Let’s explore the accepted definitions of “Deadline”
What Is a Deadline, Really?
Traditionally, a deadline is defined as a time or date by which something must be completed. But the origin of the term is much darker. It came from American Civil War prisons, where a “dead line” marked the boundary prisoners could not cross without being shot. From literal life-or-death consequences, it evolved into something more psychological—yet still stressful—applied to the world of publishing, journalism, and the arts.
Today, a deadline is a finish line. A marker of commitment. A line in the sand between “someday” and “done.”
So, from that deadly line that warned the imprisoned, it evolved into a metaphor for limits in time, particularly for journalists and other creatives, as well as students, freelance writers and producers of proposals. I have used the phrase, “I’m sorry, I’m writing to deadline,” to cut off phone conversations, and it wasn’t even questioned.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The whooshing noise I hear is my life. As both a writer and a human living life towards an unknown finish line, I see my horizon is smaller. I wonder: are both my best work and my best years behind me?
I can still pick up a pen or tap on a keyboard to etch out new work. In any creative field—writing, art, film, music—that ever-present deadline serves both as a pressure point and a motivator, often shaping the final form and spirit of the work. As artists, we need deadlines
Why Do Artists Need Deadlines?
Because let’s be honest: without deadlines, many projects would never get finished.
Deadlines Provide Focus: Sure as creatives, we crave open spaces – free of barriers, including on our calendars. But we need a structure to land. A looming deadline can help a scattered mind find its centre. How often have you heard artists claim that they do their best work in that fabled 11th hour?
What is so magnetic about the 11th hour? Well, that’s likely a whole other chapter. Basically, decisions must to be made.
There’s no time left for the luxury of perfectionism. I’d like to add something I came to understand very late in my career…If you wait till the 11th hour and do the work within that final frame, then you have the excuse that, in the event of not doing well, you simply ran out of time. If you execute and produce something passable or better, then you claim inspired creative brilliance.
Hear George Clooney’s take on learning from failure and how fear of it affects you when you wake up at 65.
As Leonard Bernstein, the American conductor, once said,
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”
- Deadlines Force Completion: For those of us who are compulsive ‘tweakers’ who re-edit every phrase or frame, the deadline of a curtain that must rise or a press that is poised to print imposes closure.
- Deadlines Create Momentum: Regardless of our life’s issues, action begets more action, growth, and ultimately, results. Nothing spurs a stagnant project into motion, or a kick in the butt to stop sleepwalking in life, like a non-negotiable due date.
We all hope to pull that magical rabbit out of the hat, and our deadlines drive the engine behind late nights, early mornings, and the kind of focus we didn’t know we had.
- Pressures of the finish line offer us an unexpected freedom. The dithering falls away. The delusion that we have infinite possibilities forces us to face the question: What can I do with what I have, right now?
That same heart-pounding panic that leads us to accept ‘the good enough’ or the imperfect but finished has parallels in life. But unlike issuing a new version or going back to fix some work, in life, there is that feeling that lingers. We didn’t do enough, feel enough, enjoy enough or love enough. Whereas our writing or art is called a body of work, in life, there might be a terrible regret. In due course, we will deal with all those lived experiences, one at a time – right here in this space. Stay tuned.
Life’s Greatest Deadline
Life holds our ultimate deadline. We don’t know when it is, but we know its coming. And just like with art, that awareness—though scary—can sharpen our focus.
It has certainly caught my attention. It did when I turned 50, but I was transitioning from the 40s – a decade that can be very exciting for women coming into their own. Then, in my 60s, when I was told I still looked so much younger, and I was distracted by moving from downtown to a cool area of Vancouver and beginning another 10-year tenure in ‘not my home town where I had roots.’
On the cusp of 69, I was recovering from hip replacement surgery only a month and 3 days before. It had gone well because my only job on May 24 in the operating room was to wake up, ‘not dead’.
Here’s the thing. Whether you’re a writer battling a blank page, a musician racing toward release day, or a painter filling in the final strokes before the show opens, know that the deadline isn’t our enemy. It’s our audience, our stage manager, even our almighty, co-creator!
It’s the vital life force that turns a dream into a draft, a plan into a living performance.
I hope to not just beat the clock in our longevity and youth-obsessed world. I hope to dance with it.
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Upcoming blogs:
- THE DARK SIDE of deadlines..
- The barriers.. procrastination, fear, the blank page, etc.
- A writer’s tool kit – a series of my tips, tricks and triumphs to help the hesitant to the experienced writers along on the journey of expression, and possibly legacy, we all share.
