There’s nothing like a big deadline to bring out the worst in a writer. We’ve all been there: We wrote a killer query or book proposal, landed the assignment or book contract, and then had to do the work. Procrastination kicks in, and all of a sudden the deadline is right around the corner and we’re staring at a blank screen on our laptops or a blank piece of paper.

The best way to avoid an all-night (or all-week, depending on the length of your project) caffeine-fest is to break the project into manageable sections. Use whatever method works for you. Some people keep a list of tasks by their computer so they can see which stages have been completed by looking for check marks. Others set up a reward system. One chapter equals one new pair of shoes, for example. That’s just my system; again, use what works for you, whether it’s time on the tennis court, a dessert the next time you eat out, or something else.

Take it from someone who’s been there: You don’t want to be overwhelmed by stacks of research and interview notes with a deadline looming. You won’t even know where to begin—and that overwhelming feeling will balloon. No matter how you keep track of the stages of your project, just keep track.

All major projects—regardless of your occupation—should be treated this way, but as writers, especially nonfiction writers (generally speaking, of course, because we all know that good fiction writers do quite a bit of researching themselves!), we deal with a task that’s oftentimes more complicated. The reason is simple, and it’s one you likely heard before: Our profession requires much more paper than others do. Transcribed interview notes. Photocopied articles. Web research printouts. Need I go on? I’m sure you could add a few sources of paper to the list. It’s difficult enough to manage all this material if we’re organized and on top of our deadline schedule, so why make the task any more difficult? As writer Peter De Vries once said, “I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.” Amen to that!

Time-management is the way to stay on top of projects. Something I do with each project checklist I create is to have a start date, a target completion date, and an actual completion date for each stage of the project. If you’re not used to this method, I agree that it seems like more work than it’s worth. What I found, though, with my first couple book-length projects was that I wasn’t allowing myself enough time to get responses from e-mail interviews. By going back, looking at these checklist dates, and then using them to construct new project schedules (in this case, by allowing for that extra return time by starting the interview step sooner than I used to) I’ve made myself much more productive—and never been stuck in a bind waiting for an interviewee to get back to me. Will my method work for you? I can’t guarantee it. But since a missed deadline is a writer’s worst fear come true, it’s worth a shot, right?

When I asked freelance writer and moderator of The Organized Writer (www.organizedwriter.com) Julie Hood about estimating time frames of various project stages, she said, “Estimating how long each step will take is the tricky part. To help guard against underestimating, I break the steps down even further, add in buffer times, or even double or triple my estimates. Overestimating makes the editor happy since I finish early.” Finishing early is a noble goal, though I almost always settle for on-time delivery.

Moira Allen, editor of Writing-World.com, discussed the issue of time management in her column, “From the Editor’s Desk,” in a recent issue (2:21) of her e-zine. I—and many of you, I suspect—often ask myself the very question Moira began her column with: “Where does the time go?” She concludes the column by noting that “once you know where your time goes, you can determine whether it’s going where you WANT it to go—or whether it’s time for a change.”

Effective time management (achieved through trial and error, because every writer has his or her own system) begets increased productivity, which enables us to undertake several projects at a time. We can easily handle multiple projects at different stages if we’re organized and know where we are with each step of each project. Breaking writing projects into manageable steps is critical to keeping on track, preventing that overwhelming feeling we all know about, and making the best use of our time. What’s better than staying sane and meeting the deadline?

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