Letting Go

A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: When to Let Go: Recognize the Point of Diminishing Returns in Revision

This is a good topic in general, but it’s especially interesting to me right this minute because I’m currently doing tiny revision and polishing both for Hedesa and for The World of Tiers (not sure that’s its actual title) (Yes, I know Philip Jose Farmer wrote a series by this title; that’s one reason I wouldn’t mind coming up with something different.)

Anyway, as I write this post, I’m doing final-final revision for Hedesa and final primary revision for the other book that might be called World of Tiers, and both will soon be tossed out of the nest into the wide sky. As you know, the release date for the former is August 2 (sorry! I hate that it’s so late!), and I strongly suspect that the release date for the latter will be September 2, unless I decide to space out releases and make that October 2.

I still do plan to put serious work into a No Foreign Sky sequel this year, and who knows, if it goes fast enough, it might come out this year, but no guarantee. Also I should write the other half of Sekaran sometime soon-ish. But those are beside the point right now; what I’m thinking of is this when do you let go question. This always does make me think of authors I’ve talked to who have complete, polished books, plural, sitting on their hard drives, but they haven’t been able to bring themselves to either query or publish. One Great Truth of being a novelist is, you can’t succeed unless you eventually put your books out in the world where strangers can read them, so … how about it? When is a book ready? How can you tell?

Usually, I feel pretty darn confident about a book by the time it goes live. I’ll tell you why:

Because early readers are enthusiastic.

This, for me, is really important. If most early readers love it, then I quit worrying. So the question for me is:

Is it ready to send to early readers?

And the answer can go, let me see, three different ways:

A) No.

B) Nooooo, but I have gone blind and can’t see anything about it accurately anymore and please, early readers, point vigorously to stuff that isn’t working so I can re-calibrate my vision and finish the dratted thing. This was Hedesa, and sure enough, much vigorous pointing ensued. It was also Rihasi, and in that case I was wrong and every single early reader say, “Yay! It’s great! Tiny comments appended.” So when I say I’ve gone blind, I mean really, it can be very hard for me to tell how close to finished a novel is if I’ve been doing a great heaping gob of back-and-forth revision for two months, which was the case for both those titles.

C) Yes, it’s polished. It works. No doubt early readers will have comments, but it’s fine. This was Marag, and it’s also World of Tiers. Honestly, I was very startled at how polished it is. Yes, it needed a little bit of revision, but what it needs is clear — nothing like a seven-year break to re-calibrate vision — and it’s trivial revision.

So far, I’ve never thought a novel belonged to category (C) when in fact it was in category (B), and it would be nice if that never happens, but who knows.

MEANWHILE, how about the linked post? What does the author of this post suggest with regard to deciding whether you’ve hit the point at which the book is fine and you should stop fussing and send it out?

You have entered the trap of endless pointless revision when:

You’re changing words back to what they were two revisions agoYou feel intense anxiety about the manuscript but can’t pinpoint specific problemsSmall changes consume hours as you obsess over minute detailsYou can no longer tell if your changes are improving the work or merely making it differentEach revision session leaves you feeling more depleted rather than satisfied

I’ve never encountered the first item. I’m not sure I’ve encountered the second, because “intense” is a strong word. I don’t mind obsessing over minute details. BUT, I’m right there with the fourth point. You can no longer tell if your changes are improving the work. This is exactly what I mean by “going blind.” That’s what I think is, for me, a key realization that means –> Send this puppy to someone who can actually see it.

The alternative strategy is apparently –> Put this sucker away for seven years. I suppose five or three would probably do, but long enough that you’ve forgotten a lot about it and most especially have recovered your ability to see the story as it actually exists on the page.

The linked post offers solutions that don’t include either of the above strategies, including setting deadlines and resolving never to backtrack to an earlier stage of revision — I mean, once you’re doing proofreading, don’t backtrack to revision of character arcs. But this post also says: Solicit a final read-through from a fresh reader. That is identical to saying: Send the manuscript to someone who can see it.

Here’s the nearly-final word:

When good enough is truly good enoughThe primary structural issues have been addressedThe main character arcs are complete and coherentThe pacing feels appropriate for your genreYou’ve fixed the issues that you yourself identified as problemsThe writing is clean, clear, and free of major errors

If your manuscript meets these criteria, it’s likely ready for the next step, whether that’s querying agents, submitting to a publisher, or self-publishing.

I only disagree with one thing in the above list:

Your manuscript is NOT ready to self-publish when it is free of MAJOR errors. That is when it is ready to send to a PROOFREADER, who will help you clear out the MINOR errors, which are awful and it’s your job to get rid of as many as possible. I mean things like “was” when it should be the subjunctive “were” unless the character speaking would say “was,” and things like spotting that a comma should be a period because you changed your mind and used a “spoke” instad of “said” tag. Or one letter of a phrase not being italicized, that one sentence where there’s an ambiguous pronoun referent … you know, all the little things that most readers won’t see but some will notice and find jarring. Don’t hit publish until you’ve done your very best to clear out ALL of those minor errors.

And here’s the final word:

Trust that you’ve done the work. Trust that readers will connect with your story. And most importantly, trust that by letting go of this manuscript, you’re making space for the next one, which will benefit from everything you’ve learned in the process.

The greatest gift you can give your writing isn’t one more revision—it’s the chance to be read.

Well put! Good post. Click through if you’d like to read the whole thing.

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