 Hello, my name's Jackie, and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, I'm an aspiring fiction author who does videos on writing and plotting and rambling about writing and plotting, and at some stage I will finally be able to revise something, so if that sounds interesting, please like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell. Today, I wanted to talk about how do you know when you're done, and that might be when you're done with outlining, when you're done with writing your first draft, when you're done with revising your draft, and even done with the editing process in general. And the reason I thought of this was because I was recently plotting my current work in progress, which is reciprocal stalking, and I did three different plotting methods. And if you saw those videos, you'll know that I got to the end of each plotting method, and, like, I finished them, and when I was done, I thought I was done. It might not be complete, but I looked at what I'd written down and thought, you know, I've really achieved something here. I have this list of scenes that I didn't have before. I have a starting point to write my draft. And then I would do the next plotting method and realise, hmm, there are questions that I haven't answered yet, and I'd better answer them. Then this happened again when I got to the third plotting method, and what was a little frustrating was the third plotting method, which was the Story Clock Workbook. In fact, just a minute. So the third plotting method I completed was the Story Clock, and mine looks like this. Basically, this is my overview of scenes I need to cover in my book. And all up, I think it's in the low 30s, which is far more scenes than I've ever had at the beginning of the writing process before. And I looked at this and thought, you know, this page is pretty full. Like, there's quite a bit there, and there are extra notes around the edges. I feel like I've achieved something. I feel like I have a fairly comprehensive outline. And then I transferred it into a spreadsheet when I was putting the work I'd done for all three plotting methods together, and I realised there are some chapters where I don't even know whose point of view it's from. And that was a little bit frustrating because it's like, I thought, you know, I did this activity, I thought I was done. I thought this would be my ultimate guide that I would use to write my book. So that then raises the question of when are you done? When can you move on to the next activity? In this case, without lining, do I need to have every single scene mapped out? Do I need to know the emotional shift that the character undergoes for every single scene? Do I, as is recommended in the snowflake method, need to break all of my scenes down into crisis and reaction, response, dilemma, and so on, which are all of these milestones that the character goes through within a scene? And I can see the same thing coming up when you're writing a draft and when you're revising and editing. In fact, I have seen the same thing come up in my formal life as a nonfiction writer and editor. And I think it's really easy not to let yourself be finished. In fact, I remember when I was writing Powerless, which was my nanoproject last year. And I knew I wanted to get it done by the end of December and I was coming up to the last couple of days at December. And I really wasn't sure. Like I knew there would be an epic battle and I got to the end of the epic battle and I was sort of like, well, what now? And I needed to think of a final scene. And thankfully, I did think of the final scene. But part of me was tempted to leave it unfinished. I thought maybe I should just leave this scene off and then when I go back and revise and I've read the whole thing from beginning to end, then I can write something that's much more satisfying. And I didn't end up doing that because I thought even if I have to completely delete that final scene, which I probably will, I wasn't happy with it. But I thought even if I need to delete that final scene, I wanted to have the experience of finishing a draft because I have so many things that I've started and not finished. Because I ran out of inspiration or ran out of motivation or energy or not time because you can always go back to something. But I ran out of that initial spurt of time and then there never seemed to be there was never I never had the motivation to make more time for it. When it comes to revising and editing, I remember I had clients in my old business where we had this editing schedule. So to give you some context, we worked on nonfiction, how to books written by entrepreneurs and they would tend to be between about 30 and 50,000 words and we would have an initial structural edit, which in most cases involved us basically rewriting the book for them. The reason for that is because they were business people, not writers. So they knew their stuff, but they didn't know how to organise it as well as they could have or how much detail they needed to go into. So we would spend three weeks pulling it apart and putting it back together and then send it back to them. The standard schedule was they would have four weeks to go through it and make any additions that we recommended and they would send it back to us. We would go through it for another week. We'd send it back to them so they could give it a final once over, address any remaining points. And then there'd be a final proofread with another editor. Now, in some cases, that four weeks turned into six months. Or a year, because the author kept wanting to tinker with things and kept wanting to add new content. Or in some cases, their business changed so much in that time that the book wasn't relevant anymore and they needed to start again. So I can understand how the revision and editing process it can be hard to see the end as well. And as someone who's written a book like that, actually. So I wrote a book called Book Blueprint. If you're an entrepreneur looking to write a nonfiction book, check it out. If you're a fiction author, it's probably not going to be relevant to you. So I will put a link in the description that, yeah, if you're a fiction author, you're not the target market, so I wouldn't have high expectations. But anyway, I wrote that book and I got to the end and I saw it as a business tool, so I was happy to sort of close like close the writing and editing process, get it published and put it out into the world. However, the Book Blueprint process that I went through with people in workshops and what I it was always the first step I took my ghostwriting clients through that actually continued to evolve. So when I handed my business over and I was creating all of the processes and documentation for this process, the process that I covered in the documentation is actually a bit different to what's covered in the book now. And what's interesting is seeing that I can see why some authors in the nonfiction space might find it hard to stop working on their book because their process keeps changing. And I can actually see how going back and redoing the book now would make it a better book. But I don't think in this case, I don't think the effort is worth the investment of time and money. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. What I'm saying is that. I can see how hard it is to figure out when a process is finished. So my question for you is how do you know when you're done? How do you know when you're done with the prep work? So you're outlining and character profiles and everything that comes before you start writing. How do you know that you're done with your first draft? Or how do you know that you're done with the writing process in general? How do you know that what you've written is ready to go to a beta reader or to go to a to an editor or proofreader? And then in the editing process, I suppose that's a little bit different because you are working with an editor, so you will get feedback from them and they will tell you, yes, it's done. Stop tinkering, like you're 90 percent of the way there and spending an extra three years to get 10 percent better isn't worth it. But in some cases, I see authors. In fact, a fellow author, Rebecca McLaughlin, her first book, Nameless Queen, came out earlier this year. And she mentioned that she got her publishing deal and it was four years before her book got published because the editing process took so long. So in a case like that, how do you know it's done? So please let me know what you think. I'm curious to see if you have any questions you ask yourself or indicators or signs you look for that tell you you're finished and it's time to move on. Of course, the other scenario is you're like me and you're doing it for Camp Nanorimo and Nanorimo and you need to be done with plotting in time for Camp or Nano. So time is a factor as well. But if time is an effect, please let me know how you know you're done. That's all from me for today. So if you like this video, please give me a like and I will see you next time. Bye for now.