Give the work a date

A book without a deadline is a hobby that can always start properly next month. Publishers, editors, and producers supply dates, sometimes brutal ones, and the brutality is part of why the work arrives. If nobody is waiting, you have to be the person who is waiting.

Invent a date you can say out loud to someone who will ask. A private date in a notes app can be moved without witnesses. A date told to a friend, a group, or a calendar that sends you a reminder has a small social cost. Use that cost. It is cheaper than another year of 'nearly'.

Break the date into ones you can fail usefully. A finished scene by Friday is a better deadline than a finished novel by Christmas, until the Fridays have accumulated. If you miss Friday, you do not move Christmas. You write on Saturday and look at why Friday was a fantasy — too large a target, or a day you already knew was a hospital appointment.

Deadlines are for completion of a stage, not for perfection of a stage. 'Draft to the end by the first of June' is a deadline. 'Draft I am proud of by the first of June' is a way of making sure June finds you still in chapter four, improving the weather.

When the date arrives, mark it kept or missed, and set the next one the same day. A deadline that dissolves into embarrassment, with no successor, teaches you that dates are theatre. They are only useful if the next one is already on the wall.