by Debbie Burke

Vilde Odmundson, designer., CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Deadline. The very word strikes fear. It promises dire consequences if it’s missed. If your work isn’t finished by the boss’s deadline, you’re fired. If your past due payments aren’t received by the deadline, the bank repossesses your car. If you ignore the IRS tax deadline, your life becomes a living hell.
What are the origins of the dreaded word deadline?
According to WarHistoryOnline.com:
The earliest known uses date back to the 1800s, where the Oxford English Dictionary discovered the usage of “dead-line” in reference to a fishing line with a weight on it to prevent it from moving. In the early 1900s, the word was used in the printing industry as the name of a boundary line on a printing press, beyond which text will not print.
The most gruesome use of the term apparently originated at the notorious Andersonville POW camp during the Civil War.
[Camp commandant Captain Henry] Wirz added the so-called “deadline.” This was a literal line of wooden planks or fences placed about 20 feet inside from the outer walls. Orders were given to the guards that any man who crossed the deadline, even by a hair, would be shot on sight without warning.
If a writer misses a deadline, the editor/publisher can’t shoot you, but your career may be dead. They will remember your name, and not in a good way.
Deadlines are important. My professional writing career launched because a friend couldn’t make her deadline and recommended me as a substitute to the editor. That began a long, fruitful relationship with a respected magazine.
Waking up in the middle of the night, realizing my TKZ post is due that morning, is a horrible feeling I don’t want to repeat. I’m compulsive about deadlines (some say anal) and usually turn in stories ahead of time.
That early-bird mentality means editors sometimes call and say: “Hey, I need 750 words by Thursday. Can you do it?”
Yup. Those rush jobs are paychecks that I otherwise wouldn’t have received.
External deadlines are powerful motivators, especially for newer writers. They build discipline and accountability. I need to write 10 pages for critique group on Tuesday. I have to finish that short story/poem/play to meet the contest deadline next week.
Writers who self-publish often struggle because they don’t have that external deadline. When we impose a deadline on ourselves, we can come up with a gazillion reasons to put it off. But are those reasons or excuses?
Side note: A recent hot topic on the Authors Guild discussion thread has been about launching a book around election time. Some authors are asking their publishers to delay their release dates until after November, fearing their books will get lost in political furor. Books already have a tough enough time attracting reader and media attention. This reason may be worth considering if you plan a book launch in the next few months.
Since going indie, my goal has been to publish at least one book per year, and I’ve met that with eight books since 2017.
But…more than a year has passed since April 2023 when the last book, Deep Fake Double Down, was released.

Cover by Brian Hoffman
The ninth book, Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, has not met my self-imposed deadline.
Readers keep asking when the new book is coming out. That’s a wonderful problem to have! But I don’t like my vague answers.
In the spring I said, “Summer.”
Then I updated to “Labor Day” because that marks an annual event with other Montana authors, described in posts here and here.
In early July, I looked at the calendar and realized how quickly September 1 was coming up.
I still had to finish the book, edit, get feedback from beta readers, make corrections, format, upload, receive and review a proof. Printing books takes four to six weeks, if there aren’t delays. All that had to be done by Labor Day. Aargh!
I raced through the climax and did a fast edit. I explained the urgency to beta readers and gave them a chance to say no. They are all wonderful friends, but a week turnaround is a damn big ask. Several understandably declined because of their own deadlines. The rest agreed. They came through and offered great suggestions.
But…one long-time critique partner sat me down and said, “Deb, this isn’t as good as your other books. You rushed it and it shows. You’re too good a writer to put this out for your readers. They’ll be disappointed.”
Whap!
Other betas had alluded to some problems, but I deceived myself into thinking they were easy fixes to be whipped out in a day or two.
Nope.
My friend and I spent the next three hours at her dining room table going through the marked-up manuscript. She was 100% right–the problems went deep.
Actually, I’d sensed that all along but pushed my concerns aside because I was fixated on meeting the Labor Day deadline.
