Erick Galindo on Meeting Deadlines & Staying Sane @ErickGEEE #LitFic #AmReading

How to Meet Deadlines and Remain Sane

The best way to view deadlines is to embrace them. That doesn’t mean you have to love them or kill yourself to meet them. But it does mean you have to use them as a tactical advantage in the process. Writing is real work. It’s like any other gig in that respect. You are making something. Yeah it is art and yes it is unlike any other job in so many ways but you are just putting out a product. And all that requires a process.

Everyone has their own way of turning out pages. Some people plan specific writing hours or set daily and weekly goals. Some are more spontaneous about getting writing done. A deadline can actually benefit either style. A deadline, by its very nature, adds pressure. And pressure can be overwhelming if you let it be a stifling force. But pressure can also be a much needed catalyst.

For example: If you are the type of writer who wakes up every day at 6 a.m. and churns out a minimum of 1000 words per day as part of your process, you might be a few steps ahead of more spontaneous writers. But writing is more than just putting words on paper. It requires reading, editing and rewriting. It also requires consuming art and other peoples words.  It requires research. It requires living.

A deadline, even for the most organized writer, gives you a goalline. Like in football, everything you do as part of your process should be a means to get the ball past that goalline. Don’t just write because it’s 6 a.m. Write with purpose. Write because you have something to say or write to workout a puzzle or problem in last weeks pages. Or don’t write at all. Go live. Read a book. Use the pressure of the deadline to be more efficient.

Even if you are the type of writer or artist who doesn’t have a routine, a deadline can be a blessing. It will get you to think about a plan in the sense of the bigger picture. You don’t have to do anything that will stifle your creativity. Simply make a plan that gets you from A to B in the best way possible so that when you get closer to the deadline, you aren’t feeling completely off guard.

In any case, use the deadline to see that, in a very important way, this is just a gig. It’s easy to be consumed by writing a novel or a story especially the closer you get to the imposed due date. But there is life outside of the gig. Make sure you make time to just say “fuck it” and go do something easy and simple. If you let the pressure push you to the finish line and take time to separate yourself from it, even if it’s just a nap or an episode of the Real Housewives, you will be just fine.

A winner of the Hollywood Book Festival, So Go On and Live poignantly and bitingly captures the angst and restlessness of modern American youth. Pedro "Pete" Salcedo, a young but worn down journalist, is on a figurative and metaphorical journey through the absurdity of life, America and beautiful women. 

After accepting a prestigious job in Washington, D.C. and subsequently losing the love of his life, Pedro loses himself, first to his work, then to the road and eventually to the apathy, alcohol and cynicism that permeates through youth culture. Pedro struggles, like many of his generation, to get his life in order and hang on to love, sanity and pathos in this modern world, where women, relationships and sexuality are constantly evolving. 

So Go On and Live is a wild and emotional expedition into the existential and farcical perspective of a drunken, Mexican-Irish, would-be poet offering a new breed of optimism that comes with a nihilistic twist.

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Genre - Literary Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Erick Galindo through Twitter

Website http://www.erickg.com/contact/