Their Lady Gloriana by Starla Kaye
One of the Yahoo groups that I follow is An Alternative Read. Yesterday they threw out a question for authors that I found interesting, especially hearing how different authors respond. They asked “Are your deadlines negotiated with your publisher, mandated by your publisher or self-imposed? If you are not a published author, but writing to be published, do you set your own deadlines or just write when you can?”
My first response back was to share that I currently write on a regular basis for three online publishers, but I am lucky enough to have fairly flexible deadlines.
One publisher (Blushing Books) that I write for also has a member’s site where I publish stories in weekly chapters until the story is finished. Often these are novellas, sometimes novels. My choice. When they are completed, after several months they are then sold on the Blushing Books site, Amazon, and other places. In this situation, I have weekly deadlines. Sometimes that is stressful.
My other two publishers (Black Velvet Seductions and Decadent Publishing) take my novellas or novels when I have them finished. In these situations, I set my own deadlines. If I don’t have a deadline…well, I tend to get lazy and drag things out.
I’m curious to hear how other published and unpublished yet authors here at BVS feel about deadlines.
When I worked there were always deadlines, Now that I’m retired, I don’t want any more deadlines. I’ll stick to being a reader.
I don’t think I would like to be a writer.
You really have to love writing, possibly be a bit insane, to be a writer. The insane part comes from all of these story ideas rambling around in your head or from characters prodding you to write their story.
Not everybody needs to be a writer or a doctor or a policeman or whatever.
I’m not an author, but when I’m given a deadline for something I try to get it out of the way as soon as possible. It doesn’t always work out that way, though
I’m so-so with getting deadline projects done well ahead of time. That is almost always my goal. But life and complications get in the way. I’ve become a very determined “last second” deadline meeter.
I agree with Mary – I’m going to stick to being a reader! I like ‘opportunity’ too, and often find myself using it in lieu of something else. Please use all the tricks you can to continue to meet deadlines and generate all the wonderful books that you write!!
I try to use all kinds of tricks to keep on writing so many different stories.
I think I will stick to being a happy reader thank you.
Sounds a grand idea Mary.
We love happy readers. 
Yes, we writers really like having happy readers.
I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. Mostly I hate them though. I hate them because having that hard and fast deadline messes with my psyche and makes me feel closed in and claustrophobic and sometimes overwhelmed.
For that reason I tend to avoid deadlines when I can. Of course, we all have those things that need to be done by a certain date.
Instead of looking at things as deadlines I tend to approach deadlines as priorities. If I know that something needs to be done at a given time then I know putting things in place to get it done by then is a priority and I try to work ahead on those things as much as I can so that in essence they are done ahead of the deadline. This works with variant degrees of success depending upon how many high priority things are stacked on top of each other and how focused and energetic I am.
Working on priorities as opposed to focusing on deadlines seems to work much better for me.
I don’t think I’d ever manage working to deadlines as you have to Starla. The deadlines themselves would make me feel claustrophobic and tongue tied.
Sometimes it is all in how you word something. Deadlines can be an overwhelming idea to many. Priorities to meet something in a timely manner sounds good.
My sister has a unique way of looking at things. We all have so many deadlines/commitments/whatever to do. She refers to them as opportunities.
I like your sister’s take on things.
Opportunities makes it sound like there is a choice about it…like you can choose to take an opportunity or choose not to. I like that approach.
i find that i have to sent my self a certain amount of time each day or i can easily let “life” get in the way of writing. there is always so much going on in our busy lives today that i often think this is the only way to get anyting accomplished is by making a schedule and sticking to it.
My problem sometimes tends to be with that whole “sticking to it” part of using a schedule. I used to have a paper calendar that I put writing goals on and it almost made me sick when I didn’t meet them. I feel much better using an electronic calendar with the ease of shifting an unmet daily goal to another day. Some of the pressure is off.