WRITING HELL
First, I would like to thank Cindy for having me here today. When she invited me here my first thought was great, I can do March 3rd. After all that is my release date for EVERY TIME WE KISS and two days after my deadline for book 3—no problem. But anyone who has ever written under deadline knows there is always a problem.
I made my deadline. Just barely. I did not write “The End” on book 3 until last Wednesday. But I made it. So where am I going with this? Writing under 
deadline is never easy but it must be done. With the economic uncertainty, the last thing an author needs is an editor looking for a book that hasn’t been turned in yet.
When I started EVERY TIME WE KISS, I was working out of my office that was really an old family room in a 1960s split-level. Then we started the remodel. This was no simple update the kitchen and baths, this was raise the roof, put an addition on the back and take every wall down to the studs. Suddenly, I had contractors knocking on my door at 7 a.m. Dust was out of control and the noise incredible. Did I mention this was my first time writing under deadline?
Before I knew it, my husband and I, and our two boys had moved into our former living room (12×14) with plastic covering the doorways. We had 1 king size mattress, 1 queen size mattress, 1 twin mattress, a small work table for my husband who works from home, an entertainment center with the TV and two portable heaters. It was cozy. (Okay, it really wasn’t). 
I suddenly found myself with no place to write. I couldn’t stay in that room with my husband on the phone and the noise from the contractors. So I started going to the coffee shop every day to write.
I had always liked my privacy when writing, no noise and no one disturbing me. Thank God for the internet classical radio stations so I could plug my headphones in and write…and write. Several times, I really doubted that I could pull this off. But I persevered. As a former software project manager and developer, I had learned that deadlines must be taken seriously. So I gave myself realistic goals for the week. Some weeks 
I made my goals and other weeks I did not. The week my husband was away in a sunny warm locale while Maryland had an awful cold front, not a lot of writing was done. It might have been that the gloves I had to wear in the house didn’t work well on the keyboard. But I didn’t give up. Writing is never easy, whether you are writing for fun (do people really do that?) or writing to get published, or writing to stay published.
I’d love to hear your horror stories of writing under deadline. And if you’re unpublished, have you ever given yourself a deadline? If so, did you make it?
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Great Before and After shots, huh?
Please leave a comment to enter for a chance to win a copy of EVERY NIGHT WE KISS. Entries accepted until midnight PST.
To read Christie’s bio or check out the back cover copy for EVERY NIGHT WE KISS, please see yesterday’s post.
To learn more about Christie and her books, you know the drill—please visit her website.
The house looks wonderful! what a story! lol.
Right now i’m working on my second book for Kensington. I still have awhile before I have to turn it in, but we are also in the process of moving. We sold our current home and have to be out this sat. We’ve been packing all week. But, we still dont have another home! We put an offer on a place, but its in pre foreclosure and the bank is taking forever to respond. So we’ll be living with relatives for awhlie and I know that is not going to be great for my writing. I’ll have to find a nearby coffee shop!
Hi Lori! I’m also a real estate agent so I know your pain.
Funny thing about the 3rd book was I received an email from my editor on Monday saying he was surprised to see it so soon. I went back and checked my contract and sure enough it was due on 3/1. LOL
Good luck with the house and the 2nd book with K.
Last summer, I quit working full-time to attend an MFA program and write full-time. Last december, I quit the MFA program to write full-time (funny, I wasn’t really getting much writing done). But, being a lover of deadlines, I told myself I wanted to get my first draft done March 15. I put together a spreadsheet and did some calculations, and realized if I wrote 2,000 words a day Monday through Friday I could make it. It’s two weeks away and I’m pretty close to on track! I may run over by a week or so, but I’m cutting myself some slack on that. Deadlines worked for me at work and they’re working for me at writing too (also work, just unpaid, at least for now).
I used to always make my deadline. But not as much now. I want to get back to the deadline-making person I used to be.
Your house looks terrific! Very up-to-date.
Hi Christie,
Welcome to the blog. Your house looks amazing. We’ve done an addition and major renovations on our current house, and we’ve also done some reno’ing of a rental house, so I’ve been where you are as far as writing and renovating at the same time are concerned – however, that was as an unpub. I didn’t have to worry about writing to a deadline under such circumstances, just getting any writing done period (seeing as I was the “helper” – I even carted away the old siding from the house and stomped on it in the huge garbage dumpster).
My funniest story is that my office was in the living room during the building of our addition, and both our contractor friend and his brother were in the house – and I had to write a love scene. I really wanted to get it done, because I was so behind. But no way could I do it with workmen in the house, especially one I knew outside of the renovations.
So I turned off my computer monitor. That way they couldn’t see what I was typing. The result was a huge mess! A touch typist, I’m not. There were spelling mistakes all over the place. Thank God for spell check. But at least I got it done.
Lisa, going over a week or two is fine. If nothing else, this gives you a really good idea what it’s like when you are published. Keep at it! You’ll make you’re goal!
