It always seems to happen when – as a writer – I’m on a deadline. Right now, I’m on three deadlines, so I guess I’m just asking for trouble. If you know what I mean (and I hope you do – if you’re serious about writing, I KNOW you do).

It doesn’t really matter about the deadlines – in my line of work (helping authors in a variety of roles from editor to promoter to ghost writer), there are always deadlines, and clients naturally want it done Right Now – and so they should. So let’s look at what life brought my way, shall we?

First, if you follow me on Facebook you know I had health problems earlier this year (hint: I died, twice, on the ER operating table on January 30th, and only by God’s grace am I hear now). That put me behind in my project work, but I’d finally caught up.

So, today I was in crunch mode to finish the rewriting of two chapters for a client’s book when – at a routine doctor appointment for my wife Lynn, our doc told her she needed to get to the hospital ASAP. So we headed straight there (flash forward – she’s fine now, thanks for asking). However, it shot the hell out of my planned all-work-and-no-play day, as we didn’t get home until after 6 pm.

I’m writing this as a kind of “mental coffee break” – I no longer drink coffee, but I still need those breaks, and how does a writer take a break? He (or she) writes, of course.

But it never seems to fail – when the deadlines come, so do the barriers to completing things by deadline. So tonight I’m planning an all-nighter if necessary to complete those two chapters before the sun rises.

That, my friends, is part and parcel of the writing life.