On Deadline. Still.

A quick bit of background: before joining AmeriCorps*VISTA, I was a journalist. You know... the we-have-ink-in-our-veins type. Scouring around city hall for stories. Thriving on the breaking news and the tight deadlines.

Maybe this is why when my executive director put a project on my desk this morning, a project we really could have used yesterday, I wasn't really phased by the tight turnaround time. We needed to get a specific set of information to a potential donor in a format that information wasn't currently in yet.

In a few hours, we should have a customized report for this potential donor. And this text is such that we should be able to use it again as the start for a possible new brochure.

Building off things that are already written is going to be key to this, I can tell. It's not just ripping-off text that's already done, but rephrasing general ideas to fit the current project. It actually makes the writing easier. Instead of reinventing every scrap of a document every time, using past writings gives you something to build on. And of course, anything written can always be improved on to bring more clarity to what you mean.

The grant writing I'm going to be doing on a regular basis is all based on deadlines, too. The deadlines may be a couple weeks away, but a proposal submitted late is a proposal that won't be considered.