The beauty of a hard deadline

Many people who create things for a living treat deadlines with a kind of jocular disdain - a guideline that can be easily broken, rather than a rule that must be followed

There's a famous quote from Douglas Adams, who never had a deadline he didn't piss all over, about how much he loved the sound of them wooshing as they went by, and while Adams will always be one of my favourite writers, and certainly one of the most formative in my life, every time I hear that quote I just think he's a bloody arsehole.

Because I always meet my deadlines, unless it's something completely out of my control, or I have a very, very good explanation. It's a point of quiet pride that I treat the idea of finishing something within an agreed time with all due reverence.

Partly it's because it is just so selfish to blow through them. Nobody creates anything big on their own, and they might have an artistic partner who needs their contribution before they make the next step (especially in something like comics), or an editor or publisher who has made promises of their own, based on the timeliness of your own work. Somebody is waiting for the next step, and I can only read so many stories of Steve Gerber blowing deadlines off to go to party in Vegas, leaving artists in the lurch, before deciding that Steve was a bit of a jerk too. 

Saying you will have something done by a certain time is a kind of vow, and I fucking hate breaking those. Your word is sometimes all you really have in life, and pissing that away with tonnes of small broken promises is such a waste.

But I also love the discipline that comes with a proper deadline, meaning that you have to get up off your arse and actually do things. And if they don't work in the prescribed time, just do the best you can and move on. Not overthinking it, just doing it.

The need to actually do the work is the key of all creative endevors, and nothing will force you to sit down and do it quite like a hard deadline. That alone is worth sticking to the limit.