How I Write: Knowing When You’re Done

This is the ninth installment in the “HOW I WRITE” series I’m participating in every Wednesday with several writers, where we all discuss how we approach writing a book. Every writer has a different process and this project gives us a chance to share and compare ours. Click on the “How I Write” image to find a list of the participating writers and links to their blogs.

Last week we talked about Revision – First Pass, Resources and Critique Groups. This week’s topic is Knowing When You’re Done.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a magical formula that determines the exact number of revisions I need to do before my book is “done”, and ready to submit. I put “done” in parenthesis because there are so many different ways you can tell a story,  many different words you could have used, many additional scenes you could have added. You could easily never be done editing a book, to tell the truth. But working on the same book forever just isn’t a good position to put yourself in.

So how do you know when you’re done working on a book?

For myself, I have just one rule. One test that is simple to apply but challenging to pass. And it’s this:

When I can read every single sentence in my manuscript with confidence, it’s done.

I mean, really read every sentence. Without rolling my eyes. Without wanting to skip over it. Without stumbling over the words. Without being bored. I believe that if I’m rolling my eyes, skipping over sentences, stumbling  or feel bored with anything I wrote, then chances are high so will others who read it, and therefore it needs to be fixed.

Feedback from my critique partners and beta readers count quite a bit here too, but although they can tell me how well they think I’ve done, they can’t really tell me whether or not I’m actually DONE.  Only I can tell that.

**thinks for a moment** And my editor.

Check out other participating blogs to learn what they think of this topic. Come back next week for my recommended Books on the Craft.