Her critique made me think. How important, really, is that deadline?
If the new book isn’t available to sell at the annual event, what are the consequences?
No one dies.
I still have eight other books on the table. If I lose a handful of sales, so what? I’ll have postcards printed of the new book cover and people can sign up for my newsletter to be notified of the pub date.
In other words, missing this deadline doesn’t matter, except to my pride.
If I make the deadline but put out a substandard book, in the long run, I’ll lose more readers than I gain.
I never want people to think, “Gee, she used to be pretty good, but she’s sure gone downhill.”
An old saying goes: “There’s never time to do it right but there’s always time to do it over.”
Not for books. For them, a different saying applies: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Deadlines teach good work habits and keep writers from procrastinating. But they can also be blinders that prevent an author from recognizing and fixing problems with their work.
Thankfully my friend yanked those blinders off and made me see what was really important.
As I work on the rewrites, I give thanks she was honest with me.
When will Fruit of the Poisonous Tree be ready?
I dunno. A week, a month, three months? Whatever time it takes to be the best I can make it.
The day after I resigned myself to giving up the Labor Day deadline, the other two authors emailed me about our upcoming book appearance. Construction has closed a bridge which cuts off one of only two roads into the little village of Bigfork. The other road will be occupied that weekend by a major car show. Parking is a mile-plus hike and access for those with disabilities will be next to impossible.
Due to these logistic issues, we decided to skip doing the event this year. What a relief from the frantic push I’d been making since the beginning of July!
Deadlines are great unless they force you to make a choice between speed and quality. They often give a much-needed nudge to finish. But this experience taught me to follow my instincts rather than the calendar.
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TKZers: Do deadlines help your writing?
Has a deadline ever caused you to publish a story that was below your expectations? Please share your experience.
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Until Fruit of the Poisonous Tree is published, the other eight books in the Tawny Lindholm Thriller series are for sale at all online booksellers.
The first book, Instrument of the Devil, will be FREE on August 2.
Since I split with my traditional publishers, I’ve had only self-imposed deadlines to meet as far as getting my books to my current editor. From there, it’s in her hands. Right now, I’m trying to decide when to release Double Intrigue, and I hadn’t considered the election chaos. I was hoping to release it this fall, before the holidays, and need a commitment if I’m going to put it up for pre-order, but so far, “fall” is as specific as I’ve allowed myself to be.
Terry, with your many books, you have clearly mastered the self-imposed deadline!
Thanks for bringing up pre-orders. That drums up reader interest before the book is released while also giving an author a deadline that’s far enough out for peace of mind. In the past, I did a few pre-orders but haven’t for the last few books. Maybe I should consider doing one for Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.
I have a self-imposed deadline of October, but I hadn’t considered the election. Now you’ve got me thinking… Would my existing audience be upset if I pushed out the release? Maybe, yeah. It’s a lot to consider. Regardless, I still need to make my deadline!
You made the right choice, Debbie. I’ve been tempted to rush, but sacrificing quality isn’t worth it.
Fascinating info on the word “deadline”!
Sue, the AG members who are concerned about book releases around election time are generally those who don’t have many books out. Esp. if this is their first book, they really feel the pressure to make a marketing splash.
Your eager fans may consider your new release bigger news than election results.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” – Douglas Adams
And I love that Adams quote, Jim! Thanks for mentioning it.
Like Terry, you’ve mastered the self-imposed deadline with regular releases while keep quality consistently high.
I was a newspaper reporter for 10 years, and my husband was a TV news photographer for 25 years so deadlines are part of our DNA. It’s like being punctual. We’re “anal” about being on-time. If you’re late to a story you miss it. Boom. You’re out of a job. I’m traditionally published so I take deadlines very seriously. In 12 years I’ve never missed one–or even come close. However, I have an incredible editor and the traditional publisher builds in the time for substantive edits. Becky sees the forest and the trees. She’s kind, but firm when the story/writing doesn’t meet expectations. Especially early on I did some major rewrites–and thanked God for her.
