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.

September 2024

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
« Aug				Oct »
						1 September, 1 2024 Back to School for Memoir Writers It’s back to school time. Use this as a deadline to get your own work in shape. How? Be hospitable. Read up, and see what I mean by that.
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21 September, 21 2024 Black and White and Still Read All Over. Thank Goodness. On this day 1784, The nation’s first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, began publication. By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, 37 independent newspapers kept our colonists informed. And these days? Well, we all know the tragedy that is befalling our newspapers. Want to write them a love letter? Go right ahead. Having trouble getting started? Try my How-To category here on the blog.	22 September, 22 2024 The Autumnal Equinox Today marks the Autumnal Equinox, that time of year when the sun crosses the celestial equator and moves southward, marking the beginning of autumn in the northern hemisphere. Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer and mathematician who lived around 190 – 120 BCE, is known for first observing and recording the equinoxes. The word “equinox” comes from the Latin for “equal night,” referring to the time when the sun crosses the equator and the day and night are nearly equal at 12 hours apiece.
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

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.