Write Like a Gangster, Class 11: Deadlines

Hey, ho, let’s go!

Reading Assignment for this class: “The Four Queens” chapter from Teardrop Road

Writing Assignment for this class: The assignment from Class 9 is due today. Send it to jesseteller (at) yahoo (dot) com. Remember to rate and review your performance at the bottom of the assignment.

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I told you to read “The Four Queens” for class today and I didn’t know why. I was thinking of what I could use from Teardrop Road to fortify today’s lesson and this story popped in my head. I had my wife read it to me before I wrote the lecture, and here it is. I’m walking across the room covered in tapestries, past my sleeping dogs, turning off the light. Artist works best in the dark.

When you’re bleeding, it’s best to apply pressure. You apply pressure and the blood tends to stop. When you have an open wound, it’s best to clean it, Neosporin or something like that is good. If the cut is too bad, you go to the doctor. I had a doctor stitch me up once. I remember the look on her face while she was doing it. I felt that same look when I’m writing. I had mishandled a carpet knife and cut my thigh open. I’m gonna let you make that as dramatic as possible. I hope you’re letting your mind make it from knee to hip. That would be really cool.

We managed to get me into Urgent Care and she very politely, very sweetly said she was gonna sew up my leg. I’m very good in situations like this, any situation in which it’s the person’s job to help somebody. I’m really good with that person, and it could be the guy taking my order at Taco Bell or it could be the woman sewing up a gash in my leg.

How big did you decide that gash was?

She had two needles, one was a syringe, actually, with a small amount of fluid in it. The other was a curled needle, threaded. She placed this, it was like a blue piece of tissue paper of some kind. It had a small hole cut in the middle of it, and the cut on my leg was visible through that hole. She said, “If you wanna look away, I have to give you this shot in the wound itself to numb it enough for me to sew this up, if you wanna look away.”

I smiled at her and said, “I am way too tough a man to ever have to have any kind of numbing agent syringed into my body. I’ll take the insult, but watch your mouth from now on, because I’m super tough. Can’t you just get a hot iron and cauterize it closed?” I said something like that. It sounded like, “Ma’am, I’m really good with this sort of thing, just feel free, anytime.” I talked to her pleasantly the entire time she was sewing up my leg. You have to decide whether it was two stitches or 42, depending on how inept you think I am with a carpet knife.

We left immediately. I mean the house, we left the house immediately. We stopped the blood, we got in the car. We drove to Urgent Care, and we did all that immediately. Because there was a deadline on this kind of thing, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about deadlines.

You can’t just leave a gash in your leg, even if you can stop the bleeding, you can’t just leave a gash in your leg. I had to go see that woman and her blue paper towel. And she had to be there. She couldn’t call in and say, “Okay, I know I’m supposed to be there to sew up Jesse Teller’s leg today, but I’m just not feeling it. I don’t feel inspired to give shots of numbing agent and sew up people’s legs, so I’m not gonna be able to make it today.” It wasn’t an option for her. It’s not an option for you either. You’re headed into the writing field, and the writing field is so messed up right now when it comes to deadlines. It’s insane when it comes to deadlines.

I have no mercy. I have no mercy with myself. I have no mercy with my editors. I believe in deadlines, and you should, too. That woman had to be there at a specific time to sew up my leg. I had to get in the car as soon as I could to get my leg sewn up. All three to 47 stitches needed to be put in my leg. It’s the same thing with your work. Your work has to be in people’s hands when they need it, and they need it all the time. People need your work all the time.

So while I was looking for reading assignments, “The Four Queens” came to mind. Artist picked it. So let’s talk about the characters Artist and Poet. Artist saw Poet crying, and he couldn’t come back tomorrow. Couldn’t miss this deadline. Fact is, he’d never seen her before. They didn’t have any classes. It was before school. In fifteen minutes he was gonna have to run off to his first class. She was crying now. And now had to be good enough for Artist.

