I finished editing my manuscript. I sat looking at the empty screen for the longest time. I stood up and walked around the room a couple of times, and I still didn’t know what to do next.

After a while I sat back down again and asked myself this question, “Is it the best I can do?”

That’s not an easy question for a writer to answer. Most of the time we’re pulling ourselves apart, trying to find that word or phrase, sentence or paragraph, an image from a scene that will pull a whole chapter together.

And when we’re done doing that we read it again and edit and read, and edit.

“Is it the best I can do?”

I’ll edit this post, perhaps not as much as I would another sort of writing, but I will read it and change a comma here and there. Expand on a thought, a concept. And if I get it right, you’ll never know the difference. All you will read is the final piece I post. And that’s the way it ought to be.

“Is it the best I can do?”

“Damn near.”

And that will suffice, for tonight.

I pitched my story at the Muse Online Writers Conference on Wednesday. It was the longest, and shortest few minutes of my career. But I made an impression because the publisher wants to read some sample chapters, and a synopsis, genre, word count.

So, I wrote and edited and rewrote and re-edited, and I asked myself, “Is this the best I can do?”

“Damn near.”

And I emailed it off tonight.

Is my manuscript the best I can do?

Its not the best I can do, but damn near. The best is for me to strive toward tomorrow.

.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have” – Maya Angelou