Why I Wish I Knew It Was Okay To Ask For Extensions On Deadlines

What’s one piece of advice you’d give an aspiring writer?

Or, if you could tell your younger self one piece of writing advice, what would it be?

To properly explain my answer, I need to tell you a little story.

After a rather rough few months at the end of 2013, I found myself at the tail end of a six-week writing slump. For the only time in my writing career, I’d only written 300 words in those six weeks (the least I have ever written). So I decided that it was time to get back on the horse and to find a new project to work on.

I went looking for open calls, turning to a publisher I’d written for before. Through a series of events, I ended up agreeing to write my first mystery for them.

This is January 2014. We agreed I would turn in a completed draft on May 1st. So, in just over three months, I was to write my first book. And at first, it went as smoothly as a project like that can go.

But it was April where things started to get hairy. See, I was working on my senior year of college at the same time and I had accidentally agreed to a deadline that happened to coincide with the beginnings of Finals Week.