He went and he talked to her. My wife has read this chapter to me so many times. She always gets one thing wrong when she reads this chapter. Artist asks for Poet’s name and Poet says she doesn’t want to talk. Artist’s response is, “Name, now.” Only after the words does it say that he said them in a whispered hush, so my wife always says them really stern, Name, Now. Artist said in a whispered hush. Artist said that the way he said those stern words so soft, almost to a whisper, made them so urgent, because they promised love. Words that are usually shouted or being demanded now softly in a plea, Artist needed to know her name now.

She realized she’d never seen him before and if she was gonna see or spend any time with him at all, she had to do it now. So she spit out her name. He takes her into a stack of books in the library, and he has to heal her with magic. And so he gets started right away. Doesn’t have time. This person, Poet, she needs beauty and she needs magic and she needs to be healed and she needs it right now because this is the start of her day. She’s got a grueling day of class and socializing to do. This is high school and high school is brutal. Artist can’t say a few words and walk away. He’s got work to do and he’s got a deadline. He still has to go talk to the Four Queens. He’s still gotta prepare himself mentally for class. And really, Artist hasn’t been in this room very much. He hasn’t ever met this person. The alter Artist is just as confused as you could possibly be about the situation he finds himself in. Let’s park there for a minute. Let’s park right there.

Writers, artists, architects, anybody who misses their deadline, will describe a process to you that begs for failure. They have to get their bearings. They have to put themselves in a certain mood. They have to do certain things. And then, if that doesn’t work, they just walk away. Their whole artistic day is a house built out of toothpicks. If the wrong errant wind blows by and their toothpicks fly away, then they say, well, can’t write today, might as well try tomorrow.

Artist needed to look at the room, figure out where he was, look at the girl for awhile, sit down at the table, introduce himself, gently ask her what was wrong and prod her into telling him. And then maybe go talk to the Four Queens and try to fix whatever broken heart she had the next day. That’s Artist’s house of toothpicks.

That’s not how deadlines work. It’s just not. And it’s not how accountability works. Guardian saw a girl in trouble and he held Artist accountable for helping. Artist has no time to prepare. He just has to act. The Name, Now softly adds an urgency and a gentleness she just can’t resist. And she goes with him. Again, fifteen minutes and he’s gotta somehow change her entire life in fifteen minutes, when he doesn’t know the problem.

Same thing as inspiration. If Artist had asked her for a full explanation of what was wrong, then he could make a plan, and then he could act on it. It’s the same as waiting for inspiration to write your book, or to write your story, or to write your poem. But he doesn’t have time for that, he’s just gotta wing it. He decides beauty is what she needs, and he starts opening books for her.

Now, Artist is a magical creature. He goes by the name Smear Lord of Ire. My mind is a wasteland. Inside is a wasteland. And hovering in that wasteland is an 80-foot man covered in small black hairs, with furry wings that are tiger-striped. He’s the god of my mind, and that’s Smear Lord of Ire. That’s Artist. I really don’t know the limits of his capabilities. So, he starts showing her beautiful things in these books. He has no time to ask any questions about why she’s crying so that he can have inspiration on how to fix her. He’s gotta do what he can.

This is the same thing, it’s gonna happen every time you sit down to write. If you put yourself on a daily schedule, you’re gonna sit down and you’re gonna have a small amount of time, and you’re gonna have a word quota, or maybe a scene quota. You’re gonna find yourself in a stack of library books searching for a picture of a rose so that you can heal a broken and weeping story.

You just don’t have time to wait for inspiration. I don’t know what was going on with Poet that day, but seeing those pictures in those books in that narrow alley of bookshelves, it healed her, got her ready for the next day. And it was the spark of a love story between Artist and Poet that was never really realized but will never be forgotten. It’s the kind of love story Smear Lord of Ire needs.

Smear was working on a deadline. So this is what I’m telling you. Inspiration or not, you have a deadline. You’ll always have a deadline. That’s how jobs work. And if you don’t keep your deadlines, you’re not gonna be able to sew up this massive gash in my leg. You’re not gonna be able to save Poet. Inspiration is no excuse. Inspiration is no excuse. Lack of inspiration is no excuse.

