My second novel in the Dan Steele series is nearly completed, or is it? How do you know when you’ve really gotten to The End? You’ve read the story a hundred times. Fine-tuned the words back and forth, changing puppy to small dog over and over again. All your BETA readers have weighed in with comments that you’ve carefully vetted making the choice about how to use them.  When do you pass the manuscript off to an editor to endure yet another round of changes or send it straight to your agent or publisher?  Or publish it yourself? Is the market so full of perfect manuscripts that you risk rejection by declaring it done too soon or is it time to take yet another pass through the story that you are tired of wet-nursing. There’s no easy answer, but I do know that publishing before its time can have devastating consequences. You lose followers, new readers willing to give your story a chance and perhaps the agent that you’ve been pursuing. The writer’s job is to make the story the best it possibly can be before handing it off to the last member of the relay team responsible for getting it over the finish line and into print.

My choice: go back to the areas that are still a little spongy – areas where the story slows, the dialog seems repetitive, the plot takes a twist that the reader is not prepared for or the hero gets saved with some technology that hasn’t even been invented. Make the effort to shore up those areas that you know are weak with some solid planking BEFORE trying to hand it off to anyone else.