There’s a free download on the Writer’s Digest website, “Why a Writer Without a Deadline Is Looking For Trouble” by Austin Vosler. The opening of the download states, “Without deadlines, writers tend to NEVER STOP WORKING, therefore I think deadlines are pretty important. […] Without a deadline, prose can always be improved, chapters can forever be tinkered with, and there is always something that can be changed.”

I’m reflecting on my own history with writing novels, and my history isn’t very long. But let’s look at my first novel, Son of the Siren. That took me almost three year to write: two years of actual writing, and then a third year editing it based on beta reader comments. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote that baby, trying to please everyone (which is impossible, as I see now in hindsight).

I rewrote scenes between Lirien and Kitra differently, and Kitra was a more dark, vengeance-driven character in the first few rounds. Brandegil was written more maturely, which didn’t fit his character, and he was also tougher, in the first iterations. These characters were reconstructed a few times.

Probably the biggest issues were scenes between the Queen and Lirien. They are awful for the readers to read (this is purposefully done, as what Lirien goes through is genuinely terrible), and it was just as awful for me to write. Sometimes I went overboard with the Queen and made her really, really evil. I kept debating as to how cognizant the Queen was while under the siren song’s spell, and the confrontation between her and Lirien was written about 5,000 times, even with input from my agent coming in (I deliberately asked him for help with that).

How I even finished Son of the Siren was a mystery to me, because I could’ve just kept working on it forever. I didn’t have a deadline. I just wrote until I felt like it would be impossible to please everyone, so I might as well please myself and call it done. I basically worked myself until I reached a breaking point and thought, “It’s now or never” in regards to whether or not I’d ever see the book published.

I have learned, since being under contract for The Darkening Gate trilogy, that deadlines do in fact help. Now, admittedly, I asked for an extra month on The Name and the Key, so I didn’t hit my original deadline, but luckily my publisher was ok with that, and it didn’t mess anything up. But I had been working on The Name and the Key (the Oliver Heber Books version) for about a year or so before I was officially contracted to write it. I had been writing and overwriting up until a deadline was created, then I whipped myself into gear.

The Step and the Walk is the fastest novel I’ve ever written. I pumped out that baby on time, starting it in December and finishing it in June. Seven months, and I wrote a complete novel. I have never worked that quickly before, and even with The Step and the Walk I had to make some stops (sometimes for weeks) while I worked through some hard writing blocks.

I have seven months to write The Fear and the Flame. Now that I know I’m capable of writing a book in that timeframe, I feel more confident pumping out the novel, as long as I don’t blank out or have writer’s block moments. I have a January deadline, although if I can help it, I’m going to try to finish sooner than that just because Book Two was released so quickly after Book One and I kind of want to keep to a rapid release schedule. However, my publisher encourages quality more than speed, so if I need all seven months (and maybe an eighth), I can take it. I prefer to meet my deadlines, though.

So, after rambling about my books and writing process, I can solidly say that in my experience, if I didn’t have a deadline under contract, I would be writing and editing my books for years. If I want to be a published author and make it my career, I know in my heart that taking years in between books isn’t the best way to go about it (unless you’re famous. Then people are willing to wait for you).

I agree with Vosler’s argument that if there is no deadline, there is no end to the writing. If there’s no deadline, I would just keep going and going for years without producing anything completed. While I wouldn’t come right out and say that I’m “looking for trouble,” I do agree that writing forever is making trouble for yourself.