For me it’s all about pride. It’s all about taking pride in my mind. I’m crazy. I’m standing in this classroom right now and I’m sitting in a room covered in tapestries with two sleeping dogs and a wife taking dictation. Her face is glowing in the darkened room, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria. And that is happening right now, as I give this lecture. I’m in both places. I explained to you the first day of this class, I am not mentally sound. But I’m proud of my mind. I’m proud of the things it’s survived. And I’m proud of the things that it’s been taught to do, and it has taught itself to do. I’m not gonna insult my creativity, and neither should you, by missing deadlines.

I say this to myself a lot, have a little pride. You’re Jesse fuckin Teller. Have a little pride, you’re married to Rebekah Teller. Have a little pride, you’re Willow and Rayph’s father. Get yourself together. And so I say to myself all the time when it comes to work, I try talking myself out of meeting my daily quota. I say have a little pride. You’ve been through hell. They tried to break your mind. You’ve survived everything they threw at you. And now, with this, you’re gonna give up? These 3000 words tonight are gonna break you? And that’s what I want you guys to think.

Think about the greatest story or poem or screenplay you ever wrote. Then think about the fact that nobody else wrote it, you did. And have a little pride in yourself. I’m gonna teach you how to do it again. And in this class we’re gonna talk about how to do it over and over again. But it’s getting late in the night. It’s almost midnight, and my wife has gotta get to bed by one. I have medicine to take, so I’m gonna finish this lecture in two days. I’m gonna finish this lecture in two days because in two days is the deadline I have given myself to finish this lecture. And I have to have a little pride, because I’m teaching some great writers and some amazing creative minds, and so I’ll make my deadline. Because you guys deserve it. I’ll see you in two days.

Feel free to get up and dance if you want. I’m gonna dance with my wife.

I wanna talk about “Moondance.” It’s the last night they have. Everything’s perfect. The night is perfect. It’s a marvelous night to make romance. This is inspiration. This is what inspiration feels like. I was actually inspired to play that for you for the span of the last two days.

This is the last chance, inspiration’s gonna go away, “Kubla Khan” kinda moment. Raise your hand if you know “Kubla Khan.” It’s a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s not actually a poem. It’s the shard of a poem. Samuel Taylor Coleridge began “Kubla Khan” and he stopped. He went off and did something. My literature teacher, she never told me what he did. I’ve built so many stories around “Kubla Khan,” of what could’ve called him away. Was he starving and he needed food? Thirsty and he needed water? Did a lover come? Did he have a heart attack? Was Coleridge in a carriage when he wrote this part and was gonna finish it when he got home?

So many times I’ve tried to explain to myself why he didn’t finish it. Because I don’t accept his excuse. I won’t accept it from you, I don’t accept it from him. Let me be perfectly clear here. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a genius. I’ll never say any different. His work has been there for me through some of the darkest moments of my life. Legend goes like this, “Kubla Khan” the poem was supposed to be pretty long. We got the beginning of it, he was called away. And no matter how many times he tried to come back and finish, he was never inspired to again. He fought hard to write more and he just never did. Yet the fragment that he did write was so unbelievably good, history remembers it anyway. And the legend of this literary disaster is enough to capture the imagination of poets and writers all over the world. I need an apology. I need an apology from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, because I don’t believe lack of inspiration is a good enough excuse.

I don’t believe in muses, don’t come to me with that. I used to. I don’t anymore. I believe the idea can be used to create inspiration. You write a love letter to your muse. You tell them how much you miss them. And in displaying to the page your desire for an idea, you get one.