Hi Edie, before I was published I think I was able to write faster. But I also wasn’t working another job either. Right before I published, I took the realtor exam and started doing real estate. When it’s quiet I have plenty of time to write but when it’s busy, I have a real hard time.
Good luck on getting back to being a deadline person. I think my years as a project manager help with that. I hate to miss a deadline.
Cindy, that is so funny! I can’t imagine being able to type with my monitor off. It would be an awful mess.
Beautiful renovation, Christie, and worth all the angst, I’m sure. Congrats on your book–I’ll be adding it to my TBR pile.
Thanks, Pat!
Hi, Christie–
Having been involved with remodeling, albeit on a smaller scale, I feel your pain! I picked up ETWK last night and am looking forward to devouring it this weekend. I noticed the acknowledgments to Panera and Atlanta Bread Company and chuckled.
I have two deadlines I try to hit with writing. I try to have something new for the Maggies every year and to have something finished for the Golden Heart. I don’t always make it, but the GH tends to inspire bursts of frantic, nose-to-the-grindstone writing and at least results in huge progress.
I’ve done freelance work that had deadlines and always made those. Missing deadlines is a good way to get less work.
Just BTW, your book cover is gorgeous!
Waving to Nancy, my fellow bandita!! Thanks for picking up my book! I felt I had to acknowledge Panera and Atlanta Bread because otherwise I would have ended up at the library, which believe it or not is noiser than either one of those places. The little kids in there during the day haven’t learned their library voices yet.
The GH used to give me the incentive to write too. Good luck with your deadlines, I know you’ll make them!
Christie, I feel the deadline pain. Mine is in a few days, and I’ve been revising like a fiend — 80 pages yesterday alone. I normally get things done way ahead of deadlines — I’m anal like that 🙂 — but my mom was in the hospital for a total of 15 days in February. So the schedule got torpedoed. I’ll be SO glad to send this project in.
Wow, the renovations are amazing. You’ve got my respect for surviving it. We built the house we’re in now, and it was hairy enough renting while it went on.
Here’s my story: I was working on my second book in a non-fic series I did a few years ago when the sky fell. The book proved to be quite a bit more difficult than I was expecting, and as my deadline approached, I got more and more stressed. One rainy night coming home from the gym, I got blindsided on a left turn. Three vehicles got towed away, I managed to mangle three sides of my van (15K in damage) and NO ONE got hurt. (Physically. My mind doesn’t count.)
That weekend, I came down with shingles. (Surprise, surprise.) A couple of weeks later, our youngest daughter dislocated her elbow. Exactly one week after that, our middle daughter had an emergency appendectomy, which ended up getting infected. A few weeks later, I had a uroscopy for recurrent bladder infections. (Let me tell you, that’s one place God did not intend for a camera to go.) I told my husband that if I’d have known, I’d have bought a season’s pass for the hospital parking lot.
But my book made it across the finish line. And of the seven in the series, it’s been consistently the top seller. Go figure.
Roxanne, firm believer that without deadlines, nothing would get done.
Trish, I know you had so much on your plate last month. I hate getting down to the wire on a book too. I like to have at least 2-3 weeks to revise it. This time I didn’t so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my editor will like it. Good luck with your deadline!
Roxanne, that story is amazing. I don’t know how you got anything done with all that going on.
A week before my deadline I had my wallet stolen right out of my purse (don’t put your purse over the back of a chair) and lost a day to getting everything sorted out again. It drove me nuts because I was so close to my deadline and planned to get that last chapter written that day.
Christie, lovely renovation! I’m under a deadline right now for the first time and am experiences all the joys and stresses of it :-). What I can predict is about how long it’ll take me to finish the draft. What’s a mystery is how long I’ll need to revise (and revise and revise) for that draft to make sense! Anyway, I enjoyed your post. And, Cindy, I loved reading about your love scene story with the monitor off!
Hi Marilyn! That first time deadline is tough. A friend of mine asked me the other day if writing under deadline gets easier. I just don’t think it does.
Hey, Christie! Great to see you here. I remember thinking you poor thing when you were trying to write with those huge renovations going on around you. I had a bathroom fixed up once and it nearly drove me mad and that was only for a few weeks and as I say, ONLY a bathroom! The idea of suffering through getting a whole house done? Yikes! But the house looks fantastic now!
Congratulations on the release of Every Time We Kiss! And congratulations on getting your third book in!
Hi Anna! My husband and I have now said, we will never do this again.
Christie, that’s what we said, too, which is the reason we’ve never renovated the basement. I can’t bear even thinking about it.
We will have to do it someday, but it’s low on the priority list. We did our additions 9 years ago and our renovations around 6 and then 4 years ago (we’ve done stuff in stages, not all at once like you). Painting time has come up again on the 9-year-old stuff.
We’ve done limited stuff in the basement, but the idea of taking everything out and finishing it to go with the rest of the “new” house gives me the shivvies. If we ever decide to sell, we’ll have to re-do the basement, because it’s still stuck in the Seventies, LOL.
