Writing and deadlines

A friend wrote:

Dammit, I always do this when I write. I start out with a good idea/concept/message, then I trail off into something else.

I replied with a thought that I'll expand here.

Going off on tangents is not necessarily a bad thing, since sometimes the tangent turns out to be the thing even more worth writing about than your original idea. There have been many times I thought I wanted to say something about Point One, and wrote four or five paragraphs that eventually petered out into pointless babble -- but by that point I realized that Point Two is even better and now that I've cleared my throat, so to speak, I can get on with it. And I wind up writing something that would be much better than if I stuck with Point One.

Other times -- especially if I'm on a deadline and I have to write about Point One -- after that first hour of inconclusive mess I can sometimes take a break, cross out most of what I've done so far, re-attack it by reminding myself of the value of the original idea, and then get it done.

That's really the way I wrote that essay in October, the one I read at the Litquake event*. After an hour I was ready to give up, but because of the deadline I got back in the box and tried again. So sometimes deadlines are a good thing.

* That essay was then accepted for Best Sex Writing 2006 -- you can already pre-order the anthology, which is due out in June from Cleis Press and which will feature me, Susie Bright, Stephen Elliott, and many others.

sex writing, essay writing, Cleis Press, Susie Bright, Stephen Elliott