Okay, I'm going to start off with just a brief little aside: It's been a hell of a week and my creative energies are not where I thought they'd be. Actually, none of my energies are where I thought they'd be and I'm struggling with reflux, chronic pain, and a migraine that's going to start any day now if I'm not careful.
BUT, I still managed to edit everything besides the last chapter -- mainly because I did a combined 8 chapters of line edits on Sunday and Monday before things went south Tuesday night. I'm hoping to muster up the energy to get my last chapter edited during my capstone writing workshop tonight (my capstone paper is done. It has been done for weeks now).
I say all this not to weirdly overshare or brag or whatever, but to state with reasonable confidence that I have gotten through 95% of the manuscript and have not cringed and have made zero revisions and minimal edits overall, and I know, based upon all that: this is The One.
It hasn't been an easy process. If you've been following this so far, first on Instagram and now on my blog, you'll know that it's taken an approximate year and a half since the ink dried on my first draft to get to this point. It's taken 3 global revisions with 4 different beta readers. It's taken hours upon hours of recorded footage of me talking my ideas out, my preferred way of fixing the unfixable. It's taken approximately a dozen rejections, and 3 drafts of query letters to get even one personalized rejection.
And, at every step along the way, with each progressive draft, I felt like this is it. This is The One. I was so achingly confident.
Or...was I?
See, that's the question. Because every revision brought me closer to my ultimate vision for my manuscript, so there was a great deal of pride involved. Every revision was also more and more laborious, and grad school just kept ramping up nonstop, so there was a great deal of exhaustion involved. Like, can we please be done this already?
And every revision also gave more time for the wheels of the publishing industry to churn. For more queer books to come out. For more agents that I had my heart set on to close their queries for a time. So there was also a great deal of anxiety, of thinking I missed the boat because I'm such a perfectionist.
And it also didn't help that a good friend of mine told me, in so many words, "you are working too hard on this. Will you ever be satisfied?" And that stung, because I knew, deep down in my heart, that it wasn't perfectionism here.
It was the fact that I was trying to get ready for a job interview...and I'd forgotten to put on pants, to brush my hair, to change from slippers to oxfords. I wasn't dissatisfied with my existing pants; they were laying on my bed, in plain sight--but the missing pants made me realize that other things were off. My blazer was overlarge in all the wrong ways. It was the dead of winter, so why had I picked out a tank top? So now I needed a weather-appropriate shirt. And, come to think of it, my bra was stretched out and ratty. And no, no one would see the bra, but I'd feel a little less confident knowing I had the ancient nasty one on, right?
So, it wasn't perfectionism. It was the fact that I was showing up to interviews unprepared, a little unwashed, and less confident in myself because of this. In short, I had all the tools to fix myself, given a little time (alter the blazer by hand, swap out the shirt for another, finally toss the ratty bra), but I was tired and anxious.
If I didn't get this job now, would I ever get the job? I've spent so long searching for the job and this seems like the perfect one, so can't I just camouflage the flaws and fake it? Everyone around me seems to be looking for a job...am I spending too long on myself unnecessarily?
This all constellated into a swarm of self-doubt. I cried a lot in February, when the remark had been made. I got angry--at myself, at others, at my stupid drafts for falling apart at the moment when I fixed one crucial thing. In April, I decided, hell or high water, that I would go for the proverbial interview (send the query) anyway, because I was overreacting.
But I knew in my heart that I wasn't.
So, how did I know that each draft before this one wasn't the final?
My brain didn't stop thinking of fixes/improvements and they were major. I would read a chapter for line edits and instantly think "what if I made this connection that ties in to the ending?" Or "why does this character exist when I can combine him with another?" These were more than a one-two line fix, but rather a one-two (or beyond) chapter fix...and when you change something of that magnitude, chances are it's not the only thing.
Adding onto #1, your "minor fixes" end up becoming massive. If they aren't becoming massive, you know they will and you're just putting it off.
Things didn't add up. Maybe these were little things or maybe they were big, but the little things were often a symptom. For example, the infamous rune dilemma: gods and fae look physically identical, so I decided to give the gods runes (physical markers of magic, similar in appearance to tattoos) to differentiate. No biggie. Problem? Ais Dinsmore, who has never wanted her magic, is going to have some serious emotional problems with that. Now, I have to evaluate her entire arc (Draft 3).
Things felt stale/one-dimensional. In particular, my love interests stopped having compelling arcs once I made them the love interest. Emotional resonance was difficult in the early drafts.
Things feel problematic or cringeworthy. Admittedly, I dealt with less problematic stuff with each progressive draft and more cringeworthy, but some hints slipped in. For example, Maeve, a character I adore, first started as the classic mean girl/bad ex and there was this whole horrible jealousy plot line. It was awful.
But, the most important indicator that you are not ready yet is this:
Imagine tomorrow, you're querying this novel. Imagine your dream agent is so intrigued by your first 10 pages that they ask for a full manuscript within a week--an almost unheard of encounter.
Now which parts of the novel do you want to apologize for? Which parts are you praying they'll read when dead-exhausted?
You're biting your nails. You're so anxious. And within a month, they get back to you: I'm sorry. I loved it, but not enough.
Which parts of your novel do you instinctively know they meant by this?
If your answer is something massive and fixable, like "my romance is super problematic," or "my world building is really lacking," or, "God, it's the Cailleach stuff, isn't it?" then my friend, you are not ready.
I'm not delusional. I know I'll face a slew of rejections again. But there's no fatal flaw that I can say, "this did me in, and I knew it would." Now, there might be flaws I didn't see--and that's what an alpha reader at the final stage is for. But ultimately, I feel this is close to my final for these reasons:
I still identified problem areas, but they were solvable within a paragraph and did not mess up other parts of the story.
More time was spent towards removing dialogue tags and unnecessary words than towards bookmarking every other line for revision.
Chapter edits did not inevitably lead to chapter revisions.
I have, finally, an emotional core that is clearly comprehensible.
When I read through, it felt both true to the vision in my head and marketable.
If you can reach this stage in your own writing, then find an alpha...and STILL sit on it for a month or two, and then it's go time.
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