{"id":868,"date":"2008-09-16T16:30:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T20:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=868"},"modified":"2008-09-16T16:30:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-16T20:30:31","slug":"writing-to-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/writing-to-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing to Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always had a weird affinity for the cartoonist Jack Ziegler, whom I first encountered in The New Yorker<\/em>. He’s not their most prolific contributor — these days, you might find his work once in every three or four issues. Time was, though, when he put in an appearance weekly. And for whatever reason, I found myself drawn (ho ho) to his eccentric view of modern civilization, to the point that I picked up a couple of his anthologies over the years.<\/p>\n

His 1978 collection, Hamburger Madness<\/em>, includes several fine depictions of writers’ dilemmas. The first, the title cartoon, isn’t really about writing per se. But the mind of its protagonist will be familiar to anyone who has been given three months, a month, a week, a few hours to finish a manuscript. Or, of course, has suddenly found himself in the throes of writing passionately, goosed by The Muse:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The second example, though, will really hit home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A while back, I described<\/a> a legendary creature called “the sh!tbird on [the writer’s] shoulder.” You’ll recall that this creature is the one who perches on your shoulder while you’re writing — second-guessing every decision you make. He goes, like:<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t write. Who told you you can write, anyhow? Look at the way you worded that. You call that writing? For God\u2019s sake, you spelled \u201cyour\u201d like \u201cyou\u2019re\u201d! And oh for chrissake, look there — passive, passive, passive! Better fix that right away — but no, goddammit, no, not that way, look, you just made it worse\u2026!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A writer’s shoulders host more than this one regular visitor, however. Also familiar, I think, will be the little one who whispers in your ear — especially when you’re on deadline — about everything else you could be doing instead:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n[Caption: “Hey, I’m thirsty. I need a drink. A drink and a liverwurst sandwich. Hey, how about a sandwich and a beer down at Gallagher’s, and then we can go shoot some pool? Or maybe take in a movie. Hey, I’m talking to you.”]\n

I especially love Ziegler’s decision to make it an angel<\/em> sitting on the shoulder. Anybody who thinks the soothing voice of distraction comes to writers from a devil’s lips has never heard that voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always had a weird affinity for the cartoonist Jack Ziegler, whom I first encountered in The New Yorker. He’s not their most prolific contributor — these days, you might find his work once in every three or four issues. Time was, though, when he put in an appearance weekly. And for whatever reason, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[274,5,372],"tags":[458,4140,459,460,461,462],"class_list":{"0":"post-868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-cartoons","7":"category-06_writing","8":"category-style-and-craft","9":"tag-jack-ziegler","10":"tag-cartoons","11":"tag-the-new-yorker","12":"tag-deadlines","13":"tag-hamburger-madness","14":"tag-the-shtbird","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-e0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}