Avi

word craft

blog

When is a book finished?

DoneWhen is a book fin­ished? I’m afraid the answer is nev­er. There is no such thing as a per­fect book. Not from me, any­way. There is such a thing as book that can be only mar­gin­al­ly improved. In my own case, I am usu­al­ly done with a book because an edi­tor says, “You’ve come to the dead­line,” or “I think you are fin­ished.” (I’ve dis­agreed with edi­tors about that more than once.) Some­times the book is done because—at the moment—I don’t know what else to do. Or, in all hon­esty, I can bare­ly look at the book any more. Or I real­ize I’m only adding (or sub­tract­ing) commas. 

But—a  confession—I almost nev­er read one of my pub­lished books unless I have to. The rea­son? Because I will always find some­thing I could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, pre­sum­ably bet­ter. Most recent­ly, when my just-pub­lished Sophia’s War came into my hands and I read the first pub­lished page (that I will do) I real­ized there was some­thing I had not done which would have enhanced the sto­ry. Too late!

I sus­pect the two emo­tions most com­mon with the receipt of your pub­lished book are ela­tion … and regrets. 

2 thoughts on “When is a book finished?”

  1. You, sir, are a God­send. Can­not thank you enough.
    You are such a gen­er­ous, lov­ing author. And you are equal­ly gen­er­ous to those of us carv­ing words.
    Thank you!
    Gillian

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.