It’s weird because I believe in vampires, and I believe in werewolves. I’ve seen one. Have had countless conversations with multiple ghosts. I believe in God and gods. I believe in that right there. But I don’t believe in muses. None of those other things are trying to stop me. I heard Stephen King talk about muses before, and I’m gonna get this wrong. He said his muse sits in the room he writes in in a chair. The guy drinks a beer and smokes a cigarette and tells him to get back to work. Makes demands. I think I got that wrong. For some reason, I see workboots and a dirty blue shirt when I’m thinking about King’s muse.

Inspiration comes. It’s real. We just heard a song about it. I’ve felt it. When a truly powerful idea comes to you, you can feel it in the cells of your body. It’s like a punch to your mind. I could stop the lecture right here, point at any of you, and if you’re bold enough you could tell us the story of the last time you were truly inspired to write. If you were asked to tell the story of the most powerful inspiration that ever came upon you, your voice would crack and your story would sound like the ramblings of a madman.

Inspiration is definitely real. But in your life, how many times has it happened? In your life, how many times have you been truly inspired? You can’t make a living off that. Unless your mind is constantly sparking new ideas, and it never stops, then you just cannot live and pay your bills off inspiration alone.

I had countless moments of inspiration, some really powerful ones. I’ll never forget where I was when I had those. Then there were times when I just had to force myself to write. I wasn’t inspired at all, I just had to force myself to write.

When I tell the story of those inspired moments, my chest starts to flutter. Sometimes I’ll actually cry. My voice breaks. And I can name about eight of them. But I’ve written 38 books. The majority of the work I do is not inspired. As a writer, it shouldn’t have to be. I trained myself to do a job. I can do it whether the moment is blessed or not.

Racecar drivers will describe a moment when they’re in a zone and nothing can stop them. Teachers will tell of a time when they’re in front of a class and they’re on fire. But whether that teacher is driving that racecar or not, whether there is a zone that’s on fire, other times, all the other days, cannot be missed, cannot be ignored.

They say rubbing is racing. What they mean by that is in Nascar, all the cars are kind of rubbing up against each other. If you can’t handle that, don’t drive a Nascar. It’s the same thing with writing. Rubbing is writing. In Nascar, if you can’t get around somebody, you push into them a little bit. In writing, if you are not inspired, you force it. It’s not as easy. But if Nascars can rub up against each other at the speeds they’re going, you can force 1000 words.

You gotta hold yourself accountable. It takes accountability to do the job we’ve decided to do. No excuse is good enough for you. No time constraint can stop you. The will to write and the demands you place on yourself knock everything else out of the way.

Publishing Deadlines

This is a major problem in the industry right now. I’m not naming names. I’m not interested in the debate that will happen because of it. Publishers give their writers a deadline.

Publishers know how long it takes to write a book. They work with writers all the time. Calculation goes into how long it took to write the last one, what time of year is it, is Christmas coming up, I’m sure publishers have an entire spreadsheet they use to decide when your book needs to be on your editor’s desk. There’s a big problem with this. It’s Robert’s Roses. It’s Cleansing the Character. It’s deciding between a realistic setting, a magical setting, or a mythical setting, which we’ll get to. I don’t care.

I’ve never missed a deadline. I’ve published 28 books. I tell myself when a book is going to be finished, and that’s when it’s done. Writers think they have a free pass, a free pass that doesn’t extend to anything but creative types. A free pass to say it’s just not ready, I need more time.

I’m an ambulance driver. I’m just not ready, I need more time.

A doctor can’t just walk into a room, look at an extremely handsome patient, and say, “I’m sorry. I need more time. I just can’t sew up your gash right now.”

I was born working class. I still consider myself working class. I have this clear image. I see it every time I sit down to write. I’m sitting on the floor, tying my shoes. I’m in first grade. My stepfather is sitting on a kitchen chair in front of me. He’s got the most baller, brown work boots I’ve ever seen. And he’s tying those boots. We’re doing it at the same time, and when I’m done, I look up at him, he looks down at me, and he nods.

I don’t need to tell you that he’s heading into a physically punishing job, and I don’t need to tell you that I’m heading into a violent school. All I need to tell you is that if he did not tie those boots every morning and walk out into his job, I would’ve starved to death and been homeless. As it is, there were times when my parents didn’t eat because we didn’t have the money to buy groceries for them.

