This month’s question is: When do you know your story is ready?
This is a difficult one to answer and it depends on
so many factors such as world building, length, genre and the dreaded
perfectionism. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that my first novel took
three years and eleven drafts before I even
considered it ready to publish. I was new to self-publishing and just
couldn’t let go of the fear that there was a massive plot hole or the
story was boring. I pored over every draft to make sure the world
building made sense and because I know I tend to be
verbose, I tried to tighten the narrative as much as I could to keep
word count down. With each of the initial drafts, I saw a vast improvement in the quality
of my story, which was partially why it took so long for me to come to a
decision that it was ready to be published. Eventually, the later drafts only had minor improvements and any more tweaks were just me moving parts around to stall the inevitable. That's when I knew it was ready.
That's good you can recognize that point when it's really done and stop messing with it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. It takes me a long time and lots of revisions to be satisfied with my work too.
ReplyDeleteWhen each draft you look at improves, it's worth all that work, right?
Sheesh! Hard question. Nice answer though. But I still think you worry too much. Your writing is great.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is the problem with self publishing - there's no one to tell you it's ready, or to stop fiddling with the damned thing! :-) Me, I fiddle and fiddle and then just send it off. They buy it or they don't. If they don't, I look at it again, then send it elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, you've learned by now, enough for your next opus.
That's cool! I guess when you just can't see what else needs to be done and you're just moving things around is a good sign you're ready to publish.
ReplyDeleteYes, when you are just changing a word here or there because you like the sound better, it's time to get to steppin', eh?
ReplyDelete