✍️ Deadlines as Accountability Tools for Writers

A good deadline creates focus.

Hey writers,

My weekend has looked like this:

…because I just turned in the full draft of my romantasy novel The Ash Trials to Amazon ahead of its release date this Valentine’s Day!

The “finishing touches” of this book took all week. Why? I’ve been agonizing over the little details because I really want you to have a fun time reading this one, and I hope you find it action-packed, shocking, and a lil bit sexy.

After writing this book, I have a ton of respect for fantasy authors. I have a small army of digital Post-it notes tracking all of the lore and backstory I’ve put together, and it’s been a fun challenge to make sure all the characters have interesting secrets, histories, and arcs set up for them!

I’ll be sending out advanced reader copies (ARCs) today and tomorrow for readers who love writing book reviews.

If you want a free ebook copy of the book, just fill out the form below:

In today’s newsletter, you’ll read about:

✨ How to use deadlines to create better focus

✍️ Writing jobs you may have missed

📚 Why deadlines for freelance work = bad, but deadlines for personal projects = good!

✍️ Missed This Past Week’s Writing Jobs?

Did you miss it? Here are the writing jobs on this past week’s job board:

• Get paid $175-$200/day to write about fantasy sports

• Get hired to write about The Legend of Zelda for a comic book company

• A publishing company is hiring writers to write outlines for psychological thrillers

• ✨ Plus: An opening for a freelance book editor

If you missed the last issue of my writing job board, check it out at the link below:

P.S. I’m changing up the schedule a bit for the writing job board — I’ll be doing a Tuesday/Thursday schedule moving forward to see how that works.

I’m trying to pick the times where I’m most likely to get you the freshest writing opportunities as soon as they pop up, which is why I’m adjusting slightly to this new schedule.

See you on Tuesday for the next edition of the writing job board!

🫖 Sunday Tea: Deadlines as Accountability Tools for Writers

In my book Six-Figure Freelance Writer, I talk about how I think deadlines are bad for freelance writers.

Why? Mostly because I think when you’re writing things for clients, you have plenty of natural motivation to stick to a reasonable schedule. You can set “goalposts” — i.e., general timeframes for your clients — but generally I don’t think strict deadlines are necessary and can actually hinder your work as a freelancer when you’re juggling multiple projects and may need to move some things around in your writing schedule.

However, when it comes to personal writing projects? I think deadlines should be aggressive as heck.

In fact, a good deadline can create urgency and accountability, helping you focus on a personal writing project you would have otherwise never gotten to.

My ~ ultimate ~ hack for self-published authors is to create a pre-order date before you’re done with the draft, and have Amazon hold you accountable to turn in your book — or else lose all of your pre-orders if you don’t!

For The Ash Trials, I set a particularly evil deadline of 3 months to have a fully completed and polished draft. At the beginning of those 3 months, I had a rough outline, 3 chapters written, and a great Spotify playlist. There were definitely moments during the writing process where I doubted that I would make my deadline, but… here we are! 140,000 words written, rewritten, and then edited even more. I’m really proud of this one, and I hope you dig it.

Back when I wrote The Nomad Detective: Volume I, I gave myself 5 months to write about 60,000 words worth of short stories. This looks laughably easy in retrospect, but what I realized is that the writing process expands to fill the space you give it. There were plenty of months where I made next to no progress on the book, and I found creative ways to procrastinate in the name of “research.” But when my deadline started to loom? I panicked and wrote an entire section of the book in three days. Funny how that happens, right?

So my challenge to you is to get more aggressive with your deadlines, and set real stakes for how to hold yourself accountable. This could be getting friends, family, or a writing group who will keep you honest about hitting your goal, or you can turn over your fate to the gods of Amazon like I do and use that as fuel to put your best foot forward on the page each day.

I’m curious — how do you handle deadlines in your freelancing and creative work?

Enjoyed today’s post? Please give it a “heart” ❤️ and share or restack it.

Sending creativity and good writing vibes your way,

-Amy