Is it Soup Yet?

Allow me to expose my insecurities.

I don’t follow recipes very often. I mean, I do, the first or second time I make something, but I don’t usually take the time to pull out the directions and follow them carefully every time.

This proved disastrous at one church dinner when the crunchy topping of my apple pie refused to crisp. I realized after delivering a rather soggy mess to a Wednesday night dinner, that butter and brown sugar, without flour, wouldn’t do anything but melt. DUH! I just wish it looked as good as this one does!

Usually my seat-of-the-pants method works fine, especially for the favorite meals that we have. When I do use a recipe, however, I find the easiest ones to follow aren’t the ones that give explicit step-by-step instructions, but the ones that tell me exactly what the food will look like or smell like when it is fully prepared.

In my writing, I'm struggling a little. Regardless of the “recipes,” the books,  the blogs, and training points, how am I supposed to know when this manuscript that overwhelms me is actually done? 

I thought it looked ready a while back and sent out queries to some of my favorite agents. Big mistake! The book wasn’t anywhere near ready and now I can’t really broach those hoped-for agents a second time. I sure don’t want to make that mistake again.

After months at critique groups, exhaustive study, and several more revisions, will I know if it’s ready; if I’m ready to find an agent and finally get to enter this world of authorship? If this story was a piece of fish instead of fiction, I could tell by the opacity. If it was a cake, I’d have several ways of checking its done-ness, but I can’t tap or puncture this. Well, I could, and have, but that's a totally different story.

Doubting a magic button or color change, I wonder if anyone give tips on how I can avoid making the assumptions that I did before? How will I know when this cauldron of literary stew is ready?