Are You Ready?

Are You Ready?

And how do you recognise that you are, indeed, ready?

A lot of people labour for years on their book; editing, re-writing, editing some more, changing characters, perspectives, adding scenes, deleting others… and still it’s not as perfect as they’d like to be. When asked, it’s never quite good enough.

But what is the real problem?

Sure, writers can be a perfectionist lot; I am and I can trace it back to one comment a boss said to me: “This is perfect and this is your first edition, isn’t it?”

For the next two years, I worked extra hard to maintain the level he expected, and in the end, it undermined my confidence as a journalist because I couldn’t sustain that expectation. Perfection is unattainable, in my opinion; there’s always something that can be improved.

If you pursue perfection in your work, you doom yourself to never completing it to your level of expectation. And yet, you have reach for that goal, because if you don’t, all you’ll get is a file full of rejections.

Finding the middle ground is needle-in-a-haystack difficult. To strike the right tone, have the most sympathetic characters, a tension-filled, rollercoasting ride story line is hard enough; add to that what the market will accept a year or so in the future requires either an indepth study of trends or the services of a clairvoyant.

It sounds sucky. It is sucky. Better to keep working on your book; better yet, put it aside – like you’re supposed to – and work on something else for the next few years. That way, you can always say you’re writing something new while the other one rests.

Or… you can take that leap of faith and find an agent or publisher for the work. You can get your stuff out there, ready or not, and get some feedback.

Yeah, scary stuff putting yourself out there to be critiqued or criticized. You wanna be a writer, fine, be one, but share your stuff.

Put aside ‘perfection’ and reach for the best you can make it. Then close your eyes and send it out.

I can’t remember who said it, but make it your mantra: “You have no right to keep your imagination to yourself.” Neat, huh.

* * *

Curious, but in checking out web things and e-mail, after I wrote this, Jaye's Blahg has a similar topic and I had an e-mail from Writing for Success about these very subjects. I wonder if someone's trying to tell me something?