When is Your Manuscript Finished?
It’s hard to know when you’ve finished a creative work.
How many times do you continue polishing, hoping to improve what went before? When do you ever finish?
Wanna know the hard truth?
Your Manuscript Will Never Be ‘Finished’.
For me, I normally do about five ‘Final Drafts’. It’s crazy! Each time, I save the next draft as ‘Draft_FINAL’ and it never is. There’s Draft_FINAL One’; ‘Draft_FINAL Two’ and so on. My personal favourite? ‘Draft FINAL_FINAL’.
Each time I review a draft, I find more errors, or more room for improvement. Each re-draft takes less time than the one before, but each re-draft is harder, more freaky, because each time I re-read it I realist that there’s still so much wrong.
I suppose for me, a piece is finished is when I CANNOT bear to read it again. It’s when I think “If I work on this story anymore I will go insane.”
That’s the time to take a deep breath, package the finely crafted work up and sit it on it for four to six weeks. Then check it one more time – just in case!
I dread the next part, the sending it out into the wide wide world. Because as soon as that happens, I start getting rejections. Rejections are almost inevitable. And oh, how they hurt.
Perfection isn’t Possible.
Your work will never be perfect, but at some point you HAVE to step away. Because only then can you get ready for your BOOK LAUNCH!
