Editing a story -- and finally stopping

Just got back my edits for "Button Up Your Overcoat," the story that will be published in the upcoming 20Spec anthology (I understand the title is still tentative). Not too bad, all told: a few grammatical fixes (which, as an editor, I find rather embarrassing), a couple of clarifications. Most of all, I think I need to tweak the ending slightly to make it more effective; I'm making that my weekend project. 

What I have to be careful of, when it comes to a story, is when to stop. I'm always finding some tiny tweak to make. I never have this problem with my technology writing -- although I usually do a few rewrites, at one point I'm able to shrug and say, "Okay, that's done," and send it off without qualms. And if the editor find a few things -- or even a lot of things -- that need fixing, it's no big deal. (Unless I have to go back to the drawing board, but that's more a matter of the time it takes than anything else.)

But with my fiction, I have to practically sit on my hands at some point to resist making one more change, one last improvement. 

Jim told me about a famous writer who was reading a story on his radio show Hour of the Wolf -- a story that had been written years ago -- and paused in the middle of the reading to note something that he thought could be changed for the better. So I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Posted via email from BrooklynWriter