Getting Close

How much can an author fiddle with their manuscript? I'm still finding little things to change that don't amount to much in the long run, like using the same word twice in the same sentence. (Example: night. How many natural-sounding synonyms are there for night?) I ran across a line of dialogue in which a character says something like, "It's slow time around here--elk hunting isn't until fall--that's our busy time." Know what? I don't care that I used "time" twice. 

I could nitpick forever; make little tweaks that don't matter. Even the two sections that I was convinced needed rewriting really didn't. In the first, I rearranged a few things and added a couple of clarifying sentences, and with the second, I changed hardly anything. Often my first instinct was my best. 

The trouble with over-scrutinizing is that an author tends to second-guess herself and usually makes matters worse instead of better. 

I'm going to do one more full read-aloud, and yes, I'll find a couple more tweaks I need to make, but after that, I'm done. Anything else that needs fixing is beyond my capability to fix. I'll never be able to resolve my self-doubt, no matter how much I tinker with the story. I just need to accept that.

And then I'll have a whole new set of tasks to complete before publication; the big one being writing an enticing blurb. As much as I'm dreading everything I'll need to do, I'm ready to move on to it. This story turned into an endless quest, when it was supposed to be fun.

I have no marketing plan. I don't know if marketing is worth it. I might put up a couple ads, cheap ones, just to say I did. 

But first things first. I feel obliged to read the entire manuscript through once more, which will take hours and hours. By this point, I practically have it memorized.