Can you ever truly be finished revising?

Putting the final touches on my MS before querying can only be likened to watching the last 5 minutes of a tied football game. Instead of taking 5 minutes, the game drags out for over an hour. Too many time-outs, and players running out of bounds to stop the clock, and yet the intensity is at 110% the entire time. It is exhausting.

I’m reaching this point where I want to say “screw it”, and just start sending the thing out. But that would truthfully be counter-productive. I took the better part of a year to write the thing, and then spent weeks upon weeks revising, then ignored it for a month, then when back to it with fresh eyes, then revised some more, then tweaked even further… I can keep going, but for your sake, I’ll stop. I’m currently in what I hope to be my final round of revisions: cleaning up odd ends, tightening prose and making final edits tweaks on some fabulous advice from my critique partner. It’s worth putting queries on hold until all that is squared away. I only want to send the strongest MS possible out to agents. But darn it all, I’m also just really anxious and excited to start the next step.

And so this brings me to my main question. Even after all the tweaks and edits and read-throughs are complete, will I ever be satisfied? Will I ever really be 100% done and 100% satisfied with my work. Can I ever rest assured I’m really sending the best possible piece of work out to agents? I’m going to guess no. Because nothing’s perfect.

But what do you all think? Can you ever truly be finished editing/revising? And if no, how do you know when to stop?

What I’m Reading: LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green

I’ve read a few books by the talented John Green. This one is my favorite.

Summary from the inside jacket:

Before. Miles ‘Pudge’ Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave ‘the Great Perhaps’ even more (François Rabelais, poet). He heads off to… Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then… . After. Nothing is ever the same.

Nothing about this book caught me off guard. I saw Alaska’s fate coming, and I knew the story that followed would be about characters dealing with that loss. And even still, I could not put it down. I hung on words and was moved at the end, and I think this is—to put it simply—because John Green is a fabulously gifted writer. 

John Green seems to do a few things unbelievably well in his books:

1. He effortlessly captures the absolutely overwhelming emotional rollercoster that is growing up
2. He infuses otherwise stereotypical characters with ticks and habits that make them feel, and relatable
3. He crafts a near timeless world, where his stories seem to unfold outside of modern-day, but still feel current

On the emotional rollercoaster of growing up (#1)… I think teens and young adults are so emotionally invested in life because they are so full of hope, but also so burdened by uncertainties. Everyone is trying to find themselves, to find their way. In LOOKING FOR ALASKA Green’s characters must learn to deal with loss and death, to accept it and plow forward. In AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES it was the desire to want to matter, to do something great with your life in a world of millions. These are dark and serious topics, emotional ones…things some adults even still struggle with.

Green also writes dynamic, layered characters, but its their ticks (#2) that make them seem so real. In LOOKING FOR ALASKA Pudge memorizes last words, his roommate knows every capital to every country on the globe and Alaska preaches words from her scholarly books while flaunting her electric blue nail polish. They pull pranks and drink cheap wine and nickname everything in sight. And they do all these things in a world that could have been my high school years, or the world of a current high-schooler, or even one of decades passed (#3).

This has somehow become a rant on why I love John Green’s writing and less of a review of LOOKING FOR ALASKA. I’m not apologizing for this though, because I think discussing the crafting of characters and worlds and themes done by Green is more interesting than any review I could do on just a single book of his.

Anyone who can write words that pull me back to when I was a teen, cause me to think about deep issues in life that I am still coming to terms with today (death, mattering, etc), and manage to make me both smile and tear up at the same time, has my vote. For future reads. For recommendations. For well-deserved credit. Well done, Mr. Green. Well done.

Finding a critique partner is kind of like…

…blind dating. Not that I’d actually know - I’ve never been on a blind date. But even without any credentials to be making this statement, I deem them similar.

» Step One

Try to narrow your pool of candidates by “interests” (writing for your same audience and at least familiar with your genre). If they write the same genre as you, that’s like an added bonus.

» Step Two

Blindly “meet up” under predetermined conditions: Let’s swap a few chapters and give this a whirl.

» Step Three

Decide if you should keep dating. Post-reveal, once the chapters and writing style make their grand reveal, and after returning feedback, discuss a second date if things look promising.  Do you jive with this person? Could you go on another date? Is this the beginning of a long wonderful relationship? Only time will tell…