Printing up the manuscript.

Hard to believe that once upon a time I wrote all my manuscripts on a typewriter. A mind boggling amount of work (and wasted paper.)

Back in the day, the draft I just finished probably would've been the draft I sent off to the publishers. Not that it is totally ready, but the idea of typing yet another draft would have been unthinkable, (as well as expensive and time consuming.)

By this time, I was usually pretty sick of the whole thing and just wanted it out the door. I was pretty obsessive/compulsive looking back on it. Most of the fiddling around wasn't all the helpful, and there was so much wasted effort, that I would lose sight of what was effective and what wasn't.

And frankly, I needed the money. I was in a hurry to get on with it.

I always harbored the hope that some professional editor would magically fix everything that was wrong with it with a few swipes of his red pen.

Not that I did myself any favors. I may have even subverted my career a little by not being more patient. Hard to know. Some of the books probably never were good enough, others seemed to come close.

The first book took forever to write, but the second and third books seemed to come relatively easy. I was on a roll, and I think that sort of misled me into thinking it would easy from then on.

I know now, that I definitely should have taken more time over the 4th and 5th books. Even today, I'm not inclined to try to revive them.

The sixth book got a big workover, way past the point where I really wanted to keep working on it. I twice made changes based on different editor's recommendations, and I think the book was improved, but man I wanted to get on with my life. It seemed to be the book that was always -- just --- a --- little -- too --- short --- of --- the ---goal.

The seventh book should have have another rewrite, I can see now, much as I liked it. Maybe someday I might even try.

I read some advice once that I think was correct: get working on with the next book.

Anyway, I'm not quite in as much of a hurry today. Nor do I need the money. I feel secure that something will go online some time soon, so I'm trying hard to do it right.
I'm sometimes confident, sometimes not: but it doesn't matter, I can only be as good as I am, and comparing myself to others is useless.

This draft is still a little rough, but I think it's time to get others opinions. Then take a little break from it, then come back and do a final draft.