Is It The End?

How do you know when your piece is finished?

I watched her on Zoom as I spoke, providing feedback on her query letter. She pressed her lips together in frustration, tilting her head forward and to the side.

She had spent the day working on her pitch—one that was already solid—revising, rearranging paragraphs, and reworking lines. Instead of improving the pitch, she felt it had gotten worse. By the end some of the strongest bits had been edited out, only to be added back in again.

This is how it goes sometimes. I’ve done it myself. Often, in an effort to make the writing better, we overwork it, overedit it, remove the things that made it special.

It’s hard to know when the piece is done and when to let it loose, but these things can help.