Nobody Hands You a Deadline.

The Matt J Hanham Show · Sep 15, 2026 · 1m

I've written three versions of the same novel. The first draft went out in 2021. The second took four years. The third took less than twelve months. Same book, same bloke, and I was working on it the whole time.

So the difference wasn't effort. The difference was that in the last twelve months I kept putting myself on the hook.

This episode is about manufactured deadlines, external accountability, and why projects with nobody waiting on them quietly take years.

In this one:

Sending the first manuscript out in 2021, and what came back about how the story was written

Why the second version took…