How do you know when a piece of work is finished?

Originally asked

The Creative Independent, to working artists, its interview series

A repeated process question in The Creative Independent, asked across visual art, music, writing, performance, and mixed media.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded António Lobo Antunes said elsewhere, not written here
A book is finished when it does not want me to work on it any longer...it reaches a point when it feels like it is literally avoiding me. I have a very physical relationship with the manuscript, almost a corps à corps. Paradoxically, when I finally feel at ease with a manuscript, with its voices, I realize it is finished. I see a book as a living organism, with its own rules and will. What matters to me is to allow it to grow and to acquire an existence of its own. It’s as if the book uses me in order to come into existence, rather than being written.

Alessandro Cassin, Geography? It Doesn't Exist: Antonio Lobo Antunes with Alessandro Cassin, The Brooklyn Rail, 1 November 2008 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 69 →
Sam Amidon American musician
Right, right, totally. It’s the advantage.
Recorded Ty Maxwell, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Marya Hornbacher American journalist and author
Michael Chabon talks about staying with projects that you should abandon. He talks ignoring what he called “the hand of dread,” which would grip his throat every time he sat down to write. He worked on this project for five years and I took that to heart. I’m like, “Don’t ignore the hand of dread. If you know, the project is wrong, walk away or you’re not ready to write the project walk away.” And it doesn’t, at that point, matter whether the publisher thinks it needs to come out or not.
Recorded Elle Nash, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Loraine James British electronic producer and musician
Most EPs I’ve done have just been for fun, Bandcamp stuff, so I just stop when…I guess with EPs, it’s easier. It’s like, “Oh, EPs are usually four or five songs.” I know it will end within that bracket.
Recorded Max Freedman, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Taja Cheek American singer and songwriter
Sometimes when I listen to it, I’m still editing it in my head a little bit. At a point, you need to realize that you have to stop and be outside of yourself. You want to take it seriously, but you also know in your heart that you’re making it worse by over-editing or over-processing or over-adding.
Recorded Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

More on craft & work

Also answered this

Allie Rowbottom, Claire L. Evans, Sigrid Nunez, Lucy Ives, Willa Bennett, Claudia Dey

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer