Emma asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

How do you decide a draft is good enough to become the final one, the one that will become the book? What criteria, conscious or subconscious, do you wield?

Lois McMaster Bujold
Well, as I've said elsewhere, I do rolling revisions now I'm working paperless, so there is no real boundary between drafts. (This does tend to result in more editing and micro-editing of the earliest parts than the latest.) Finding "the end" is done as much by feel as anything; I know it when I see it. I also collect an array of test reads, aka beta reads, both during and at the end, which gives me a mirror in which to see the work when my own eyes don't focus anymore.

The final editing pass is always a very nervous proposition. I've described late edits and changes as like trying to swap out one card in the second layer of an eight-layer house of cards.

Other than that, I can tell the end is nigh by exhaustion; mood swings viz the work, from delight to hostility and back (though those go on in the middle as well); noting that changes are starting to muddy rather than clarify; and the ever-popular "change it and then change it back, lather, rinse, repeat" syndrome, all of which are signals that it's time to be done.

Deadlines, wanting the fun of publication, or the call of a new story also motivate putting the keyboard down and backing away. However, the phrase "a story is never finished, only abandoned" is one of those great truths. My daughter, a metals artist, also put it strikingly when she described a finished piece as "a series of decisions that I stopped making."

Ta, L.

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