Some years ago, I had a friend in a writing group who offered me her manuscript. Though outside my usual genre of interest, I enjoyed the story. It needed some editorial manipulation but held my interest. When I saw her at our monthly meeting, she told me she changed major aspects of the plot. I advised her that she may want to reverse that, and the story was pretty good just the way it was, but she was motivated to move on.

Some months later, she had procured the services of a professional editor, paid handsomely, and acted on the editor’s suggestions and rewrote more scenes.

Two years later, she was still rewriting. Ultimately, her enthusiasm for the project waned, and it sits in an electronic dust pile.

At some point, you must accept yes for an answer.

• Yes, the plot makes sense.
• Yes, Alpha-readers were honestly encouraging.
• Yes, I’ve gone through the manuscript and if there are typos, they are few and they’ll be found later.
• Yes, my word-by-word edit was thorough and I’m confident those kinds of error are also few.

If even for just a moment you feel you are done, stop. Trust that moment. Clean up the manuscript using the techniques on the preceding pages and put it out for Beta.