For me, DONE falls in that same mythical bucket as leprechauns, magic weight-loss sprinkles, and completely sane authors. Many of us can spend an eternity reworking the same story/scene/word and still never perfect it.

However, I try to keep levels of “done-ness” in mind to prevent an endless cycle of rewriting.

• RARE: Cut this manuscript open and it’s bleeding. Characters are convoluted, plot twists are more of plot knots, et cetera. But the juicy story and arcs are in there. This level is to be consumed only by yourself.

• MEDIUM RARE: This manuscript has been back on the fire. It’s had a solid pass through or two. At this level, typos may be rampant and the middle might still be raw – but you’ve fixed it the best you can. Time to serve to your most trusted Beta readers (Hope you’re hungry, Muses).

• MEDIUM: The first Beta reads have cooked this puppy more. In this level, the arcs are all in place and the major plot points are clear. The manuscript starts to sizzle with layers of detail. Feel free to plate for a wider audience of readers, though they’ll need to digest with a grain of salt.

• MEDIUM WELL: Another flare of tweaking from the last round of critique means the subplots are rounded out and character’s voices are distinct and consistent. The word choices are spot on. Folks, it’s ready to offer up at conferences/show agents.

• WELL DONE: The outside and inside are crisp. All but the most hidden typos are gone. The biggest changes are flipping between wobble and teeter on page 127, and then back again. This manuscript is solid. It’s not perfect, but ready for the masses. Bon appetite.

Hmmm…funny, I’m starving. All this blogging makes a guy hungry. Time to dot my Ribeye, cross my T-bones, and finish up this manuscript. And when I'm done, I'm going to get myself a big ole’ Porterhouse.

Can you pass those magic weight-loss sprinkles?

This week, we’ve been discussing how to know when you are finished with your manuscript.

I’m with Katy. I never thought I’d have an answer for this question. Maybe it comes from being a perfectionist. From the fear of knowing that I will continue to improve as long as I continue to write, so how can there be an end? Impossible, right?

Well, not necessarily.

As Donna mentioned in her post, there comes a point of diminishing returns. You change a sentence and then you change your mind. It was better the way it was. You put it back.

You can read and work something so much that it starts to blur before your eyes.

Try this: say the word “bagel” one hundred times. Go on. I’ll wait.

I guarantee that at about the 50^th bagel, the very meaning of “bagel” will start to slip away, perhaps turning toward the peculiar nature of what you are doing (who says bagel 100 times?) or perhaps to appreciating the terrific vocal acrobatics of pushing out the “bay” and pulling in the “gull.”

Revising a novel is sort of like this. You hit a wall and the tight hold you have on the story starts to loosen. You start to lose perspective. You nitpick. You worry about things you never would have, if you weren’t burned out. When you are at this stage, it’s time to call in reinforcements, if you haven’t already. Beta-readers. Critique groups. Agents. Editors. They will remind you of what bagel means. How to say it and spell it. They’ll keep you on track, and give you a boost. Inevitably, however, you return to the point where you have done everything in your power to improve your story.

If you are a pre-published writer, this is how you know you are done. You no longer know what bagel means. If you are working with an agent or an editor, “done” usually means “it’s deadline day.”

Now for another angle on this same subject. You can be “done” with a manuscript without it being anywhere near done. Let me explain.

The first manuscript I wrote, I worked on steadily for five years. By that last year, the sight of it made me physically nauseous. I knew it wasn’t submission-quality work. I couldn’t get it there. There were just too many things to fix, and more importantly, I needed a change. So… it was an unfortunate “The End.”

The second manuscript I wrote, I knew I was “done” because I received feedback from an agent that gave me an epiphany of sorts—the subject for another post, for sure. That feedback told me, very clearly, that I was heading in the wrong direction. That was a very sad The End. I loved that manuscript. My writing was in a groove. The characters were complicated and flawed and faced terrific challenges. But… it wasn’t the right story to bring to market. Quite honestly, I had to walk away from it but I grieved.

My point is this: sometimes you are done well before the writing is polished, the story water tight. Sometimes you can call a work done before a beta reader or agent ever sees it. I know. It’s scary. But I think this one of the marks of a professional writer. Know when it’s time to walk away. You work in words. You can generate more of them. Better words. So don’t coddle them. Be fearless. Demand that they are the best words you’ve got. Done doesn’t always mean typing The End.

With my third manuscript, UNDER THE NEVER SKY, I had deadlines to tell me I was done. Fortunately, those deadlines coincided nicely with the feeling of being done.

