Deadlines In Creative Work

To have a deadline, or not to have a deadline. That is the question. Some say yes, others say no, but who is right? It’s a question that plagues many. I believe I have the answer:

They’re both right. It just depends on you.

Charles Dickens only had 6 weeks to write A Christmas Carol; it needed to be published by Christmas, in addition to him needing the money. He wrote during the day and walked several miles at night to think about the story.

Meanwhile, J.R.R. Tolkien took about 12 years to write The Lord Of The Rings. True, it’s a longer book and he had interruptions including a war, but still. He didn’t have a deadline and he still got it done; it just took a while.

Those are both excellent books. If someone had told Tolkien he needed to have it done in a certain amount of time, we might not have the masterpiece he wrote today. If Dickens had had all the time in the world, perhaps his novella would have become a long drawn out novel, harder to read, and not have the impact it ended up having.

So what should you do? Whatever works. It may be both. I don’t like to have deadlines for my longer projects, but for short ones, it works great… with a reward at the end. For example, when I set a deadline for September 1st to finish my 6,000th draft of my novel—it’s not that many but it feels that way—I didn’t complete it. I still haven’t finished it. But I’ve gotten new ideas in this longer stretch that I might not have gotten. On the other end of the spectrum, every week, my family does a “Creative Night” where we all write something of a set form and genre, e.g., action short story, and read it aloud in return for ice cream. If you don’t write something, you don’t get ice cream. I have never missed a day… and I wait until the last minute to write. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a poem while dinner was in the oven, and it wasn’t that bad.

All I’m trying to say is that you should decide for yourself if you need a deadline. If having a deadline makes you lose the will to create, then don’t use one. It may really help you though. So play around with it, figure out what works, and just keep making stuff.

Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use - do the work you want to see done.

— Austin Kleon