Photo by engineroomblog (click pic for link)

First, thanks so much for all of your nice comments and congratulations yesterday. You guys are the bestest!

Now, because I had the opportunity to review the judges' comments and revise my submission before sending it along to the editor, I spent the entire afternoon yesterday obsessing over two paragraphs. Last night, I finally hit the point of mostly happy with it and went ahead and sent it in. If I looked at it any longer, I know I would have ended up changing too much. The entry got me to the finals, so I'm trying to go with the ain't-broke-don't-fix-it (well, don't fix it too much) mentality--a philosophy that is hard for me to embrace at times. So I have officially let it go and am giving it over to the Fates at this point.

But as I was going through the judges' comments and emailing back and forth with my crit group to get their input, my head started to swim. It's amazing how subjective this whole writing thing is. One reader will point out how much they love something, then another one will say I totally blew that part.

When I threw out options to my crit partners, each had different opinions of which version I should go with (and gave completely valid rationales behind why there opinion was such.) I'd read one of their suggestions, and be like, yes that makes so much sense. But then I'd read another's opposing opinion and her reasoning, and be like, damn, that makes total sense too. Gah!

So it makes me wonder, how do you know which advice to take and which to toss? Ultimately, I went with what had the best "feel" to me when I read it out loud, but believe me, I agonized over every freaking word.

So how about you? When you get opposing opinions that all make sense, how do you determine your course?

**Today's Theme Song**

"Brain Stew" - Green Day

(player in sidebar--go ahead, take a listen)