waited until the last minute to finish your book. Though, yes, sometimes that happens.
Deadline hell is what happens when you have an unforgiving deadline—either one you set for yourself or one you agreed to—and suddenly the calendar and the manuscript are having two very different conversations.
The problem begins when we agree to deadlines while imagining ourselves as completely different people.
We imagine Future Writer Us.
Future Writer Us is studious. Diligent. Disciplined. Future Writer Us wakes up every morning refreshed and inspired. Life is going perfectly. Nobody needs anything. Nothing breaks. There are no emergencies, unexpected trips, illnesses, distractions, family obligations, or days when our brains simply refuse to cooperate.
Future Writer Us just writes.
And because we know approximately how many words we can produce in a day, a week, or a month, we look at the deadline and think:
Absolutely. I can deliver that.
Welcome to the dreamworld.
Here is something I’ve learned: until you really understand how you write and have developed the discipline to consistently produce, give yourself 1.5 times longer than you think you need.
Trust me. You’ll be grateful for the padding.
Of course, some of us know this and still let that beautifully padded time slip away.
Hello. It’s me.
Know How You Work
I’m an everyday writer.
That means I’m going to write or research every single day until I get that bad boy done.
Sometimes I have an actual word-count goal. I use Scrivener, which has a wonderful—and occasionally terrifying—feature that lets you enter your target word count and deadline. It calculates how many words you need to write each day to get there.
In the beginning, maybe that number is five hundred words a day.
Notice I didn’t say five hundred good words.
I said five hundred words.
Then life happens.
Suddenly that daily target is 2,500 words.
When you’ve been in the game for a while, that number doesn’t necessarily frighten you.
It probably should.
But fear isn’t going to finish the book.
Right now, my deadline for my next book is August 15. This will be book number 32.
With the exception of one book during COVID—and perhaps one or two deadlines that had to move by a couple of weeks—I’ve hit my deadlines.
I don’t say that to brag.
I say it because deadlines are about knowing yourself.
As a writer, you get better by writing. There is no substitute for putting yourself in the chair and doing the work. There will always be something more interesting happening somewhere else.
The book does not care.
You still have to finish it.
So, from someone currently residing somewhere around Dante’s fifth circle of Deadline Hell, here are the things that keep me moving.
1. Limit Social Media
You can scroll forever.
What looks like a huge block of writing time can become a very small one frighteningly fast.
But as an author, I also can’t simply tell you to abandon social media. Social media is one of the ways we get our stories into the world. Publishers expect authors to participate in promotion. As you develop readers, they’re going to want to know what you’re writing, what you’re thinking about, and what’s coming next.
Connection matters.
I’ve taken long social-media breaks before, and I’ve found that rebuilding that connection afterward can be difficult. Algorithms aren’t necessarily kind when you’ve been gone for a long time—particularly if you don’t already have an enormous following.
So don’t disappear.
Set boundaries.
Do what you need to do, then get back to the book.
2. Accept That You Don’t Have All the Answers
I have a decent outline.
I have a plan.
That’s it.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a plantser. I plan my books, but I deliberately leave room for inspiration and for the story to change based on how the characters begin speaking, behaving, and moving through scenes.
An outline is a map, not a prison.
Characters reveal things. Scenes develop differently than expected. Something you thought would be important becomes unnecessary.
And something you barely noticed becomes the heart of the book.
Leave yourself enough room to discover the story you’re actually writing.
3. I Don’t Truly Know the Ending Until I Type “Done”
I know.
That sounds scary.
I usually know where I’m heading. But because I allow the manuscript to change, I don’t know exactly how the book will end until I get there.
I don’t completely know what will stay.
I don’t completely know what will leave.
And that’s okay.
The first draft isn’t the final declaration of what the book must be.
It’s how I discover what the book is.
4. Save the Additional Deep Research for When You Know You Need It
By the second or third revision, I’ve already typed DONE on that first draft.
Now I’m adding facts.
That means additional research.
And research takes time.
But there’s something incredibly thrilling about researching during later revisions. I know what I need. I’m looking for the details that will convince the reader they are genuinely inhabiting characters’s world.
That’s very different from researching everything that might be useful before the book is written.
There is nothing worse than spending hours researching fascinating details only to discover that none of them belong in the manuscript.
Research what you need to understand the story and the characters.
Then, once the story exists, research what you need to make the reader believe in them.
5. Be Realistic When the Deadline Is No Longer Possible
At some point, optimism becomes denial.
If you’re within seven days of turning in a manuscript and there is simply no earthly way you’re going to finish, communicate.
If you’re traditionally published, reach out to your editor.
