What is this THING you speak of: Ready?If only

So WELCOME friends to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group first Wednesday meeting! You can find out all about IWSG here, and I encourage you to join if you have not already. Tons of great friends, support and resources. Plus the knowledge we are not on this journey alone.





If only it were this easy...

As a format, the group has been throwing out a question each month. October’s question is this:



When do you know your story is ready?



And the truth is, this is the crux of my problem. I have published 6 books and a short story. All published with DEADLINES. Because you see… I will keep tinkering and thinking “just this one more thing” forever unless somebody kicks me in the back side and says TIME!



Now three of my books (and the short) I had external deadlines imposed--an editor waiting for the book and a date it had to be there by. And that worked out pretty well… well the 2nd book was rough, as they edits they asked for were pretty large. But mostly that all worked out. I had to say “good enough” and because they were going to a professional editor, I could trust somebody else would call me out if they were not ready.



The flu trilogy was different. That was me trying to publish serially and because the first part WAS GOOD I dived, but then I didn’t want to leave people hanging too long waiting for the rest… sort of a forced speed of it that only allowed so many iterations.



Yet here I sit with probably 12 completed books, at least 5 of them pretty near ready, and I keep tinkering… I am calling one DONE. Maybe I will start with that.



Now go visit some people who have their act together, because clearly you aren’t going to learn anything useful here… erm…