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deadlines

Deadlines

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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.

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Using Time For Fiction

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Image Credit:   Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

I’ve often used time in fiction. I’ve sometimes used Time as a character. I sometimes have a story where a character has a certain amount of time in which to achieve their objective. I’ve also written from the viewpoint of time travelling aliens (as you do!). I’ve written the odd story as a diary format and even timed the entries written by the narrator. I’ve also written historical flash fiction where the setting is back in time. All great fun to do.

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Deadlines – How to Make the Most of Them

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Image Credits:      Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, famously said “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Strongly suspect his publishers/those he worked with on the BBC (for scripts, including for Doctor Who) did not take the same view!

I see a deadline as a challenge. Not to let it go by but to meet it with room to spare. I also think deadlines can encourage you to be more creative, simply because they give you something to work towards. There is an end goal. It is a great antidote to that notorious thief of time, procrastination!

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Numbers Into Writing Will Go

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Numbers in writing? What role do they play? In maths, obviously, but writing?

What possible role could they play in fiction, say? Surely there it is about the prose, how well the characters are created etc. Numbers turn up all over the place in writing.

Numbers into Writing Will Go
Numbers into Writing Will Go – Pixabay

Incidentally, the inspiration for the title comes from an old phrase hammered into me when I was learning  division many moons ago at school. I had to look for numbers that “would go” into another number – e.g.  2 into 4 will go (twice!) and say 2 into 5 will go (twice but with 1 left over). Anyone else remember that style of teaching?

On to the use of numbers in fiction then…

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