HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

 By Patricia Bradley

Deadlines. Every writer struggles with them, and if they're like me, about a month before the deadline, she looks at her sorely lacking word count and swears this will never happen again. 

That was me on January 1, 2023. My word count for each book is 90,000-100,000 words. On the first day of the year, I still had 35,000 words to write. I would just make my deadline if I wrote about 1,300 words a day. That's if I wrote seven days a week...which I rarely do. And in between the book writing, I also had several blog posts to write 

I'm not one of those writers who can turn out four thousand words in a writing session. I wish! The most I've ever written in a day is thirty-five hundred words and that was a one-time thing. Normally I can write two thousand words fairly easily, but there weren't any "normal" days in November or December...I wasn't sure there would be any in January.

So, thirteen hundred words a day should be easy-peasy. Right? Wrong. For some reason, I was pansting this book (You know, writing by the seat of my pants). Normally I have a loose outline. At least I know what direction I'm going in, but not this book. 

If I were looking for someone or something to blame, it would be coming down with the flu right after I started the book. For two weeks, I didn't write anything. And even after I recovered enough to sit behind a computer again, my brain didn't--there was a serious lag in my brain catching up.

So, here I was last week, honing in on "THE END" when I realized I had the wrong villain. I've had that to happen before, but this time, I'd skipped ahead and written the ending. 

Time is ticking. Deadline is looming. And I have to rewrite the last quarter of the book. Rats! But I couldn't leave it with the wrong killer. Because I'd asked for an extension on the last book, I didn't want to ask for one on this book...

So, I prayed (not that I wasn't already praying, but this was a flare-prayer), then dug in and made the corrections. I hit send at 3:31 Wednesday afternoon. Yes, God is still in the miracle business!

 I have about three weeks before my editor sends the manuscript back with a list of changes that need to be made...it should be interesting. 

Anyhoo, this is a look at the life of a writer on deadline. I'll let you know if I make good on that promise to not get behind on a deadline.

Have you ever gotten behind on a deadline of some sort? Maybe over-commit and then realize you have way too much going on in your life? Leave me a comment about it and I'll enter you in a drawing for one of my books--your choice.

And the randomly-drawn winner of last month's drawing of what you'd do if you had all that money was Perrianne Andrews! I'll be contacting you!