Deadlines and Other Powerful Words
Opportunity Writ Large…Again
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, multi award-winning author of the
HowToDoItFrugally Series of Books for Writers
Deadlines.
I’m not going to give you advice on meeting deadline because I’m in the middle of a booklet for my HowToDoItFrugally Series when I should be nearing the end. I’ve always believed in leaving early for social occasions, and to catch planes. And I’ve never had trouble with deadlines before. Now—suddenly—I’m feeling…inadequate and a little fearful of mentioning the word.
So here I am facing my November deadline for Writers on the Move. I just, well…sorta stole a little segment from the booklet I’m writing to share with subscribers and visitors to Karen Cioffi’s blog as well as her talented slate of regular contributors.
It’s the story of how I came to write a booklet I’m working on. It’s little about deadlines, too, I guess. You’ll have to read between the lines.
Anthropologists tell us we humans have been storytellers since we first gathered around fires for warmth and companionship, long before we entertained the idea of writing. Stories were our entertainment. It’s also how we learned the easy way—from others’ experiences—rather than from our own shortcomings, our own seemingly insurmountable challenges, and our own oopsies. Having said that, when we do learn the hard way, sharing helps us see the value of applying humor to ourselves.
In important moments of working with my first editor, I found myself using the words saying or adage and immediately felt ill-at-ease about my vocabulary skills. I eventually acquired the more acceptable all-purpose word, apothegm when one was suggested in an editing class I was teaching and thereby expected to know about such things. It is somehow both more specific and more adaptable than sayings…and, yes, less humiliating. But it still didn’t let me bore down on the specifics I needed to communicated with editors--nor for my classes and the new book I was writing to use as a text in a class on marketing books. There were available books and texts galore out there but nothing that included public relations for authors, or promotional ideas or getting media attention for books.
In the meantime, apothegms were leading me to all kinds of synonyms with slightly different meanings. They included more precise as well as well as subliminal interpretations for each:
§ mottoes and catchphrases might suggest an unwanted commercialism.
§ proverbs imply a biblical passage; words of wisdom also connote religiosity or a philosophy that might or might not be appropriate for the title in consideration.
§ platitude smacks of cliché, something most of us work mightily to avoid.
§ maxims tend to be about rules of conduct. If an editor suggests you use them to introduce chapters and your book isn’t a “Miss Manners” book, explore the kind of apothegms they had in mind before spending good writing time researching quotations that probably won’t suit the tone of your book.
§ axiom, dictum, adage, and even the word sayings, itself!
Soon I realized that very few authors use these, ahem!…sayings to make a book work as a full book and that maybe if I wrote a short book of vocabulary words related to the needs of authors, the content could help them apply this technique to their books. Different words might work differently for them, but each could be an opportunity for one of my fellows out there.
I had found a way to make the interior design that would make my book more interesting than a theme paper. It wasn’t a new idea, by any means. But it had become an opportunity that kept growing.
I had to self-publish because I was on deadline for my first class that fall. I started introducing each chapter with an apothegm or one of its semi-synonyms, depending on the topic of the chapter. One opportunity kept leading to others. Thinking of apothegms as opportunity, it’s a wonder they haven’t become an essential technique combined with the merest suggestion of interior design in seminars and presentations at writing conferences! (If you are interested in reading Terry’s article, leave a comment at the end of this article and Terry, Karen, or I will send you the permalink a to make it easier for you to access!)
But back to my story. This one “accidental” piece of knowledge worked in favor of my flagship book, my UCLA Writers’ Department students, and is still making itself useful for me nearly three decades later. If you’re familiar with my how-to books for writers, you’ve probably already run across the motto or tagline I came up with early in the pursuit of clarity to replace my old sayings habit:
“Careers that are not fed die as readily
as any living organism given no sustenance."
~ CHJ
I still try to find somewhere to slip that one into all my how-to books for writers and promotional material. But it’s limited. It only works when I want to convince authors that they’ll need a “to know more about a lot of things they never suspected they’d need or wanted desperately to avoid.” It’s also an example of how the work you put into apothegms for one book might be recycled to benefit many books—even many promotional projects like handouts.
And here’s the icing on the cake. This (unfinished!) book has lead to another promotion I haven’t tried before. WinningWriters.com will be giving it as a gift to all those who enter their 2025 #NorthStreetBookPrize contest. If I’m lucky the contest entrants will tell others about it. Opportunity meeting opportunity. Speaking of opportunity! I mustn’t forget to add WinningWriters’ clever pre-promotional idea to the next edition of my The Frugal Book Promoter. That would be its fourth edition. It seems a single word has more power than even I who love words could have imagined.
PS: Once finished, this booklet full of writer-related words, each a powerful opportunity, will be available from Modern History Press early in 2026.
MORE ABOUT TODAY’S WRITERS’-ON-THE-MOVE BLOG CONTRIBUTOR
Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts. Carolyn writes nonfiction for writers, poetry, and fiction and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague. J. She is especially thankful to Karen Cioffi for letting her share stories like this with her #WritersontheMove audience.
