How far are you with your manuscript? Has anyone done first draft and felt confident that that's enough or are you on second, third, fourth draft?
Once your manuscript is complete... What's your intention? Are you going to ride the rocky road of rejection or Self publish or just pack it away and start another novel?
Remember there's only one today that follows many tomorrow's.
Jonathan, I can completely relate to that. I was so excited at having written a children's book that I sent it off straight away when it was sitting at just over 30,000 words and had a very mundane opening chapter that did not pass the read the first line and want to read on test! Endless revisions later and it now stands at 51,000 words and has matured a lot along the way. Think I will always go back and tinker with it but am finally ready to start submitting it properly and just hope I didn't burn too many bridges....!
I once sent off a first draft for a competition, so confident was I that it was brilliant. Ah - the naivete of youth ;)
Once I realised it really wasn't very good I changed it to the degree where the original opening was in the middle. I don't do more 'drafts' as such, just edit and edit and edit etc , etc.
Oh - and it's probably never going to be 'complete'. I'll always find something to be unhappy about but you have to draw a line somewhere in the sand.
I'm juts starting my third draft of one novel and a first draft of another and when I feel I've got them as perfect as possible I'll be sending them to an agent. I don't think self publishing is the right path for me.