O Mighty Deadline

Hello. I haven’t blogged for a while. Blogging was great when it first came out in the late-1990s. Published authors, wannabe writers, and ordinary people seemed happy to have this inexpensive and widely accessible platform from which to express themselves to the world. But bloggers soon found out that blogging was work that also required a fairly good grammatical sense and style. Eventually, the limited posting on Facebook and Twitter became the People’s Choice for easy Internet expression.

But popular social media, by definition, has limited content — in Twitter’s case, 140 characters. Blogging is truly a writer’s medium, allowing for the development of thought, plot, characterization or poetry in whatever stylistic format the writer chooses. Blogging is certainly good practice for a writer. I often read about how novelists or short story writers began their works from informal blogging that became their creative springboard.

Blogging requires a regular commitment of time — an increasingly rare commodity in today’s fast-paced world. As a freelancer, my time is divided between weekend liturgy work at my parish, music arranging and rehearsal during the week for my choirs, doing webmaster duties for my parish, recording my weekly Liturgy Podcast for spiritandsong.com, composing new songs, giving liturgy workshops around the country every couple of months, and writing a monthly column for Ministry & Liturgy magazine — not to mention my continuing research and interviews for the follow-up sequel to my first book, Keep the Fire Burning. Weighed against all these commitments, blogging definitely occupies a place at the bottom of the totem pole.

One writer I know places high priority on blogging. Sure, it seems like no one is reading your blog. But people will read it if you blog regularly. Sounds like the classic chicken-or-egg to me. What comes first?

It all comes down to the tyranny of the blank page, doesn’t it? My regular writing gig is Ministry & Liturgy magazine, with a deadline every 15th day of the month. I can’t tell you how often I promise myself that I will not be a last-minute writer, rushing to meet the deadline with an 11th hour frenzy of wordsmith madness. And yet, it seems like I sit and stare at my computer screen every 14th of the month, praying for inspiration to come up with something that will be publication-worthy.

Therein lies the secret of a writer’s success: the deadline, that relentless oppressor who breathes down my neck and forces my hand! Who was it that said, “Without a deadline, nothing would get done”?

So thank you, O Mighty Deadline, for keeping me on the writer’s path. And if I’m really serious about earning a living as a writer, I need to keep on writing. And writing. And writing.

See you tomorrow in the next blog! (Yes, that is a self-imposed deadline. Please hold me to it!)

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Image above: Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne (ca 1594-1632)
"Saint Paul, pray for me!"