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I'm "almost done" with the editing of the submission draft of A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL, my current work-in-progress. Not that I'm done with the editing entirely, mind you. Sheila, my editor, will now read it and have her own comments and suggestions, and the manuscript will go through another intense pass, and then there's the copy-edit to look forward to...
But the truth is, I could probably revise the manuscript forever...
A brief anecdote: way back when, I was a Fine Arts student in college. I had a fabulous painting instructor at the time: Bob Fabe, a local artist. One day, I was laboring over a tempera painting I'd been working on for a few weeks. I could feel Bob standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. He watched for a time as I was painting, making tiny little changes. Suddenly, as I reached for another brush, he rapped me across the back of the head with his open hand. "Ow!" I said, annoyed, looking back at him. "What the hell was that for?"
He was grinning at me. "You're done," he said. "You're just moving paint around now without accomplishing anything. Every artist need to have someone standing behind them with a baseball bat to hit them over the head when they're done, or they keep working and working until they ruin it. You're done."
As it turned out, in later years I became much more interested in writing fiction than creating fine art, but I still think of that incident -- because I know that what Bob said is true for me and writing. I can look at a paragraph I've labored over for half an hour and still make some change. I can go over a scene ten times, read it the next day and decide that it might be better if I tried this. I'll read work I've published and want to have it back so I can change this phrase or that piece of dialogue. In some sense, I'm never done. If I let myself, I could revise endlessly. I would always make some change in what I've written.
But at some point, you have to stop and send the damn thing out... or you end up never being published. I'm just not sure where that point should be. For me, there's rarely a real 'baseball bat' moment, no time when I rise up in delight and proclaim "Aha! It's finished!" There's mostly a sense of being 'exhausted'...
So how is it with you? Do you have the "Aha!" moments? Does the Muse use a metaphorical baseball bat on your head? How do you know when you're 'done'?
But the truth is, I could probably revise the manuscript forever...
A brief anecdote: way back when, I was a Fine Arts student in college. I had a fabulous painting instructor at the time: Bob Fabe, a local artist. One day, I was laboring over a tempera painting I'd been working on for a few weeks. I could feel Bob standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. He watched for a time as I was painting, making tiny little changes. Suddenly, as I reached for another brush, he rapped me across the back of the head with his open hand. "Ow!" I said, annoyed, looking back at him. "What the hell was that for?"
He was grinning at me. "You're done," he said. "You're just moving paint around now without accomplishing anything. Every artist need to have someone standing behind them with a baseball bat to hit them over the head when they're done, or they keep working and working until they ruin it. You're done."
As it turned out, in later years I became much more interested in writing fiction than creating fine art, but I still think of that incident -- because I know that what Bob said is true for me and writing. I can look at a paragraph I've labored over for half an hour and still make some change. I can go over a scene ten times, read it the next day and decide that it might be better if I tried this. I'll read work I've published and want to have it back so I can change this phrase or that piece of dialogue. In some sense, I'm never done. If I let myself, I could revise endlessly. I would always make some change in what I've written.
But at some point, you have to stop and send the damn thing out... or you end up never being published. I'm just not sure where that point should be. For me, there's rarely a real 'baseball bat' moment, no time when I rise up in delight and proclaim "Aha! It's finished!" There's mostly a sense of being 'exhausted'...
So how is it with you? Do you have the "Aha!" moments? Does the Muse use a metaphorical baseball bat on your head? How do you know when you're 'done'?