Minding the Muse by Priscilla Long

Author:Priscilla Long
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book
Publisher: Coffeetown Press
Published: 2016-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

IX.

Completing Works

There is a magical power in every completed, self-contained creation.79

—Peter Zumthor

What if it’s totally embarrassing?

I only do it for myself.

What if it will expose my true nature as silly and stupid?

If my mother saw this she would never speak to me again.

How do I know if it’s finished?

This subject matter bores me now.

I’m not looking for fame. I don’t care.

What if it shows me up for the fraud I am?

This is stupid and dumb.

What’s the point? There’s no money in art.

These are all rationales—at times subconscious—for not completing a novel, for leaving piles of paintings half-finished, for never finishing that collage or that poem. They may also occur to artists who’ve become successful in one style or mode and thereafter feel a certain reluctance to venture out into new creative territory. Being ignored or scorned following success is no fun. