How To Know When You’ve Finished a Piece of Writing

On the mystery of time in the creative process

I make a good lentil soup. But I only get the official take on how good it is when my husband eats the leftovers. “It’s better now,” he says, often enough that I wonder why I don’t cook it in advance. While the soup may be piping hot and fresh when I take it off the stove, after a day or two, when the onion, cumin, and tomato have had time to blend and settle together, it’s richer and more layered.

It took me a long time to realize that this was also true with writing. When I think I’m done with a draft, I’ve usually just put the ingredients together. The real flavors—the structure, thematic resonance, and depth—emerge over time.

But how much time exactly? While this essay offers pointers for writers to recognize when they’re done, the hours it takes for a piece of writing to be cooked to perfection is a mystery, dependent on many different variables: what kind of piece, how close the writer is to the material, how motivated the writer is, what resources they have, if there’s a deadline, etc.

False Endings

Case in point: As a first-time author, I thought I was done with my debut memoir, This Incredible Longing, after working for a whole year on the second draft. I made the rookie mistake of sending it out to the few agents I knew. Despite knowing them personally, I never heard back. The sting left by their silence eventually morphed into the drive to rework it.

I was sure I was done by draft four. In reality, I’d added material that weighed the story down.

By draft seven, I was as done as I could be without professional help. I was hoping for the input of an agent, but despite some close calls, I didn’t land one. I paid for a developmental edit that revealed the manuscript was near completion. I needed to start the book sooner to hook the reader while providing just enough backstory for my character’s choices to make sense, but not so much backstory as to smother momentum.

I was sure I had nailed it when I sent a snazzy new Chapter One to my writers’ group. But their faces in the Zoom squares looked grim. It wasn’t working.

When I got the same feedback from three new beginnings, I decided to quit.

By that point, I’d been working on the book for five years. The joy in creating it had been replaced by overwhelming frustration. Who was I to think I could write a book? Who cared about my story anyway? Quitting gave me a feeling of power over the situation. I was done.

In hindsight, I was taking an extended marinating break. Though I’d been writing for thirty years, a full-length narrative was new. I simply needed more time to integrate everything I was learning about structure, scene building, and tracking themes.