Deadline

I am under a deadline. 8 days (but who's counting?) and that includes not just working through the weekend but, I should point out, working on Valentine's Day as well.

I'm wrestling with a project that has both inspired and bedeviled me from the start: fighting tooth and nail for every paragraph, leaving claw marks on the edge of my desk as I haul myself back up to the keyboard each time I topple off.

Most children's book writers I know have a love-hate relationship with deadlines.

When the work is going well, I appreciate the deadline as a zesty little kick-in-the-pants that keeps me on track and motivated. When the work is going poorly, the deadline looms, dark and menacing, keeping me awake at night until it becomes less painful to--alright already, enough!--go ahead and get out of bed at four in the morning to get to work.

Finally, of course, I am deeply appreciative that, after all those early years of rejections, someone is waiting to see my work at all.

And with that short post, I am done with today's blog. I would have loved to stay and whine some more, but you see, I have this deadline....