Interactive Deadline Calendar

Welcome to my Deadline Formula Calendar, where you are going to learn how to choose and meet writing deadlines, makes those deadlines every time and finally establish real accountability for your writing. Here’s how: Use your cursor to hover over a date. See the description of something that happened on this date? These are some of my favorite emotional high holy days of the year.

What are your emotional high holy days? First read through some of mine, think about that question and then keep reading below the calendar.

December 2024

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
« Oct				Jan »
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21 December, 21 2024 The Winter Solstice Today is the winter solstice, on which the Earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun, making this the onset of winter up north. And while you can’t really see the axis and its tilt from where you are, what you will see is that this is the shortest day of the year, or the longest night, depending on which way you choose to view it. How to personalize something that happens to us all? Look for universal themes.	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29 December, 29 2024 Owls Mating Now You read that right. And if you’ve heard some hooting, that’s why. The Great Horned Owl and the Great Gray Owl are starting a brood. Owls don’t migrate, allowing them to breed now and into the early months of the year, while most other bird species don’t mate until spring. Owls have distinctly different calls. The hoot owl hoots; the short-eared owl has a sneezy bark; the barn owl, a shrill snore, all in the name of love. Humor is serious business. Maybe this will inspire you.
30 December, 30 2024 Birds Do it, Bees Do it. Great Horned Owls and the Great Gray Owls are starting a brood. Owls don’t migrate, which allows them to breed in the early months of the year, while most other bird species don’t mate until spring. It’s mating time when you hear a hooting, but what I love is that the hoots, owl-to-owl are quite different. The short-eared owl, has what the guide refers to as an emphatic sneezy bark; the barn owl has a shrill rasp or snore, long eareds give us two longs hoots, great horned are known for their 5 or 6 resonant hoots, spotted owls give us three, barred in groups of four, grey is a deep single whooo hoo hoo or a single shoooo, while the snowy is mostly silent, and, get this, the flammulated owl of the west and southwest is what my bird guide calls ventriloquial, as in a ventriloquist.	31

All of our high emotional holidays come to us yearly, and all of them present opportunities for you to write Op-eds, personal essays, posts for your blog or guest posts on some larger public blog. And if you write those pieces well enough, people will notice and you’ll develop a following, perhaps even in the form of a publisher or an agent, and that book you’ve always wanted to write will get written.

How to Use this Deadline Calendar

Here’s the key to this calendar: Learning how to choose and meet writing deadlines begins with knowing that you need to write those pieces in advance of the event. So choose one date from here — or from your own year — but choose one that gives you the time to write and submit to a large online or print publication.

Let’s give it three months. Here’s why: You’re busy. Perhaps you need to learn now to write an op-ed or how to construct a personal essay (have you seen my recorded class on the latter?). Perhaps you are writing a book-length memoir from which you can extract a short section to turn into an op-ed or essay. Even better. Best yet, in fact. Two of my four books came from shorter pieces I wrote and published, both arguing what I believed about something large but doing so in a small format. Both led to profitable book contracts. Want the same success? Of course you do.

Would you like more on how to choose and meet deadlines? I have a course for that. Check it out here.