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Deadlines. Dreaded deadlines. Dastardly deadlines. I’ve never known a writer who likes them. In fact, all the writers I know – myself included – hate them. But, like headaches and the common cold, they are a fact of life for people whose jobs require them to write.

Though we detest deadlines, we should bow down in front of them and sing their praises. It is my firm belief, after years of writing, that few projects would ever be completed without deadlines. This particularly applies to the myriad books, plays, screenplays or other works that writers have been nursing along for years – some potentially great works that will never be completed, let alone published.  

So I implore you: If what you are writing doesn’t have a deadline, give it one … and move heaven and earth to meet it.  

If you are writing something for work, school or some other entity, deadlines are often set for you. If not, always set one – whether it’s an hour or a year in the future. Tack it down from the get-go. If you don’t, you might find yourself in a tight spot at some point down the road (e.g., you think you have at least two days to finish the job when it really has to be done by day’s end).  

Another mistake – a big mistake – is to agree to a deadline you can’t meet. Be realistic. Failure to meet a deadline can cause huge problems for you and others. It’s better to say no right at the beginning so you can plan contingencies before the emergency sirens go off.  

I was once asked to write a mammoth project for a billion-dollar corporation based in the Los Angeles area. Unfortunately, the project was far too large for me to complete by the deadline. Even if I had worked on the project exclusively for 18 hours a day, I could not have finished the text for the various pieces of the sales package in time to give to the graphic designers so they could do their thing, so the printers could do their thing, so the materials could be ready for the company’s international convention the following month.  

I hated to turn down the project. The money involved was tempting. But I realized that if I failed to meet the deadline – as I knew I must – the critically important printed materials would not have been ready for the convention. That would have placed the company in a devastating situation. I didn’t want to be responsible for that. Nor did I want to kill myself writing nonstop for several weeks and not be paid for it – as I knew I would not if I triggered a disaster of that magnitude.  

I did the smart thing: I declined the job, explaining my reasons. They said they still wanted me to do it, and asked if I thought it would be possible to meet the deadline if they had some of their in-house creative people assist me.  

We worked out a solution. The project was still a strain, but we met the deadline and everyone was delighted with the results. I was well paid and the company became a good and profitable client.  

Moral of the story: If you’re writing for work, school, etc., don’t ever commit to a deadline unless you’re sure you can meet it. If you think that might not be possible, admit it and either walk away to fight another day or work something out to make it possible.  

And if you’re writing for yourself, give yourself a deadline and make yourself honor it. If you don’t, you will be just another wanna-be writer with stacks of unfinished manuscripts that are doing nothing more for you or anyone else but gathering dust.

PS. Several of you have shared excerpts from your journals as comments to last Wednesday’s post. If you haven’t read these, you should.

PPS. Also, some wonderful comments to Monday’s Word Shot have been posted as comments. I think you’ll enjoy them. If you haven’t submitted your own, now would be a good time.

When speaking of real estate value, the slogan is “Location, location, location.” When speaking of the value of nonfiction writing, the slogan should be “Clarity, clarity, clarity.”

Granted, clarity is only one of many important elements of writing. But in my book (excuse the pun) it’s the most important. If you fail to make your written message clear, you might as well have stayed in bed.

Let me give you an example. This morning my daughter asked my daughter-in-law if she liked pumpkin pie. Her response was, “I like it more than Greg.” (Greg being her husband, my son.)

I wasn’t sure what she meant. I think she meant, “I like pumpkin pie more than Greg likes pumpkin pie.” But on the other hand, she could have been saying, “I like pumpkin pie more than I like Greg.”

If she meant the latter, my son is in trouble. I say that because my daughter-in-law is the kind of girl no one would want to lose, and being demoted in her affections to a position just below pumpkin pie would not bode well for him.

So remember: When you write, pay attention to what you’re saying. Unless you’re writing poetry or certain types of fiction (and sometimes even then), clarity is rule #1.

(Note: I wrote this post a few months ago before I decided to “retire” from accepting jobs from commercial clients. Still, it is applicable to freelance writers in general.)

Ah yes … we work for money, don’t we.

And we should. After all, you wouldn’t choose to spend your afternoon writing a press release announcing ACME Balloon Rental’s new vice president of inflation instead of working on your novel, would you? Nor would you pop out of bed in the morning thinking, “Finally, today I get to write a brochure about widgets instead of finishing my screenplay!”

The fact is, as freelance writers, we work to eat, and to eat, we must charge for our work. But there’s the rub: What should we charge?

Let’s cut to the chase. I currently base my fees on $75 per hour for anything clients ask me to do, whether it’s writing, ghostwriting or editing. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for a brochure, Web site, book, press release or what. It’s $75 per hour. (That rate is higher than some writers charge and less than others charge. The geographical market has a lot to do with it.)

My fees are almost never discussed when I work with repeat clients. They know what to expect and seem to be okay with it. If it looks like a project is going to cost more than the client is used to, I bring this up for approval. The last thing I want is to give a good client an unpleasant surprise when he or she opens my bill.

My fees are always discussed with new clients. I usually don’t tell them what I charge per hour. That really tells them little, because it’s only half of the equation. One writer might take five hours to do the project while another would take 10 hours. So simply saying “I charge $75 per hour” means nothing. That’s why with new clients I estimate what I would charge for a project, based on all the information I have been given. I also let the client know to expect changes in the estimate if the project’s parameters change midstream. An up-front estimate eliminates sticker shock when the client receives the invoice. (By the way, you could call it a “bid,” but I like “estimate” because it seems a bit more pliable.)

Ultimately, of course, you can only charge what the market will bear, but the fee structure I’ve just described has worked for me for years. I have, of course, periodically raised my rate.

Don’t be afraid to turn down clients who aren’t willing to pay you what you’re worth. If you keep saying yes to these people, you will get locked into a low-level of clientele and will always be underpaid. Believe me, there are companies and individuals out there who are willing to pay the price for a good writer. If you are a good writer, you just have to find them. But you won’t find them if you’re swamped with jobs that keep you perpetually unpaid and overworked.

I have a pet peeve: writers who low-ball their rates just to get work. They make life difficult for other hardworking, professional freelancers, and ultimately they cut their own throats. I recently went online to check out what writers were charging and being offered for online articles and content. I was appalled and frankly infuriated to read that some online publishers were offering 1/10th of one cent per word! Once cent per word was fairly standard. That sort of compensation is a slap in the face to serious writers, and any writer who accepts it is doing real damage to the profession as a whole.

Let’s put things in perspective: Yesterday a garage door repairman charged me $89 to fix one of our garage door openers. He spent – I’m not exaggerating – less than five minutes! The day before, my sister paid a plumber $180 to fix a leaking connection. He spend just over 30 minutes on the job. And they’re asking writers to work for maybe $2 per hour?

And some writers will do it? I can’t think about this without wanting to break something.

One last thought. Some writers wonder whether to charge on a per-word basis. This may work for magazine articles and the like, but is lunacy for most types of projects. It doesn’t take into account the time you might spend on research and in meetings, or the approval process and other variables. I once spent three days in meetings and creative time to come up with a small college’s three-word billboard headline. Had I charged per word, I would have had to charge over $400 per word. Had I told the client I would charge $400 per word, I wouldn’t have landed the job. But telling them that I would charge about $1200 for three days of work seemed reasonable to them. And it was. In fact, it was a steal. They used the headline for years in all their marketing materials.

By the way, I regularly get $400 per word for 2,000-word travel articles … in my dreams.