Just about finished with the ‘tweaking’ of Five Dragon Sword (at least THIS time around). One of the things I seem consistently to have problems with in writing is the inability to declare something ‘FINISHED’ once and for all and then just let it be.
It was the same with the first novel in the Dragons series, The Dragons of Antioch. Impossible for me to read something I’ve written without wanting to change a word here or or an inflection there, correcting a spelling or a punctuation that was missed, and then… it’s off to the races, and before I know it I’m chest deep in a rewrite.
The only thing that keeps this from happening is to move on to other projects, so as soon as I finish up this round of tweaking…
(now where did I put those notes on the Dare Stones?) 
An artist never finishes his work; he abandons it…Paul Valery
Thanks! I really like that quote
One other one applies but it’s been so long since I heard it that I have NO idea who said it…
It was in an art class when I was in college and the instructor was talking about a famous artist (again, I don’t recall who it was) who said that ‘every artist should have someone standing behind him with a mallet, and once he says he’s finished that person should be instructed to beat him with the mallet if he picks up the brush again’
Yes, I agree with that one too. I think, at some point, endless editing starts to damage the piece, and you have to turn it over to someone else, OR,
The best thing that I’ve found is to just let it sit on the back-burner for a while and then return to it with rested eyes.
And another thing: I resist the urge to start at the beginning of a piece. Some days I’ll dive into the middle or the end. The middle, you know, is always the part that needs the most work. That’s usually where everything slows down and goes ‘CLUNK.’