My Love Affair With the Deadline

My love affair with the deadline has been a long, rich romance.

My first exposure to the deadline was as a young project manager. In that first project management scheduling class I saw her beauty, her sensual curves on the calendar and before long my crush turned to addiction. I went looking for her, from early morning and into the evening. Even through lunch I searched for her. I didn’t hide it, I couldn’t. I told everyone who would listen about what deadline meant to me. And for the last 20 years I have used and flaunted my love for deadline in corporate offices and meeting rooms, for-profit and non-, all across central Indiana.

Now as a writer, my respect and commitment to deadline has only deepened. I depend on her to see me through, day to day and week to week, in good times and in bad, deadline is my mistress, my lover, and my lifelong partner. Without her I would be a drunk, a loser, hopeless, full of passion and without direction. From short story to novel chapter to prose poem and back again, I hold deadline close and together we make work happen.

For behind every great (or even good) writer there is a deadline, a deadline that has kept vigil and made the writer who he is, a deadline that deserves all the credit.