Back from the Dead(line)

Ugh, that was painful.

I used to be good with deadlines. Sure, I used to faff around and procrastinate like everybody else in the time leading up to the deadline. Then, with the deadline suddenly imminent, I’d burst into life and get the project finished in a blaze of activity.

Nowadays that bursting into life is more like a feeble stirring followed by a resentful crawl leading to something being spat onto the screen a few weeks later, maybe.

It’s been the same for the last stories of every anthology I’ve written so far. This one was worse as I lost confidence in my ability to do the story justice about halfway through writing it. Normally I’d have tossed it back into the ideas file and gone back to it later, but I’d already made a commitment to contribute to one of eXcessica’s fundraising anthologies and didn’t have an adequate back up plan.

Anyway, it’s done. It’ll be appearing in one of eXcessica’s anthologies next year. I had to pretty much drop everything and focus on finishing that story, even though my productivity went to hell. I hate it. It’s an ugly baby that probably deserves to be drowned in a bucket. Maybe I’ll grow to like it after a few months. I didn’t like Arachne’s Web much after I took the route-march approach to getting that one finished as well. I like it better now.

Deadlines, avoid ‘em I reckon. Write whatever wants to be written and then pick whatever’s most suitable at hand when the time comes around.

Time to get this blog back up and running at regular intervals again!