The Godfather: Peter Corris on deadlines

Deadlines and commitments – what to leave in, what to leave out. – Bob Seger

All my life I’ve had a horror of deadlines for written work. At university I made a point of always getting essays in on time or earlier. Even in the year I changed from Pass to Honours and had to pick up extra subjects I got everything in on time and without needing extensions.

We had to write a 10 000-word thesis in the final year and I made a pragmatic decision. I didn’t know what weight was given to the thesis in the final result but I knew the examination papers counted for more. I wrote the thesis early and kept it on ice. Seeing others battling with their theses and trying to prepare for the exams at the same time, I knew I would have found that horrific. As it was, I was able to do thorough exam preparation and submit the thesis as required, having done it with no stress. The thesis wasn’t very good, but I was able to get the result I’d hoped for courtesy of the solid exam performances.

It was the same when I did postgraduate work. I knew that to have a chance for a PhD scholarship I had to have my Master’s thesis completed and assessed for it to be taken into account. I worked very hard at it, had it done in half the time usually taken, and got the scholarship.

The PhD scholarship lasted for three years only. Many candidates took much longer and had to finish while taking up academic appointments and other jobs, or failed to finish at all. I was lucky with the topic, supervisor and material and was able to finish the thesis early in the third year and to have a relaxing time until I submitted precisely three years after beginning.

None of this was indicative of dedication and commitment, rather it came from my certainty that running close to a deadline would make me anxious and unlikely to do well.

The habit persisted through my brief journalistic career into my life as a fiction writer. As Literary Editor of the National Times I always had a stockpile of reviews ready (including several of my own) so there would be no panic as publication day drew near.

As a writer I made a lucky start in that I’d already finished a second detective novel and was well embarked on a third before the first book was published. A flying start!

Over the years that followed, whether writing non-fiction, fiction or commissioned ‘as told to’ autobiographies, I always submitted the work well before the publishers’ deadlines. The old fear of being hard-pressed, of having to hurry, to work under pressure, continued and served me well.

As my output slowed down until all I was able to write was these columns, the editors will confirm that I never had fewer than two or three columns already written and set to go and that is still the case.

My epitaph might read: ‘He took the pressure off himself.’ For better or for worse I think that may have been my guiding principle through life, and not just to do with writing.