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Releasing Works In Progress

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2008

"When you get it as good as you can get it," the writer told me, "that's the time to let it go."

He was advising me about manuscripts and publishing books and articles, but he might as well have been mentoring me about life in general.

We were spending a gorgeous fall day on his balcony, overlooking the warm blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, talking about publishing books. For three hours he shared lessons about writing as I relished the soft breeze and warm sunshine.

At the beginning of the afternoon, he was a complete stranger whose name a Maryland friend had given me. He had agreed to meet with me and by afternoon's end, we had a tentative friendship and a mutual admiration - I for his knowledge and generosity, and he for my determination to learn.

"Get it as good as you can get it," I mused as I drove the 60 miles back home, "and then let it go, send it out, submit it for judgment." He was referring to my writing; about the homework a writer does before submitting a manuscript; about the long, lonely hours of labor that writing a book demands; about knowing when to stop and recognizing when something is complete.

But I was thinking about life, about the things in which we invest ourselves. This year, I became 67. My children are 42, 39 and 36. They are my manuscripts of sorts. I have invested the long, lonely hours of parent work that raising them into adulthood required. When I sensed that I had "gotten them as good as I could get them," I struggled with the work of letting them go, of sending them out into the world to take on independent lives and be judged on their merits.

I wondered if a book tells you when the job is finished in the way that children do. You pour your soul, your intellect and your energies into both. You spend hours agonizing over whether you have given it your best shot, whether you have gotten it just right, whether you have said and done what you meant to say and do. You go back and edit what you have created, rewriting a chapter, talking with your children, tightening up a paragraph, sharing your life experiences with them, checking your spelling, reworking relationships to become peers, correcting errors even as you plan and aim for the future.

Then the time comes to let go, to mail the manuscript, to help a child move on and out, so that both can take on lives of their own. It is hard, frightening, exciting and risky. You are laying it on the line and saying, "This is what I've done. This is my accomplishment. This is a good as I can get it."

I know I am stretching the literal analogy because in so many ways, our children create themselves and choose and build who they become. I think the figurative analogy holds. I created this. It is my product.

As I struggle over my manuscript-in-progress, I am aware of my progeny-in-progress as well. I am rewriting, spell-checking and editing one and hope that I have corrected my errors of omission and commission with the other. It is time to let them fly or fail on their own. I will always be available for updating these editions but at this time in my life, I have almost gotten both just about as good as I can get them. They have to make their way on their own merits. It is time to let go.

Judy Kramer can be reached by e-mail at JudyandOz@tampabay.rr.com.

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