When It's Cooked.

How do you know when your manuscript is finished? I think it's easier to tell when it's not. I've got two markers. 1) When I don't feel like working on it anymore, it's usually not finished. 2) When I've asked for only one reader to review it and that reader is my wife, it's usually not finished.

I can tell in my gut when a book is done. The problem is that many times I want to believe a book is finished even when it's not. I want an ending to work that just doesn't, or a chapter to stay in when it needs to be cut. For example, I cut a chapter from my latest book, Remise, that I spent about a month on - I'm a slow writer but it also needed lots of research to get the details just right. I spent hours in the library and on the Internet - Stork Club, 1940's, interior layout, menu, characters who might be there, story set-up. I loved what I wrote. My writer's group loved what I wrote. It was a great chapter ... for another book. I cut the whole thing, near thirty pages, and wrote another chapter to replace it - one that fit. It just about killed me but it had to be done. I knew it.

A book has an arc to it that I can feel in the air with my hands, that, if I close my eyes, I can see. I work off of a three-act structure that is real to me even if it is invisible. Every edit I do brings a manuscript closer to the size and shape it needs to be. It's the metaphysical part of writing that is done by your third eye. Sometimes I can find the final shape myself and other times I need a guide. That's where friends who are writers/good editors come in. An agent told me once, "Your work comes in without needing much editing - it comes in clean." That comment I've kept with me. Be patient, I tell myself. Wait. Wait until the work is in its final shape. Don't give up on the process. The publishing road is littered with the bones of those who gave up and those who tried to serve their meal half-cooked.