Experienced authors - is last month, last section procrastination typical?

[NRaleighLiberal]

My book contract is for 90K words - text is due on June 30. I've hit a bit of a dead spot - not creative-wise (it is a gardening book, so more about just doing the final bits of research and slogging through parts that are not as interesting to me), but crank it out wise.

So I have 10K words plus a complete format/edit walk through to do in one month. I seem to need the sword of Damocles hanging over my head to finish things with deadlines.

Typical?

[Chan790]

1. For me, yes.

My process being different. I write screenplay...it's easiest to write Act II last*...but yeah, it takes me about 4x longer to write the middle-third. Then you read for continuity and rewrite. Then a last edit and format.

*-so you know where you're coming from and where you're going and just have to get there from here. Some people write backwards. Almost nobody writes beginning-to-end.

[nomorenomore08]

3. I wrote my first (short, 115 pages) novel in a pretty much A-to-B fashion, with minimal rewriting.

But the two I've written since, especially the latest one, have come together in a much more fragmentary way. Writing, to me, almost feels like squeezing blood from a stone a lot of the time - though I tell myself quality is more important than quantity.

[kag]

2. Are you kidding?

I think it's mandatory .

Sorry I didn't post this sooner. I just kept putting it off.

Good luck.

[gejohnston]

4. for me, it is the middle

beginning and endings are easy.

[PATRICK]

5. Even when you know the ending

maybe especially so. Like the reader who has it figured out so much that the actual reading has to be worth the effort. You almost convince yourself it is already done, almost started, something that has an appointment somewhere on a continually receding calendar date.

Like running in track and field it is the endgame stress poopout. Not only does the approaching end tighten you getting to the finish line seems to have a half life progression between pain and time.