Imagine you’ve been working ten hours a day, six days a week, your paycheck is given to you, you pay all your bills, and you’re standing in your pantry with your arm around your wife as she cries, because you have half a loaf of bread, one can of condensed chicken soup, and a small box of rice. And two more weeks before your next check. That’s the reality my parents lived. And he worked sixty hours a week.

You are a writer, with an education. You can train yourself to day-in and day-out put on those boots.

You’re walking into an industry that has zero respect for a deadline. Every editor I have ever had has at least once told me it’ll be done in two weeks. And I get the book in two months. For some reason, creative fields have given themselves the permission to ignore deadlines. Maybe not ignore, but take a deadline as a suggestion.

I publish a book every October 5 and April 15. And I’ve done that for years. Sometimes the book is 110 pages. Sometimes the book is 800 pages. There are no excuses that are good enough for me why I can’t meet my deadlines.

I have zero mercy when it comes to deadlines. And from this day forward, I am your publisher. If your arm falls off, there’s a death in your family, we can have a conversation. But if your leg falls off, you don’t need your leg to type. Right now, from this moment forward, I am the publishing house you may never have to deal with in your life. If you turn in an assignment 20 minutes late, I will not read it. I’ll give you a 50% on your grade unless you’re missing an arm or there’s a death in your family.

I do not mind being an asshole, if it teaches you a lesson I taught myself. Your audience matters. If you make a promise to your audience, like a deadline, then you owe it to them to keep it.

I have a reader, her name is K Smith. Yes, I initialized her first name, but her last name really is Smith. This isn’t some Men in Black shit. She’s read everything I’ve ever published, and a few things I haven’t. But she hadn’t read the book that came out April 15, 2024. She hadn’t read that book yet. She gives me her time. She prioritizes me in her life. I am her Raft of the Medusa. She keeps coming back. She sees a new dead body being held onto the raft by a bored man every time she comes back. I owed it to her to have that book ready by April 15. I don’t know what alter I’m going to be in fifteen minutes. I don’t know what I had for dinner tonight before I came here. But I do know this one thing. April 15, 2024, was the release of book three of the series Nation of Five. It’s called Dreveren. And at 12:01 AM on that day, K Smith could begin reading that book. I owed that to her.

Your readers are the only reason you have a job. If you make them wait too long, eventually they will resent you. Eventually they will ignore you.

The Ladder

Each rung of the ladder is a number of the word-count. Divide the days left before the deadline by the words left to write and you have your rung of the ladder, your daily word count quota.

I knew a martial artist once. He said that every class was like moving paper. Imagine you have a stack of paper, 4000 pages. You go to one class. You take one of those pieces of paper and you move it over and make a second stack of papers. Next time you go to class, you take another off the big stack and put it on the small stack. Keep doing this. Every time you go to class, you take a piece of paper and stack it on the other side. That’s the analogy.

This right here is how you write a 900-page book and a four-book epic series. That’s how you write anything. You take one piece of paper off every time you sit down to write, and you move it over to the smaller stack. Eventually you’re a black belt, you’ve written an epic series, or you’ve got your short story done, all 4000 pages have moved to the other stack. It grows slow. But it does grow.

Accountability

Accountability is this funny thing. An idea came about, fairly recently, a couple decades ago. It probably sprouted up everywhere, but I’m gonna talk about where it sprouted up in my life. This is where I really got in trouble. It was a masculine accountability based around religion. There was a group of men who were going to hold each other accountable for reading their Bible, how they treated their wife, the time they spent with their kids. The story is, I am a man, you are a man, we get together, we talk about manhood. I hold you accountable for taking care of your responsibilities. You hold me accountable. The idea entered my life decades ago. Then about eight years ago I decided I was gonna try doing that with a group of friends and our artistic endeavors.

