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 Hanif Abdurraqib said elsewhere, not written here
I move back and forth. The Tribe book is easier. I have a proposal and a plan for that, so it’s easier to know when that’s done because there’s a hard end. There’s a certain amount of chapters, and that whole thing. But poetry books, at least in my experience, those tell you when they’re done. My first book told me when it was done. It told me when I had mined everything I could out of the emotional landscape I was trying to create, and it pointed me to an exit strategy. With poetry books, I have been lucky to have my poems do that. My poems tell me how they want to live in the world, when they want to live in the world, and when they’re done being played with… Sometimes, it’s over the course of a month with one poem, or sometimes it takes a little longer than that. I think the hard work is knowing when to pull yourself back so you don’t overextend or let your projects blend together.

Brandon Stosuy, The Creative Independent interview source ↗

Others on this question

View all 69 →
Lucy Ives Writer
Usually I’m overcome with sadness and fear, actually. And when I have that feeling where the bottom drops out of things, I know that it’s done.
Recorded Maddie Crum, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Neel Patel Short-story writer and novelist
For me a story is done when I can read it and not cringe. When I’m revising a story, I focus on what’s not working. I usually set something aside for a little bit, and if I come back to it and feel that it’s complete, I trust that sense. You kind of know.
Recorded Alec Niedenthal, New Routes in Fiction: NEEL PATEL with Alec Niedenthal, The Brooklyn Rail, 1 March 2019 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 ↗
Justine Kurland Photographer
I think that there is a lessening of attention. Sometimes when a series is done I still make a few extra pictures where I’m still kind of batting the dead mouse around and sometimes those are where the best pictures get me because I’m not trying as hard, or I’m more open-minded to let other things come into the picture. That’s what happened with one of my favorite pictures in the book, the one where everyone’s in the sand and they’re making out. I actually ended up dating one of the girls in this picture afterwards.
Recorded Amanda Jane Robinson, The Creative Independent, 16 July 2020 source ↗

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