Cindy, we still have the basement to do too. Just as we were finishing up the renovations, our basement flooded from a sewer backup. The insurance paid us for the damages but we just don’t have the energy to start working on it. This spring we have to do the landscaping and maybe a small deck.
Hi Christie:
First of all, I can understand the renovation – only we did it on a 100+ yr. old Victorian over a 20 year period. As to deadlines, I am an unpubbed, but I have been putting myself under deadlines to meet writing goals I’ve set. Sometimes I meet them, sometimes not, but always there is progress. Last weekend, I went with hubby on his business trip to Montgomery, AL with 5000 words as my one day goal. After about 2200 words, tornado sirens went off. Really! I had to pack up a few things with medical supplies and wait to see if we were evacuating to the hotel basement. I didn’t quite make my goal :).
Hi Debbie, I think a tornado siren is a valid excuse for not meeting a deadline. Keep up with those goals and deadlines! It really helps for when you’re published.
Hey, Christie! Congrats on the release of Every Time We Kiss and getting your third book in! I have ETWK in my TBR pile and can not wait to read it *g*
I don’t have any horror stories to share about writing under deadline – and I really hope I don’t experience any in the near future either! But, of course, there are no guarantees, right? 🙂
Hopefully I’ll be able to handle any bumps in the road as well as you did.
Love the pictures of your house!
Hi Beth! Thanks for stopping in. I wish you nothing but easy deadlines and no renovations 🙂
Christie, I love the contrast with the before and after pix of your house as I’ve said before.
I think you’re a miracle for having met ANY deadline at all while your house was under construction. Thank goodness for wifi at coffee houses, right?
I just picked up your book today at Borders. Yay, and YES, I turned all the copies face out LOL. Can’t wait to start it.
I’m a deadline freak. I made little schedules — cleaning schedule, writing schedule, teaching schedule — and make sure I meet my daily requirement. Usually I go over because I like to get ahead. What, anal, you think? Say it isn’t so!
Congrats again on your second release!
Hi Jo! You’re right wi-fi also important in case I had any real estate calls that I had to handle while I was there. Thanks for picking up my book already and for facing them out. I haven’t even had the chance to do that yet.
WOW Christie – talk about a lesson in perserverance. I’ll never whine about the difficulty of making a deadline again. You kicked tushie. And under such trying circumstances -GO YOU. I can’t wait to get your book. Its on my list to pick up this weekend in my bookstore trip.
And me and deadlines? Ha, the only thing I have to juggle are line edits, promotion and kids. No construction or writing-in-gloves. You win the deadline Queen award, hands down *g*
Hi Tawny, I think you’ve got enough on your plate to juggle. Don’t you home school too? I’m going nuts today because we had a snow day yesterday and my middle schooler is off today because of a school remodeling thing (poor kid finally gets away from it at home and has to deal with it at school). So I had three 6 grade boys running above my office today.
Hey Christie,
Just checked out your website!! I read the back covers of your books…they sound great!!
Can’t wait to read them!!!
Take care
Carrie
No deadline horror stories, Christie – I actually work better under a deadline, having been in the newspaper biz (remember those?) for a long time. We did go to a lot of trouble and expense to turn one of our bedrooms into a beautiful and stylish office for me – and yet, I now find I get a lot more writing done at Panera.
Very impressive remodeling job – looks like it was worth the headaches. And EVERY TIME WE KISS definitely turned out well despite (or maybe because of?) all the upheaval!
Thanks, Carrie. My website is undergoing a redesign because of some issue that I could not get the original designer to fix for me. So hopefully soon it will be even better!
LOL – I do homeschool, Christie. But not during construction under a deadline. You still get to keep the crown.
Hi Lynn, I do remember the newspaper biz. I can’t seem to get away from it because my 11 yr old insisted on taking the route over from his brother. And this route must be driven so every afternoon I have deliver the papers with my son. It does give him really good money.
It’s funny, there were days when I was working on book 3 that I almost went down to Panera. I think I focused better than being at home where the laundry and dust bunnies were staring me down.
Okay, Tawny. I’ll keep my crown.
Cindy, thanks so much for having me today! I had a great time.
You’re welcome, Christie. I had a great time hosting you!
I’ll let you know if any more replies come in overnight, and of course I’ll pick the winner’s name tomorrow.
Those who haven’t left a comment yet but wish to enter for a chance to win Christie’s book, you have until midnight PST to do so.
Cindy
Christie, I HAVE to give myself deadlines or I would have no impetus to finish anything. The Golden Heart is a great one, because the full must be, you know, FULL. *g* I still can’t believe you managed to write anything with all the house drama. But it’s gorgeous and, best of all, FINISHED!
Now if only I could get my book finished…
The Magic Safeway Grocery Bag has declared Lisa Katzenberger the winner of Christie’s EVERY TIME WE KISS. Congratulations, Lisa! Please check your email and send me your snail mail address so I can forward it to Christie.
Christie, thank you again for visiting!
My next guest blogger is Samhain author and former Golden Heart finalist, MJ Fredrick. MJ will be here next Monday, March 9th. Be sure to drop in.