I've just started the New Year full of cold and good editing resolutions - not sure how good a combination that is so I'm keeping all the back up versions.

Anyway - this is my first book. To those of you further along the road - how did you know when you'd finished? Do you ever? I've got one story in print that I try to hide from.

Do you get to the stage where you think, that's it, good as it gets or is there always that element of thinking, that could be better?

I've got bits finally coming together and others that I know were better several drafts back because I tried too hard!

Sarah

Sarah, I definitely get a sense of completion after editing and polishing...but I think that if you're serious about it, there will always be little unresolved niggles.

Just wait until an editor gets hold of your masterpiece. Then the real sparks start to fly.

JB

Sarah, I'd agree with James that I'm not sure it's ever as good as it can get, but for me there is a stage when I think 'That's as good as I can get it on my own.' If there's a single thing which makes you think 'that could be better,' then you need to make it better. If you can can't see how, that's the time for a professional editor, or a writers' circle, or at least to put in a drawer for a nice long time till you can see it more detachedly.

Only then is it ready for you to send it out into the wide world with a clean hanky in its pocket, to try its luck with agents and editors. You need another hanky for yourself, while you wave it goodbye.

On the other hand, my novel's had input from one supervisor, four tutors, eight workshop colleagues, two MPhil examiners, three agents, two editors and a copy-editor, and I'm STILL tweaking things...

Emma

Don't forget the third hanky...for when it comes back, empty handed, bearing a scrawled note telling you such insightful titbits such as 'wasn't for us' and 'not at this time, thanks'.

The third hanky is to wipe away those tears, wring it out, and send out your MSS once again in fresh clothing, determined to shake worlds.

Seriously though, there really is a time when you reach a sense of completion on a novel, but whenever that happens is decided on an individual basis by the mystical gods of writing.

For me, that sense is only ever fleeting...soon eclipsed by another project and all its inherent worries along with it. Is there anything more insecurity-provoking than writing a bloody book?

JB

Is there anything more insecurity-provoking than writing a bloody book?

It's a terrible old cliché, but having children's the only thing I know that's worse.

Emma

Actually, I was just thinking that pregnancy is relatively easy by comparison.

I mean, you know how long it's going to take, you have a rough idea of the end result, the basic checks are straightforward (count those toes) and nobody says, "I'm sorry, this one isn't good enough. Put it back and try again, love."

Also - if you need the drugs, you get them!

I suppose if we get into the era of designer babies the "editing" will get more tricky - not that shade of blue, show me another chart - but until then it's a cinch. Isn't
(s)he gorgeous? When (s)he's asleep, yes!

Sarah

It's not the pregnancy so much, it's the next 21 years of bringing up your hostages to fortune that are so brain-rottingly, stomach churningly, back-wreckingly grim.

Emma

<Added>

:). Probably

This is true - and who says it stops at 21?

Life sentence?

Sarah

I'm settling for 21. If I think it's for life, I might just decide to end it all now. If you count from the first wave of nausea, screaming backache etc., this is my 16th anniversary

Emma

Maybe that's part of the reason why so many new mums start writing with abandon - I know I did - they've experienced the most insecure you can feel so what the hell eh?

Sarah, I knew I'd finished when I could read it through without flinching, and my brain simply stopped churning it around - just let go quite naturally and started thinking about new ideas. Of course mine was a children's novel and only 30k so it was easier to handle.

Best of luck,

Myrtle

God, after this conversation I'm just thankful I can only get knocked up by an idea.

JB

Going back a few posts, yes, there is a sense of completion, and anything further really does feel like tweaks that improve it by making it clearer and more itself, but not in the sense of turning it into something different.

JB, yes, count yourself lucky. And to think that most of us let ourselves in for it on purpose!

Emma

It's funny how something can be finished one day, and then unfinished the next time you look at it. I tinkered around with my first book for months, changing things and then changing them back again. I think it was because it was easier wallowing endlessly in something I felt comfortable with than venturing into something new. Now that I've finally written something else, I can look at the first one more objectively and hopeful make some really constructive changes.

Ginerva

I'm in the position where I've been writing snippets and aborted short stories for years without ever feeling the need to actually get serious, since I always figured that if I was ever going to feel that way, it would have to just happen, and it has - in the last six months my output has been pretty prolific, and I do write every day.

In answer to your question, I feel like I'm still on a huge learning curve and I have never experienced that feeling of completion. In practical terms, it takes about 4 or 5 drafts to get to the point where I feel the basic story and structure is ok, but then I start on the language, changing a word, adding a sentence here and there.

However, just lately, I've been trimming a great deal more than I have been adding, since I seemed to have experienced a few revelatory moments about what I'm doing, and this is extremely exciting, because I can almost feel myself getting better at this, and hearing a voice emerge.

I hope to feel that sense of completion one day. It must be a good feeling.

Guy

I think it was because it was easier wallowing endlessly in something I felt comfortable with than venturing into something new.

I think that's a real insight, and a tendency can get in the way of making progress as a writer quite as much as giving up on things or calling them finished too soon.

Emma

<Added>

should be 'tendency that can get in the way'