How many nights can someone survive on caffeine and chaos?
Steve is a great guy, but he has a habit of giving me phantom deadlines.
There is this editor – let’s just call him ‘Steve’ – who sends me these fake deadlines.
I love the guy.
We’re perpetually engaged, you and I, in a tango of terror and triumph – the same steps, the same tune – but the music, the tempo…? Well, that’s what the insanity is all about.
It starts on the phone, at least it has ever since: Steve’s cheery, laid-back voice on the other end of the line, sounding like he’s asking you to come over for a Sunday barbecue when, in fact, he’s proffering an Entopian flip-book of self-interrogation.
"Hey Matt," he'll say. "I need that piece by Friday."
Friday. The word hangs there, a small ticking time bomb. It doesn’t matter that it’s Wednesday already, that I have a dozen other projects winking at me from the corners of my computer’s screensaver. Steve needs it by Friday, and what Steve needs, Steve gets.
So I will say yes, of course. What the hell else can I do? I’m a writer. Writers write. Even when you have an hour to go after a day’s writing and the subject is as exotic as Mars.
I’ll hit the ‘end call’ button, take a deep breath and swallow, and jump off.
The next day and a half are a whirl, a caffeine-fuelled hallucination of Googling, phone calls and typing until my fingers fall numb and my eyes go sandpaper.
I’ll forget to eat, forget to sleep. The world will diminish to a tiny pinprick, a flashing screen and a blinking cursor.
And then, bang: done. I’ll send an email, hours before the deadline, and watch my progeny fly out into the void.
I will sit back, I will take a breath. Pride and exhaustion will jostle for supremacy. But there’s no time for rest, there’s no time to celebrate. Because I know what comes next.
Silence. Deafening, maddening silence.
Maybe I’ll send a few emails, refresh a few inboxes. No response. No message. A sign that I wasn’t read, wasn’t replied to. No nothing.
One day will be followed by two. The pride will be replaced by doubt and by fear. Is that all there is? Did I mess up?
I’ll begin to question whether or not I’d actually dreamt the whole thing, whether the deadline was just a product of my eyestrain and exhaustion.
But I’ll wait, because that’s the only thing writers ever do. And aren’t writers nothing if not patient?
A week will pass, then two. The seed of doubt takes root, grows, and festers. I begin to compose apology emails in my head, will start to plan my new hermit life in the woods.
However, I won’t send them, not yet. For down, in some dark corner of my soul, I still hold on to hope: perhaps my words had an impact, perhaps my sleepless nights were not in vain.
Eventually, when the quiet becomes overwhelming, I’ll snap. I’ll send an email, a tentative nudge.
Hey Steve? Got that story I sent? Sure you didn’t loose it in the ether?
I stare with my heart in my throat and then – ping! – reply.
"Oh yeah," Steve will write back. "Looks great. We're running it next month."
Next month. Two words, a sucker punch to the gut.
I’ll read them again, blink. Next month. As in, not this month. As in, not that month gone by, where my body stacked its like-daggers into the altar of the sham deadline.
I’ll have a hysterical fit of laughter so close to tears. Two weeks that I gave myself, to a deadline that didn’t exist.
It's enough to drive a man to madness... or to the nearest bar.
But I won’t be mad. And I won’t go to the bar. Because this is my dance. Because this is my choice.
I’m a writer, after all. We write. We do it, even when (I’m talking to myself here) the deadline is self-imposed, even when the goalposts shift.
It’s what we do, we always do. We chase, the words, chase, chase. We take the ink, and we bleed it onto the page, to fill the void.
And, yes, sometimes, we’re lucky, too – sometimes the emptiness speaks back. Sometimes our words get out into the world, into the heads of readers, alive.
That's the dream, the drug. That's what keeps us going, keeps us dancing.
Even when the music plays behind the beat, even when the steps are improvised from scratch; we keep scribbling, keep fabricating, keep sprinting towards the white but always fanciful deadline.
Because that's who we are. That's what makes us alive.
And besides, Steve always picks up the check the first time the piece appears. A small consolation, but a consolation nonetheless.
It’s tradition. We’ll belly up to the bar and toast. Steve will pat me on the back, tell me I did us proud.
And I’ll smile, nod. Because I did do good, even if it took a month for anyone to notice.
Anyway, I’ll take my drink, feel it slip, slap, through my vein, and there is a moment; just the one, that I will get a bit lost – all the phantom deadlines, the sleepless nights, all of it has been forgotten.
For a moment, I'll just be a writer, celebrating a job well done.
But then Steve will sidle up and wink at you. ‘So,’ he’ll say, ‘I’ve got a project for you. By Monday.’
Monday. Three days from now.
I'll feel my heart sink, my stomach clench. But I'll nod, force a smile.
Because what else can I do? I'm a writer, and writers write.
Even when the deadlines are impossible, even when the demands are insane. We scribble, we type, we flee, we run after the words.
It's a mad dance, a frenzied tango. But it's our dance, our song.
And long as there is story, long as there is truth, we’ll dance. Write and chase.
Even if it means a few phantom deadlines along the way.
Cheers to you, Steve.
Cheers to the late nights, the early mornings.
Cheers to coffee, and to chaos.
Cheers to pride, and to panic.
Cheers to that dance – the eternal tango of scribe and scissors, of art and commerce.
It's a crazy life, a maddening whirl. But it's our life, our whirl.
And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
Well, maybe for a deadline extension now and then.
But only if you're buying the next round.