Creative people will understand the following dream scenario: you have completed a project of some kind (whether it be the written word or a blockbuster movie, the concept remains the same.) In the dream, you find out in the worst possible way that you have messed something up. The nightmare is compounded when you find out that this one mistake will cost you everything.
I used to have this dream all the time when I worked at the paper in Rome. I contributed a good chunk of copy every day for a while there, and then spent a lot of my time after I got off the grind of writing to work on video projects for a few years before the editor years began.
About once a month for some reason, I would have this horrible dream about a mistake being found after the paper had already been printed, and it was usually something horrible. You switch the name of a murder victim and the accused killer, for instance.
Without fail, I would wake up terrified and covered in sweat. Then wildly you would scramble toward whatever computer was available, hoping beyond hope the copy wasn’t already on the page and you could look it over one final time to assuage your unjustified fears.
Every once in a while I woke up with enough time to check, but mostly it was already gone and you’d either wake up right or write a correction the next morning.
Fortunately, I rarely ever wrote a correction.
Fear is extremely motivating toward writing a story right the first time. Thankfully, I no longer work in print.
Deadline dreams are a thing of the past.
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