Monday, March 16: The Scribbler
DEATH-LINE
by James Lincoln Warren
There is nothing in the world that inspires an author as powerfully as a deadline, except for a paycheck. Although CB has a deadline for each of the contributors, I don’t usually find it all that particularly hard to meet since all it really requires is a relatively short rant.
Fiction is something else. Fiction is craft. I get paid for fiction.
Anyway, I have to get a story in the mail by Monday (when you will be reading this — I am composing this on Saturday) for it to be considered for the next MWA anthology, and I still have over a thousand words to write. Yes, it’s my own damn fault for being lazy and putting it off, but now I’m in the zone and I have to move with alacrity or forget about my submission altogether. Leigh and Deborah have already submitted their offerings, Deborah apparently laboring until 4 a.m. the other day to bang hers into shape in time. Mine is going to have to go off complete with warts, I’m afraid.
So where did the term “deadline” come from?
The OED is for once isn’t particularly helpful in this regard, other than identifying it (somewhat predictably) as an American newspaper term:
dead-line
1. A line that does not move or run.
1860 Chamber’s Encycl., Barbel, Angling .. with a dead~line, called a ledger. 1892 Pall Mall G. 5 Aug. 3/1 The scene is worked with miniature pulleys, ‘working lines’, and ‘dead lines’.
2. a. Mil. A line drawn around a military prison, beyond which a prisoner is liable to be shot down. orig. U.S.
1864 in Congress. Rec. 12 Jan. (1876) 384/1 The ‘dead line’, beyond which the prisoners are not allowed to pass. 1868 B. J. LOSSING Hist. Civ. War U.S. III. 600 Seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the ‘dead-line’, over which no man could pass and live. 1888 Contemp. Review Mar. 449 Should he some day escape alive across the dead-line of Winchesters, he will be hunted with bloodhounds. 1889 BRUCE Plant. Negro 45 The instant he sought .. to cross the social dead-line.
b. Printing. A guide-line marked on the bed of a printing-press.
1917 F. S. HENRY Printing for School & Shop xi. 183 If the chase is one that just fits the bed of the press, make certain that the type does not come outside of the dead-line on the press.
c. = TIME-LIMIT; esp. a time by which material has to be ready for inclusion in a particular issue of a publication. orig. U.S.
1920 Chicago Herald & Examiner 2 Jan. 10/4 Corinne Griffith .. is working on ‘Deadline at Eleven’, the newspaper play. 1929 Publishers’ Weekly 27 July 349 Deadline for Poetry’s $250 prize poem contest is September 1. 1948 Daily Tel. 31 May 6/5 The Security Council will not meet again until Wednesday, about 20 hours after the dead-line. 1958 Woman’s Jrnl. Feb. 96/1 We wait till midnight. .. That’s the deadline.
The first three definitions were included as an extra bonus for the Gentle Reader, but also to take up some column inches. (I told you I was lazy.)
So it’s the Long Good-bye, the Big Sleep, the Undiscovered Country, Gone But Not Forgotten, Returned To The Dust From Whence it Came, Nothing But A Memory, Aloha, Adios, Adieu, Meeting Its Maker, Buying The Farm, Snuffing It, Passing Through Those Pearly Gates, Crossing The Bar, oh hell, you get the idea, for my story if I don’t get crackin’.
So, as one of my favorite 80s cult bands, The Tubes, once reckoned it, “Talk to ya later.”
I had the privilege of reading four MWA entries for the anthology, two complete and two in draft form. Not one’s a dog; they’re all different and they’re all good. I don’t envy the judges, except it must be easier to have a glut of the good rather than the bad.
While James is writing and– à propos of nothing except we’re talking about tubes– here’s an entertaining video viewed more than 3-1/2 millions times, set to a speech by ex-Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens explaining the internet:
And a special Tubes-tubes version for when James rejoins us:
Wow. Today’s Scribbler took me down several different memory lanes (memory alleys?)
One of the few Scholastic Books that I still own, from those I bought in grades 3-5, is Eugenia Miller’s Deadline at Spook Cabin. I still remember some of the details of the book. It was where I first learned of the five Ws of a cub reporter (what, who, where, why, when).
The other alley you took me down was The Tubes. Great stuff, from the Al Kooper produced first album, on through the magnificent Todd Rundgren produced “Remote Control.” I haven’t thought about (or listened to) them in twenty-five years or more.
I was sympathizing with you, JLW, until I remembered a conversation with the late Joe Hensley. He told me of a phone conversation the previous night with another writer. I believe it was John Jakes but won’t swear to that. After talking a while, Joe was informed his friend had to get busy as he had a manuscript that must be ready for a publisher in the morning. Joe asked how many words remained to be written and was told 25,000. Joe managed to say goodbye, but was speechless other than that.
Can’t help but ask James, have you ever heard the radio quiz show Says You? (“A simple game with words played by two teams, the first of which sits stereo right…”)
I listen to it on the web, I think you’d love it!
Oh, and best with the story!