Kelly, your training is invaluable to instill discipline. A good editor is gold. Sounds as if you’ve got it all together. Good writing!
I am of the traditional publishing world, so deadlines are a part of life. More importantly, they’re part of a larger production calendar. Everything from the copy editor’s schedule to the printing press schedule is dependent on me getting my manuscript in on time, and there is no quarter for an under-cooked book. This is the entertainment business and the show must go on.
Debbie, I wonder how much confirmation bias there was in the input you received from your betas. If you had passed the manuscript along to them and said, “I think this is one of the best things I’ve ever written, I can’t wait to share it with you,” I wonder if they would have been less critical.
John, interesting point about confirmation bias.
I try to guard against that by sending to betas w/o any description except to ask specific questions. They don’t know about input from other betas. Their comments came back generally positive except for one and she nailed the problems.
The thing with this book is I knew it had problems. I just didn’t want to acknowledge them and the so-called deadline was my excuse.
As you say, the show must go on but fortunately I have the luxury of setting the show time. 😉
This post hits home, Debbie. Deadlines have helped me a great deal but they’ve also created a lot of stress in my life. When I began in 2016, working on the Empowered series, I created a spreadsheet that broke down the deadlines in the writing and publishing process for the first four books in the series. My goal was to produce a book every three to four months. Needless to say that quickly ended up going by the wayside.
The first two books were sustained by deadlines I had with my developmental editor, but even so, she pointed out that I was being too tight with my planning, and that any delay pushed back the deadlines.
A couple of years later, I began relying on a pre-order deadline, which created its own problem. I reset when I began working on mysteries late in 2020 and gave myself a couple of years to learn how to write them with my first mystery. I finally put up a pre-order for “A Shush Before Dying” for a year out, in March 2022, but as March 2023 neared I realized I needed to push it back a month. I did, and the book was published.
I became too ambitious with Book 2, and only gave myself eight months, and three of those months ended up being consumed by producing a reader magnet prequel. I ended up having to cancel the Amazon pre-order after two one-month extensions and the book ended up being published in June, ten months after I had begun working on it in earnest.
Mysteries take more time than fantasies for me to write. I’d love to be able to publish two a year but that might be too ambitious for me.
I’ve promised my wife I wouldn’t do long pre-orders any more, or any pre-order until the book had been through the editing process. It’s hard, because I want to have a pre-order book up to ensure readers that the next book is coming. A pre-order deadline is a big goad to keep me working. Deadlines can definitely help keep me on track.Years ago, before I got “serious” about self publishing, I drifted with my novels.
The key, I think, is in having just one deadline at a time. My current deadline is getting the first draft of Meg Booker #3 done. I’m aiming for 8/31. I currently have over 16K words in the draft I’ll need to write 1500 words a day to reach that. It’s very doable, for me, *if* I can relax into writing in flow.
But, in the end, quality is the most important thing, as you’ve written. Which is why having one deadline at a time, rather than one master deadline, may be the way to go.
Dale, you’re a high achiever and tend to put too much pressure on yourself, too. Just reading about your earlier goal of 2-3 books/year stresses me out for your sake! We have to know ourselves and be realistic about our habits and individual strengths and weaknesses. Then adjust deadlines accordingly.
Great idea about scheduling a pre-order after edits are done. I’ll try that. Thanks!
I love the various uses of the word deadline in your article, Debbie. Such a fascinating history.
I like having a deadline to work to, but I also think the quality of my books is more important than quantity. I’m willing to move a deadline if I just don’t think the story meets the mark. Right now I’m trying to be realistic about the amount of time I have to focus on the next Lady Pilot-in-Command novel when I’m also spending time on marketing previous books and working with a publisher on my middle grade book. I want to keep moving forward while making sure I’m traveling the right path. Festina Lente!
You’re fortunate to have a beta reader who is willing to point out flaws. In the end, that’s the real value of beta readers.
Thanks for mentioning festina lente, Kay! Those ancient Romans knew what they were talking about when they counseled make haste slowly.
