Deadlines just aren't real to me until I'm staring one in the face.
I get nervous the more time I have to think about something so I deliberately don't give myself too much time between jobs. I take a big break and then I start working again usually.
I save everything up until Sunday night because if I start sending emails on Saturday afternoon, then people have to start responding to me on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
In high school, I was the biggest procrastinator in the world.
When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it...So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were - the writer.
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.
Publishing is, by its nature, about deadlines, and deadlines are toxic.
When I realise that I don't have a lot of time left to do what I'm meant to do in terms of buying things, that's when things begin to feel Christmassy for me - when I realise that time is against me, and I've got to act; otherwise, I'll look ridiculous.
My husband Charlie says I get ready five minutes before I go out the door. I am one of those people who can't do anything unless it's imminent - that's how I roll.
I'm a perfectionist and want things to be done now.
The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.
I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.
When you have a deadline, or when you know that your equipment is about to go up in a rocket and you won't have another chance to fix it, your mind works in a way that it otherwise never would.
Those inevitable dreams where you can't get your column in, you know, and at first they were the Xerox telecopy, and then they were the fax machine, and then they were, you know, email. The anxiety remains the same, but the technology has changed.
We Brazilians, happily or unhappily, leave a lot to the last minute.
