Okay, I haven’t gone over the edge yet into Deadline Hell. I still have eight weeks to finish my book, and so I am jogging rather than sprinting to the finish line.

I have been writing ten pages a day for a week now, which means that, although I am a little flaky and not-really-present-in-my-own-life, I am still eating, sleeping and even bathing. I even allow myself to talk on the phone for up to twenty minutes each day. Today, amazingly enough, I actually met two friends for breakfast and was able to sit at a table in a diner and make semi-appropriate conversation about things that did not specifically have to do with the subjects in my book.

But I had to laugh when I came across this blog post by mystery writer Alison Gaylin at the First Offenders web site in which she describes her life on February 23, the day her novel was due.

Here is what she says:

The manuscript was due at 4 PM on Friday. I turned it in at 3:59. I wrote the last 50 pages that day, and since I was technically “working from home,” the magazine called me at noon and asked me to write an Angelina Jolie story, due at 1:30. I did a phone briefing with the executive editor at 12, went back to writing the novel. Put it aside at 1, wrote the Angelina story, turned it in at 1:15, and went back to the novel, my fingers barely leaving the keyboard. There was no time to complain, no time for Itotallysuckitis. I was a writing machine. A tortured, broken machine, but mechanized nonetheless. At 4, after I turned the book in, I couldn’t stop crying. 

Have we not all been there–possibly without having to stop to write treatises about Angelina’s adoptions–but still always with something coming up that prevents us from finishing our novel in a calm, orderly manner.

But you know the worst part? Sometimes it takes getting to that edge before we can do our best work. It took me 17 long, lazy years to write my first  novel, which then was finished in the same kind of hours-long frenzy that Alison describes. And my second novel, which had to be written in 11 months, also ended up in a marathon session that made me wonder if I’d ever be able to move my typing fingers or walk upright again.

What is it about panic that brings out the clarity needed to complete a book? Why is it that we can’t just lope along at a decent, but sane, pace, completing each stage with time still to enjoy the power of human speech without bursting into tears?

I’m striving for something of a healthy finish to this book. My goal is to to type the words “The End” without falling to the floor and needing a blood transfusion and some oxygen. But as Alison so eloquently put it:

I told another writer friend about this, and she said, “Maybe that’s what you need to do your best stuff. Maybe you need to be close to death or a nervous breakdown, or both.”  She’s right. Hate to think it, but she is. I look back on all the plot twists that just sort of came out of me, the structural problems I managed to solve, and I realize I couldn’t have done it without the two Ds: desperation and delirium.  I’m hoping, the next time around, I can be inspired to do my best in healthier ways. My editor suggested setting up a series of false, but impossible deadlines for me. This might work.

Yay, desperation and delirium. Until then, I’m going to go take a bath.