Of the 18 known dimensions, time—the fourth, is the one most important to the writer.
Most often when a writer thinks of time, it is in relation to deadlines which always seem to be approaching at the high closing rate of a behind-schedule freight train. Or how long we have to work before that beloved screech of “M-M-M-O-O-O-M-M-M!!!” breaks our literary peace. Or just how much writing time we wasted this morning playing “Bejeweled” (and, in my case, how much I burnt reading online comics and watching kittens dancing and singing on YouTube—Hey! It’s research…honest.).
Such considerations are valid and should be kept in mind somewhat like “Time in a Bottle” as Jim Croce suggested (or, even better, as an excuse to resort to the bottle on those days).
While, as I say, the above are valid temporal concerns of the writer, I would speak of another—calendar time.
Any number of us are doomed to produce works keyed to specific seasons and dates. Invariably, one finds oneself laboring against a deadline for seasonal submissions that falls six months or so before the publication target date. The stress of this comes from the environmental effects of being forced to meet such deadlines.
As just two examples, the writer finds himself sitting in his skivvies attempting to keep the sweat dripping off the end of his nose from shorting out his keyboard while working on that classic New England-style Christmas snowball fight or portraying a torrid summer romance on a sun-drenched beach as the ink freezes in her pen.
One wonders at these unreasonable deadlines. That editors and their publishing minions lack the dedication to their profession to set more realistic deadlines that fall toward the end of the season in question is a scandal! Any publisher truly supportive of their poor, scrabbling writers would cheerfully forego contact with their significant others, parents, offspring, siblings, friends, pets, sleep and the bathroom to make the lot of those scriveners easier. Alas, such people are hopelessly self-centered and prefer to have lives.
An answer to this would be for those who publish to view it as a vocation on the order of that of the Religious. Just think how the development of a monk-like devotion would improve both publishing and its relations with the writers.
Hopefully, the reason of this modest proposal will be seen; to do otherwise would deem this post to be utter drivel.
4 July 2011: Feast of St. Odo the good.
