Swamped Thing

It is a truism that while waiting for an answer about a proposal or book manuscript, time slows to a snail's pace, and the endless silence screams.

It is also a truism that when things finally start popping, there's nothing slow about it. Manuscript deadlines collide with galley deadlines that come smack up against (guess what) still more deadlines. For promotional responsibilities, a synopsis due to another editor, a proposal that your agent is expecting... possibly last week.

These competing pressures are enough to make a writer feel like a Swamped Thing... and quite literally turn into a monster (ask my family) under the stress.

Over time, however, I've gotten far better at handling things. I've learned to block out my upcoming schedule and compartmentalize rather than stressing over all of it at once. (You'll often hear my wandering around muttering, "One page at a time.")I've learned to schedule in some extra time for "oopsies," those unpredictable time drains that show up when they show up, and I've learned that it's important to fence off (with barbed wire) a reasonable amount of time for family, friends, boring-but-necessary-household-tasks, and an occasional walk in the sunshine.

Because a little dose of sunshine and downtime are the enemies of monsterdom. You have my family's word about that, too.

What strategies do you use to cope with both the waiting and the stress of time-crunches?

Gotta run now. My daily pages and my galleys both await!

By the way, the cool comic graphic comes from www.myfreewallpapers.net. Gotta love it!

Deadlines and the Law of Distraction

I'm currently on a deadline that under the best of circumstances would prove a challenge. But the fact is, it's not the best of circumstances. I've been putting in the sweat equity all right, but the universe keeps lobbing hand grenades into my foxhole, each one more distracting than the next. Illness (bang!), son's birthday (boom!), Christmas (pow!)... then, most recently, a loved one's serious illness (cue mushroom cloud!)

But that's the way it is when you're a writer. Life doesn't stop, and disaster's no respecter of the deadline or art either. I meet so many wanna-be authors who tell me they're get serious as soon as _____ settles down in their lives. But I'm here to tell you, the ________'s just there to teach you how to develop the focus to write through anything. If it teaches you instead to make excuses, then you'll never make it in the trenches. Because the hand grenades will just keep raining down; they don't buy into the myth of the lonely artist living in splendid isolation and grunting out each breach-born word as if it were the Second Coming.

You're in the foxhole when you're working. And the best, bravest, most defiant thing you can do is to plug your ears a little while and turn your total focus to the book.

So how do you react to stress? By escaping into your work or freezing up completely? And is there anything (non-pharmaceutical) that can be done to change the way you deal with it?