I have had requests for partials from three different agents over the last few weeks. Huzzah! Hooray! Huge news! Exciting, and overwhelming, and stress inducing, and, and, and, and…

A million thoughts swim though my head: How mistakes are in there I didn’t catch? Should I have paid an editor? What if they hate it? Is 50 pages enough? Did I do enough to hook a reader into wanting more? These sort of things eat at me, makes me doubt myself, and doubt my work, and if I really let it get to me I’d freeze. I’d never finish. I would never have gotten a requests for partials. I’d never be done.

There’s a quote from Voltaire I strive to live by, “perfect is the enemy of done.” It’s 100% true. I could keep working on that sentence, that paragraph, that chapter. I could work it and rework it and then I’d have another sentence, paragraph or chapter to work and rework. it becomes cyclical. I can’t tell you how many times I have written and re-written parts of my manuscript and – if I’m being honest about it – I didn’t improve anything.

Eventually you need to get your work out there. Circulate it, let it be what it is. Not everyone will love it, but if no one sees your creation you’ve robbed them of the chance to love it.

Three partials: I count that as a win.