Writer's dilemma

So having 'finished' my novel while on sabbatical last year, I am now wrestling with the conundrum of how to know when it is really finished, to the extent that I will be happy to send it out and be judged by it.

One criterion was length - I had in my mind a minimum word count for credibility, below which it was feeling more like a novella, but I have now passed that magic figure.

I don't want to be one of the people who does 17 versions of their novel over almost as many years - and in fact it's rarely in my nature to re-write anything too much, the patience wears off. But I take it as a good sign that if anything my interest in 'Mother of the World' is increasing - I still keep having good ideas to flesh out the characters, having been told be several people that I may be 'under-writing', and they are definitely real people now who haunt my head whenever they get the chance.

I'm also having fun reading over each of the main characters' stories separately to check for internal consistency. And then of course there's the fact that I'm actually going to Cairo in May, having written about it from second hand accounts, so that's bound to give me ideas.

Guess it might be a month or two yet...