The 11th Hour, Forcing Functions, & That Writing Project You Just Can’t Seem to Finish

It's Okay to Procrastinate... Until It Isn't

Note: Today is the last day to sign up for my upcoming classes at the early bird rate. You can see the list of available offerings here. I’ll share more at the end of this post about upcoming writing circles I’m teaching.

I have a client who’s been working on a book for eighteen months. The past year and a half, we had been going back and forth, figuring out what this thing was and needed to be. It was a few steps forward and almost as many back. We just didn’t seem to be making any progress.

Photo by Ivan Mani on Unsplash

Then, at the eleventh hour—a week before the deadline—he rewrote the entire book. I mean, the whole damn thing. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I wasn’t. In fact, I’ve done the very same thing, more than once. 

Authors are notorious for wanting to change things at the last minute and often for doing some of their best work with their backs up against the wall. There is something about a deadline that stirs up a person’s creativity. 

As an author and ghostwriter, I can attest to this. Most books I’ve written were completed in a mad dash sprint to the end when I absolutely had to show up or… I’d be in trouble. This did not happen within the confines of a sterile writing environment. It happened over a basket of unlimited chips and salsa at the local Mexican restaurant. Or at a nearby coffee shop or brewery, the grocery store cafe where I camped out all day to do the impossible. 

And it happened. Every time. I pulled it off, somehow, often to the dismay and shock of others. But this is not particularly unusual for a creative person.

Another client I’m working with has spent the past six months reworking a single chapter in her first book. She struggled to find the confidence to believe in what she had to say, who it was for, and whether or not she could pull it off. 

As her coach, I challenged her to stop focusing on the little things when she had one big thing—finishing her first draft—to accomplish. She had three weeks left in our time together, and I reminded that she was in good company. 

Ernest Hemingway lost most of his earliest writings in a trunk his wife forgot on the train and was forced to start from scratch. He finished The Sun Also Rises, a new novel that immediately launched him to international acclaim, in about six weeks.

Similarly, Jack Kerouac is said to have written On the Road in a drug-induced state over the course of a long weekend.

Genius does not always come in even doses. It happens in fits and starts, random bouts of madness that are hard to capture and even harder to plan for. But when they come, you should harness them and ride that storm for all it’s worth.

My client took the bait and—you guessed it—she spent the next three weeks finishing her book. Forty thousand words in less than twenty days. This was a person who had struggled up to this point to get a few hundred words written in a week. Something, however, just clicked for her, a switch was flicked, and a deluge of unwritten words came pouring forth.

I was, of course, impressed but, again, not all that surprised. 

The Power of the 11th Hour

Authors thrive at the eleventh hour. Maybe it’s our proclivity to procrastination and ADHD-type behavior. Maybe it’s the creativity that often thrives in a certain kind of chaos, the controlled kind that evokes our best work. I’m not sure. What I know is that this works.

Over and over again, when you put human beings in a state of fight-or-flight, they will, more often than not, find a way to survive. To fight, to flourish, to live on to produce more work.

I’m not saying this is always good. A state of prolonged stress can wreak havoc on a person’s nervous system. But in the right batches, at the right time, a creative sprint can work wonders. As my friend Chris Ducker, a business coach and author himself, likes to say, “Hustle is a season, not a lifestyle.”

The term you sometimes hear bandied about in regards to this sort of behavior is a “forcing function.” This concept, sometimes used in engineering and design, refers to any set of circumstances that induces a desired behavior. In short, it’s any constraint that forces a particular function. You’re putting yourself in a position where you either have to “do or die.” And if we know anything about human beings, it’s that they prefer doing over dying (which is not a bad thing at all).

There’s a lot to be said for habits, of course. For sitting down every day and writing a few hundred words. For going to the gym multiple times a week. Brushing your teeth, going for a walk, doing meditation, and so on. But we should not neglect this discipline of waiting until the last minute, putting yourself into a state where “flow” is a necessity, and see what happens.

Which is why after not writing my own next book for seven years, I told a speaking client that, yes, I would, indeed, have a new book to share at their upcoming conference in October.