But really, guys, as a writer there really is no The End. We move to the next WIP, the next draft, the next deadline. We improve. We stumble. We get up and go again. Which reminds me of the work I should be getting to right about now.

So for now--for this post--I think I will type:

THE END

Oh! Be sure to come by tomorrow to say hi to our newest Muse, Bret Ballou!

When I was a child, my family drove across country three times.  Over three summers, we loaded up the Ford station wagon and made a vacation of it, complete with my grandmother in a wheelchair, my two siblings and an Old English Sheepdog named J. Edgar.  There were a lot of “Are we there yets?” from the fold up seats in the rear of the car (the dog and the grandmother got the backseat).   Each morning that we left a city behind, I remember feeling like we’d never get to the next stop.  After the first few hours of driving, the roads invariably got narrower and more desolate, and it seemed like we were getting further away, not closer to a destination.  But then we’d turn a corner and see a sign for the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore and we’d know that we were getting close to something amazing.  I’d suck up a little more patience and eventually I was always rewarded.

Those trips were long and painful, but they created some of the best and most vivid memories from my childhood.  My family and I experienced this country together.  We saw Buffalo Bill Cody's rodeo in Jackson Hole, explored the pueblos of Mesa Verde, ventured into the petrified forest, felt tiny under giant Sequoias, rode roller coasters that went upside down, and flagged down a wild black bear in Yellowstone (From a car! We weren’t completely insane, although these trips might suggest otherwise). 

Writing is a bit like traveling cross country for me.  It is a tedious journey punctuated by amazing moments and revelations. Every time I get somewhere good, I find myself setting off again in a new direction, down long and winding roads. Only the signs are harder to spot.  At many points along the way I ask myself if I’m done yet, and I always want to believe that I am.  Once you’ve reached that hotel in the middle of Texas with the indoor waterslide, it’s hard to imagine why you’d want to venture back out again.  It’s easy to lose perspective.

I am a writer that tends to love what I’ve written most recently the most.  While I’m writing my crappy first drafts, I’m falling in love with my characters, being dazzled by ideas that spring from nowhere and blown away by plot twists that even I did not see coming.  Can you see the danger here?  

When I’m “finished” I have a story only an author (and perhaps said author’s mother) could love.  But I’m tempted to hit SEND anyway.   But then I remember that I can’t get from D.C. to San Francisco in one leg.  Even if I could do it by switching off with another driver, I wouldn’t want to.  Because the joy of the trip comes from the stops along the way, the secret places that your characters don’t reveal until draft three or twenty.  So for those of you who are on that long drive, here are some signs to remind you that you are not quite done yet.

Rough Road

There’s a reason they call the first draft a “rough” draft.  It’s full of plot holes and lacking any smooth surfaces.  After the months if not years it took to finally get to the place where you can type “the end,” you are going to feel like you’ve made it.  It can be better.  A lot better.  DO NOT SEND.  Not even to your mother.  

Detour

 

Somewhere halfway through a read-through of the manuscript you realize your book may have started out being about X, but it’s really about Y.  No problem!  Y is so much more exciting and adds layers to the story.  DO NOT SEND.  Go back to the beginning and make sure the entire story is consistent with your your new theme/plot/character arc.  A lot of writers hit send too soon because they don’t realize that changing one thing in chapter seventeen means smoothing out all the chapters before and after to build to and build from the new moment.  Make sure your book reads like one smooth story and is not a series of many detours taken through multiple revisions. 

No Outlet

You probably have a few dead ends- plot arcs or characters that go nowhere and serve no purpose.  Purge these from your manuscript. Now look again.  Could the scene be better if it were in a different location?  If the characters discovered the secret a different way?  Now is the time to second guess your decisions.  BEFORE you hit send. 

Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear

Once you have the plot and scenes in place, take some time to dig deeper, to infuse your scenes and characters with even more conflict and emotion.  When you think it’s just about there, take one more look. One of the most critical drafts for me is the internal reaction, tension building draft.  One of my last drafts of the manuscript involves adding at least one sentence of emotional reaction to every page.   This draft always ups the tension and makes me love the main character more.  Go ahead lay your characters bare.  It’s hard, painful work, but your characters deserve it.  Your readers deserve it.