And I learned an extremely powerful lesson. Nobody can hold you accountable. Nobody knows what you’re going through. Nobody knows what you’re experiencing. I can’t walk up to you and say, “Did you write last night?” And you with shameful face say, “Yes.” And I say, “How many words?” And you say, “378.” You know the word count exactly, because you know your failure. I look at you and snap, “We said 500.” This is not how it works.

I guess you could probably do that with your spouse. Me and my spouse have something similar to that. I always use examples from myself, so I’ll use an example from her this time. She’ll have some graphic design work she has to do, time to do it, and she will exceedingly rarely, very very rarely, walk into whatever room I’m in and say, “Honey, can I take the day off? I just don’t feel up to it.” And I tell her yes.

It’s a ritual we go through. I do the same thing. There are times when I just had a day so distracting that I can’t find my way to fantasy and I’ll ask her if I can take the day off, but the answer’s always yes. I don’t ever say, “Okay, but what about the deadlines? Do you have any deadlines, and have people been waiting for that brochure for…?” I never do anything like that.

She never says anything like, “Well, we said you would write on these particular days and…” The answer’s always yes. But still we go through the ritual. We do it for ourselves. I ask her if I can have the night off, because I’m declaring it a night off. And my declaring this particular night as a night off, this tricky little thing happens where, at the same time, I’m declaring all the other nights nights on.

When you say you’re sitting in the dark like I am in right now, you’re declaring the room is in gloom, except for the Lighthouse of Alexandria taking dictation at her computer with her face glowing. One thing means the other. So when I ask my wife if I can have the night off, and she says yes, I’m silently making an agreement with myself that all the other nights are nights I’m supposed to be working.

These groups that men had where they held themselves accountable to their Bible study and their wives and their children, there’s no teeth in it. There’s absolutely no teeth. I set one up that met every Friday, and I answered to these men on how much work I was getting done and what I was doing. Another of them answered to the group on how things were going. The third one never did anything. He was an artist. He never did anything. He never kept a single deadline. But he’d come into our room and talk to the other guy about how he wasn’t meeting his deadline.

At one point, the three of us are in a driveway, the artist stands up and starts yelling at the other guy to finish work. You don’t have anything until you have something finished. By this time I think this group is four years in. And this artist hasn’t finished a single project he’s ever started. When we finally had our break, he blamed it on me. Don’t ask your friends, don’t ask the people in this classroom to hold you accountable for anything when it comes to your work. You’re placing blame on somebody else for your own laziness.

Accountability has to begin and end with you. You can have the arrangement that I have with my wife, but the answer is always yes. I don’t have to explain myself, I don’t have to… the answer is just yes. You can have something like that. Do you have any idea how many times I told this guy to get to work and work on his art? Six and a half years I was with this guy. Being held accountable by an outside force just does not work.

If I had decided to not give myself the deadline of finishing this lecture today, I could’ve played “Moondance” for you, and then after that I could’ve played “Sao Paulo Rain” by Tom McRae, and I could’ve explained to you that something devastating happened, I wasn’t able to finish tonight like I said I would. And you would’ve had to believe me. All of you stood up to dance to “Moondance.” All of you would’ve stood up to dance to “Sao Paulo Rain.” Strangers grabbing strangers. Classmates you’ve never spoken to before, like you did with “Moondance.” You guys are good dancers, by the way. I didn’t expect all of you to get up, but that was very cool.

But although we all would’ve loved listening to Tom McRae, you guys in reality could never have held me accountable for missing my deadline. And the Lighthouse of Alexandria doesn’t get mad if the ship shows up to the docks late. You either take on the responsibility of holding yourself accountable for your actions, or you admit to the fact that you’re blaming an entire classroom full of writers and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, because you didn’t finish your lecture in time. And both of these sleeping dogs know you’re full of shit. They are not impressed.

Reading Assignment

Reading assignment for next class: “The Hammer and the Spike” chapter from Teardrop Road

Seeds of Tarako will have to be read by Class 17.

—Prince