Finishing a manuscript?

I’m coming up to finishing a manuscript. I think. I mean, how do you know? There are a thousand ways a manuscript can unspool from the mind onto the page, or in my case the screen. How can I know when I’ve got the right one?

This is a question many students ask, and I wish I had a better answer than just to say ‘when it feels done’. I mean, I guess I do have a slightly better answer—when what readers relate back to me reflects what I thought was on the page. When they say, ‘I enjoyed this story about a girl and her friend who go to a remote island and explore it as a way to overcome grief,’ and I think, yay, that’s also what I thought I was writing about. That’s a good sign that the story might be done, or at least close to done. When readers start pointing out scenes they particularly like, I take that as a good sign too. But really, I mostly call a story finished when I read over the draft and I think, okay, I think that’s as good as I can make it. With luck, I will get to work with an editor who will help me polish it even more, but until then, I’m going to call it done. It’s always risky, but then writing is risky, isn’t it?