deadlines.

So, we've just had a month of deadlines, courtesy of the lovely Chris Baty over at NaNoWriMo* and now I've taken on the onerous task of setting myself deadlines. Woo.

...there's nothing quite like the sound of eight pm rolling around and realising that you:
a) have to finish one and a half novel outlines in less than four hours;
b) tumblr was down all day, so you really have no excuse for not having done anything**;
c) probably didn't have to watch the ending of The Hangover.... twice***;
d) should not be writing a blog post right now OMG WHY ARE YOU NOT WORKING JESSICA;
e) oooh, it's Monday morning in the US and all the blogs are being updated! **__**

People can be divided up into three categories.
1) Those who can break down tasks into little tasks and get things done before the deadline.
2) Those who work well under pressure. Less-than-four-hours-before-it's-due sort of pressure.
3) Those who work to their own timeframe and deadlines just don't matter.

I'm in the 2nd category, unless I collapse and fall into lucky category number three. (I'm not sure why it's a lucky category.) Like, during NaNo, I started panicking because my university releases the nasty YOU-FAILED-YOUR-EXAM-SO-WE'RE-GOING-TO-MAKE-YOU-SIT-MORE-EXAMS-MUAHAHAHAH notes on November 26. And there was no way that I could study AND write a novel. (I'd stop studying, fo shiz.) And let me tell you, I was CONVINCED that I'd have to sit those extra exams. I'm not so much a glass-half-empty person as a the-glass-contains-a-posionous-liquid kinda gal.

With that pressure on, I churned out 10,000 words in twenty-four hours. (I didn't have to sit the exams which quite possibly means I failed the year. I don't think that's a good thing.)

So maybe pressure and scary deadlines with the possibility of impending doom is good for my writing. Who knew?

*I'm jess.jess over at NaNo, should you want to cyberstalk me. Which would be rather flattering, albeit incredibly creepy.
**I did do edits for an entire novel, but that was mainly because I was procrastinating from my own novel. On that note, if you'd like me to be YOUR beta reader, drop me a line at jessica(dot)denoire(at)gmail(dot)com. You can also send virtual flowers and cookies to that email and I won't complain, pinky promise.
**I also watched an episode of Jeopardy and pwned Alex Trebek. There was a Books category, a Science category, and an Australian Geography category. IT WAS MEANT FOR ME.