Today I was reading THIS blog post by my friend, L.S. Engler. She was talking about a quote concerning deadlines whooshing by. Her post made me start thinking about deadlines and how, as indies, we only have self-imposed deadlines. Although one of my favorite perks of being indie is that I don’t have to answer to anyone about deadlines, it also can cause me to be lazy about them. If I only have to answer to myself, what are the real consequences of not meeting them? Maybe this is part of the reason I haven’t published anything in a year (except a short story in an anthology). Because I don’t HAVE to. I’m not making even a quarter of the money I made when I first started, before this whole indie thing exploded, so THAT motivation isn’t there like it was. As long as I’m answering to only me, will I have the discipline to make myself meet deadlines? Wait…I haven’t even SET deadlines.

Okay, this has got to stop, right? So I went to my trusty Google calendar and I entered November 30 as the deadline for finishing my WIP. That gives me about 17 days to finish. I’m already about 80% done (see my nifty little word count widget over to the right), so that should NOT be a problem. This will make me have to up my word count per week a bit, but it CAN be done. If I finish by November 30, then I should be able to get it published before Christmas. My beta readers are super fast and they are also great editors and proofreaders. This should be NO PROBLEM. The only obstacle is me. I’m going to start treating this like a real job again with deadlines. And you guys out there need to kick me in the behind if I don’t do this. When I said the only person I have to answer to is myself…well, that should be the most important person!

Thanks, L.S.!