Learning to Let Go

I've spent the last year editing my novel, CRASHING DOWN. I've tweaked and moved things and rewritten and read it 1086168 times. And it's finally ready for betas. Actually, I should have requested betas a while ago, but I was afraid. I didn't want any of my writer friends to see my novel as anything less than stellar. I wanted it to be PERFECT, to be DONE DONE before asking anyone to read it.

But there's a problem with that. That problem being, of course, that perfection is impossible.

I present to you Neil Gaiman's sixth rule of writing:

Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

I've talked before about my fear of falling into the trap of never moving on, never letting go, always seeking perfection. I try really hard not to fall into that trap. But sometimes I do.

Now, I'm not saying that my novel didn't need all the work. It did. Oh boy, did it. Am I done with edits? Well, if everything goes according to plan, no.

What I am saying is I'm learning to let go, learning how to tell it's time to let go. Recognizing when it's time to stop seeking perfection and moving on to the next step. Because if we get sucked into seeking perfection, we'll always be stuck in whatever part of the process we're in. We'll never move on to the next step, and we'll never reach the end point we're trying to reach.

So we have to learn to let go and keep moving forward.