If you’re independently publishing, take a serious look at the entire production process—editing, formatting, covers, distribution, marketing—and especially at what you’ve already communicated to readers.
I hate moving a deadline.
Point blank.
But truth and expectations matter.
Ignoring an impossible deadline doesn’t make it possible. It just makes the eventual conversation harder.
6. Revisions Get Faster as You Approach the End
This is one of the benefits of having written and revised a lot of books: the closer I get to the end, the faster my revisions tend to move.
Why?
Because by then, I finally understand what the book is saying.
When I’m drafting early chapters, I’m moving toward a conclusion I haven’t completely discovered. I’m following the through line of the book. There is a message underneath the plot, there’s a theme the story is trying to express. There are question i want the reader to wrestle with. The last quarter is where all that lives.
Finishing the last quarter of the manuscript, I understand it.
I finally know the direction we are heading. It may not have been what the maps said.
Then revision becomes sculpting.
I’m refining. Tightening. Cleaning. Making sure the earlier chapters are leading toward what I now know is waiting at the end.
By the time I reach those later chapters in the revision process, there’s often much less work to do because the manuscript is already traveling down the right path.
And that’s a beautiful feeling.
The Part About Deadline Hell Nobody Likes to Mention
Your beautifully balanced lifestyle?
It may get a little…less balanced.
Your meals may become questionable.
Your workout routine becomes negotiable.
I am literally dictating this while I’m on the treadmill because I firmly believe I need some way to burn off the stress and keep my energy moving.
You still have to eat.
You still have to sleep.
You still need nourishment.
Maybe every meal isn’t going to be a perfectly balanced culinary wonder. Maybe you’re manifesting your way through the pantry while trying to squeeze the last thousand words onto the page.
Do what you have to do.
Within reason.
The goal is to finish the book, not emerge from the deadline needing six weeks to recover.
Forty Thousand Words to Go
So here I am.
August 15 is approaching.
I’ve got about 40K to sculpt.
Scary but beautiful.
But I’m proud of this story.
I cannot wait until I can tell you exactly what I’ve been writing.
For the writers reading this, I hope this encourages you to keep going.
Keep writing.
Keep learning how you write—not how somebody on the internet says it’s supposed to be done.
Build the discipline to sit in the chair when the words aren’t perfect. Give yourself enough time to discover the book. Learn. Revise. Learn some more.
And be honest enough to know when that schedule needs to change.
And for the readers, consider this your little peek behind the curtain.
This is what my Deadline Hell looks like.
If you’re not following me on social media, come find me there. I share more about this process, the books, and the strange behind-the-scenes reality of building stories for a living. And, of course, follow me here at Write of Passage. I love having this space to talk with you about writing, reading, and everything that happens between the first word and DONE.
Now I have to get back to work.
But I’m climbing my way out of Dante’s Deadline Hell. I’m ready to enjoy free time and sunshine again, but I must finish this book.
Be strong this week, my friends. Write your stories.
This week’s book list is filled with writer friends with books coming out or just released.
The Missed Connection by Tia Williams — Casting agent Sasha Cruz becomes determined to find the mysterious man she connected with on a Paris flight.
Ghalen: A Romance in Black by Walter Mosley — Mosley moves into romance with a story centered on Ghalen’s journey through love, identity, family, manhood, and coming of age.
Find My Way Down to You by Julian Winters — In this YA reimagining of the Underworld, grieving August searches for his dead boyfriend but finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Cary, forcing him to choose between holding onto the love he lost and embracing the possibility of living and loving again.
A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray — In 1930s New York, trailblazing Black prosecutor Eunice Carter joins forces with famed madam Polly Adler to pursue a seemingly untouchable target: mob boss Lucky Luciano.
Check out my latest “done” release: A Deal at Dawn – Katherine’s lies have been exposed, but the duke has a plan.
And it’s still Pirate Season. Check out the women pirates in Fire Sword and Sea.
And time for your next murder fix. Murder in St. James’s Park releases Sept 1. Bonus for you: It’s on ebook preorder sale right now, $.99 (Amazon Sale).
Get these books from Eagle Eye Book Shop. They have a few signed copies of Fire Sword and Sea and A Deal at Dawn.
You can also try one of my partners in the fight, bookstores large and small, who are in the trenches with me.
You can find my notes on Substack or on my website, VanessaRiley.com, under the podcast link in the About tab.
Hey. Let’s keep rising and creating together. I need you. That is the truth. Like, share, subscribe, and stay connected to Write of Passage.
Thank you for being here.
I want you to come again. This is Vanessa Riley.
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