Image Credits:- Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. AI images avoided. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Deadlines are a fact of the writing life and apply equally to non-fiction as well as stories of all lengths.
Douglas Adams, renowned for his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, famously said he loved the sound deadlines made as they “whooshed by”. Hmm… I do feel sorry for his editor and publisher here. Someone has to meet printing schedules etc. Clearly, Douglas Adams left that for someone else to worry about!
Having said that, you would get short shrift if you tried that now. You would have to be a very big name indeed to get away with that and I’m not convinced even by that. There is a greater awareness of how the book market works. Everyone wants their books out in time for the Christmas market and, for certain books, the summer holiday one. You definitely have to meet deadlines to have any chance of achieving this.