Yield

You've finally sent your manuscript to beta readers, critique partners, agents, and friends.  Now take a breath and listen to constructive feedback.  At first it’s hard to hear that your manuscript needs work.  But give yourself time to take it all in.  There’s almost always something you can use.  If you get the same feedback from more than one person pay special attention to it.  The way I look at edits is this: someone can suggest an idea, but I am the only one who gets to decide how to implement it in my manuscript.  Whatever I write will still be mine, and since I tend to love what I’ve written most recently the best, chances are, I will love the result.

Good luck on your journey to finished manuscript, and don't forget to enjoy the stops along the way!

“You know, bookstores don’t like it when you go in and start using Wite-Out.”

I got that response from an industry professional when I said I didn’t know if I could ever be “done” with a book.  And I’m sure it’s true.  Even if I’m the author, my local indie will not take kindly to me defacing their merchandize.  Not only that, but I could never get to all copies of my book before they got into the hands of unknown readers.

GIRL IN A DIAMOND COLLAR is about to come back to me from the copyeditor.  I have changes already in mind that need to be made.  Small things.  But they’re there nonetheless.  Brought up by the research I’m doing for Book 2.

So my fear is, what happens next?  What if I got my facts wrong?  What if I have a dream that Kitty really needs to say this one thing?  What if I have a brainstorm in the car for the most brilliant kiss in the history of YA and it will only work with these characters?  Yes, at that point, I can change it (if I want to pay from my own pocket for the changes).  But what about after the next step?  What about next year when I give a reading and realize, as the words come to my lips, that they really would have sounded better a different way?

How do I know when I’m done?

I don’t.

Once the book is bound and shipped, there will be nothing I can do to change it.

I won’t know that I’m done, but I will have to be.

Because of who I am and how I operate, this thought fills me with fear.  I am a bit of a control freak and more than a bit of a perfectionist.  I rewrite my e-mails. I take a breath and cross my fingers before I hit send.  Even when I’m writing to my sister.  I’m compulsive. 

I will probably never read my book after it’s printed.  I’ll flip through it, of course.  Feel the thrill of my words there on the page.  I’m very excited to do public readings – I love reading aloud.  But I won’t sit down and read it cover to cover.  That sounds painful.  (For me!  I hope you all read it.  It won't be painful for you!)

I will stop looking for facts that apply to the characters, situations and settings of the book. I will not (note to self: I will not) revisit locations for the express purpose of finding details I missed or descriptions I got wrong.  I will not mull over passages after a reading to figure out how they could have been written better. 

So this is how I know I’m done.  I feel like I did justice to the characters.  I have imagined the settings in my mind and illustrated them to the best of my ability with my words.  And perhaps not every phrase in the book sings, but there are a few – a choice few – of which I am inordinately proud.  Phrases that, were they in someone else’s book, I would read and say, “oh, I wish I had written that.” 

I also trust my editor completely.  Because of her, I trust the copyeditor.  If they say the book is ready, I will believe them.  I will take a breath, cross my fingers and let go.

And then I will be done.

This seemed like a great blog topic when we were brainstorming. Really it did. But now that it's on my screen, and the little blue cursor thingy is blinking away at me, I've come to a sad realization...

I DON'T KNOW!

I tend to be a writer that jumps too soon. I think I'm done before I should be. I pull the half-baked cake out of the oven when, if I'd only given it a little more time to bake, it could have been perfect. With my current WIP, I resisted that urge. The result? I felt I could have worked on it for six more months! Easily. The more I worked on it, the more I could see things that might make it better. And yet, this same manuscript attracted the attention of my wonderful new agent in only a few days.

So, where's the happy medium? The sweet spot? The little bell in your head that goes off with a DING to say the cake is done?

I DON'T KNOW!

There are some tiny clues that kinda sorta help me:

You might be ready to hit send if...you are repeatedly editing things that were better before you changed them.

You might be ready to hit send if... all your beta readers are saying, "SEND IT, FOR GOD'S SAKE, BEFORE WE SEND IT FOR YOU!"

You might be ready to hit send if...the thought of working on your manuscript makes you want to throw up a little bit.

You might be ready to hit send if...you still smile with satisfaction when you read the final scene.

You might be ready to hit send if...your characters have stopped talking to you.

You might be ready to hit send if...it still sounds ready when you read it aloud.

The Muses are quick to remind me that even when you're finished, you're really not. An agent will have edits, and back you will go to the "completed" manuscript. An editor will have changes, and back you will go to the "completed manuscript." A copy editor will have changes, and back you will go to the "completed" manuscript. You will be working on this "completed manuscript" for a long time to come. So hitting send, doesn't mean it has to be perfect, but it does have to be ready for someone to see the potential.

So how do you know when it's done?