What I didn’t say is that I hadn’t written it yet. But, as George Harrison articulated in the “Get Back” recordings about the chaos of their thirty-day project to produce a new album, on demand, this is pretty much how I always do it.¹

Creating Your Own Forcing Functions

So, if you have a project you’ve been struggling to get across the finish line—something you believe in but it keeps tugging at you from different directions—consider the benefit of a forcing function.

Give yourself an impossible deadline and enough space to work on it, and see where you end up. The worst that will happen? You will likely accomplish more than you thought was possible in a surprising amount of time.

You might need some help and encouragement from friends or peers, as is often the case, and you probably need a consequence if it doesn’t get done. A deadline, after all, is only powerful when there are very real and legitimate stakes involved.

As a marketing professional once told me, “Something bad needs to happen on the next day, or people won’t take a deadline seriously.”

That’s true, whether you’re selling an online course, producing a record, or trying to finish your next book. You can call it rapid prototyping, a forcing function, or just being an artist.

Whatever you do, don’t underestimate the power of the eleventh hour. It is, indeed, when many of us do our best work.

---

Need Help Finishing a Book?

On that note, I want to let you know about two writing groups I’m running this fall. They have only five people per group. The goal is to finish the first (or second) draft of a manuscript you’re working on. The group lasts ninety days.

Here’s how it works:

• You start with the Big Idea and Structure classes (these are included for free, which you must take ahead of time).

• Start writing your heart out.

• Check in with the group via email to post your progress and share your manuscript.

• We meet monthly for two hours via Zoom, and I give each author live feedback and coaching on their writing, and you can ask any questions during that time. These sessions are recorded, but it’s recommended that you make most, if not all, of them.

• You can email me and the others in the group with questions or feedback at any time.

• At the ninety-day mark, we celebrate, and I make recommendations on your next step (revise, hire an editor, keep writing, etc.).

See below for more details on each group.

---

Writing Circle 101 (August-October 2024)

This group is for manuscripts in progress that need help getting across the finish line.

Price: $500 one-time payment or three monthly payments of $200

Meeting times: Aug. 8, Sep. 12, Oct. 10 at 1–3 p.m. CT

Prerequisites: You must take both my Big Idea and Structure Classes ahead of time (included with the price of admission to this group_

Signup deadline: Aug. 1, 2024 at 11:59 p.m CT (only two spots remaining!)

---

Writing Circle 102 (September-November 2024) 

This group is for first-time authors and brand-new manuscripts.

Price: $500 one-time payment or three monthly payments of $200

Meeting times: Sep. 11, Oct. 9, Nov. 13 at 3–5 p.m. CT

Signup deadline: Sep. 4, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. CT (five spots remaining!)

Note: These groups are first come, first served. If you do not qualify for the group, I will either refund you and/or recommend another writing program. To get started, sign up at the group link above, and my team and I will be in touch with next steps. 

---

P.S. Don’t forget about this week’s upcoming “Big Idea” class. Today is the deadline to sign up.

If you join one of the above groups, you get this and next month’s structure class for free. Or you can bundle them together for a discount. 

See all those details (including early bird discount codes) here:

Upcoming Offerings for Writers

---

P.P.S. If you are still looking for more intensive help with finishing a manuscript, I have one open one-on-one coaching slot available. These are three-month minimum commitments, include two hours of live coaching per month with me, and are a flat $500 per month. Email me if interested. 

1. Harrison actually said something like, “This is pretty much how it always was,” referring to the chaotic, unplanned nature in which they tried to produce an album. Get Back, of course, ended in “failure,” but that’s a little too simplistic. If you watch those old recordings, you see genius at work, under pressure, and what emerges. There is one scene, in particular, where Paul writes a hit song in less than five minutes. Of course, the Beatles would go on to scrap the project, return to the studio with their longtime producer George Martin, and make Abbey Road. Then they would break up, reassemble the pieces from the failed recording sessions with Phil Spector’s help, and release Let It Be. Nothing is lost or wasted.