I’m grateful to all my beta readers and use different ones for different books b/c I don’t want to wear anyone out with too many requests.
Compliments are always nice to hear but, as you say, it’s more important to find the flaws we need to fix.
Since I’m a newbie, and an indie, deadlines aren’t usually imposed upon me. However, I did sign a contract recently with Guideposts (woo-hoo!) for an anthology submission. I was given deadlines for that. It was a new experience, but I had plenty of time to get the first draft and the suggested edits completed.
I do have another indie non-fiction I planned to release this fall. I might re-think it based upon the whole election situation.
I think what you had to say about speed vs. quality is important, Debbie. I’m tucking that concept into an empty spot in my author tool belt.
Congratulations on Guideposts, Deb! That’s huge.
Our tool belts need to fit a 100 inch waist ;).
As a recovering newspaper reporter, I was trained that deadlines are important. One novel writer paid a terrible price for missing his. The publisher cancelled the contract. They didn’t want the book. And the writer had to give back his advance. Since you know writers, Deb, you know that advance was long spent.
Kudos to you for withholding publication until the book meets your standards. Looking forward to reading it.
Ouch, Elaine! That’s a cautionary tale about the high cost of missing a deadline.
You’re another journalist for whom deadlines are ingrained. That’s great training for any writer.
Thanks for your kind words! If you like, I’d be glad to send you an ARC when Fruit of the Poisonous Tree is ready.
I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines. I’m very goal oriented, but I’m also a perfectionist. As an indie, I need to set a deadline for myself so I don’t spend the next decade fretting over perfection (that I already know is unattainable). I think my biggest challenge is knowing how long it will realistically take me to do something. I have a good grasp in time needed to get words on the page, but editing and rewriting is an entirely different animal. I love “Deadlines teach good work habits and keep writers from procrastinating. But they can also be blinders that prevent an author from recognizing and fixing problems with their work.” And I really hope I have a friend who’ll be that honest with me when I need it!
Lori, estimating time for edits and rewrites is a challenge. When you start, you think the problem might be small but as you go deeper, you might realize it’s like an iceberg with 90% under the surface.
Perfectionism is our blessing and our curse. Your comment about spending a decade fretting reminded me of a very good writer in a critique group I used to be in. He spent literally two decades on the same novel. His “rewrites” were little more than rearranging commas. I finally got so tired of the story that I dropped out. I don’t believe he was ever published.
I want to be friends with your friend! She sounds fantastic.
As a traditionally published author, I have deadlines and generally meet them. If I get behind because life happens and see that I’ll be turning in an inferior book, I’ll email and ask if ms is going to sit on her desk a week or two before she gets to it (and that’s always the case) I’ll ask for additional time. My publisher also builds in time in case “life happens”.
Loved the info on deadlines.
Pat, I’m truly blessed with generous friends!
Your editor sounds understanding and accommodating. Plus you’re honest with her and give notice when you know there’s a time problem. Good communication really helps.
I currently have a self-imposed deadline, despite being freelance and submitting to traditional publishers, for example literary magazines. The reason for saying this is that I have to complete a short-story by October this year. Sounds easy on the surface, but the pressure comes from the fact that the magazine I am submitting to is a ‘big name’ publication which is open to submissions this coming October. Hence I need to put in my best effort, and have the story ready for submission by this October.
The other self-imposed deadline concerns a novel I am writing. I am hoping to complete the current draft in less than an year, and then revise it and submit it next year.
You are absolutely right in not letting deadlines become overpowering.
Hasan, thanks for bringing up the point that some publishers are only open to submissions for limited time periods. That’s a good incentive to get the story done before the window of opportunity closes.
Your self-imposed deadlines sound reasonable, achievable, and not overwhelming. Good luck completing them!
As readers of your excellent books, Debbie, we’d say, “good things are worth waiting for.” Whenever you feel ready, we are.
Mea and Jim
Thanks so much, Mary Ellen and Jim!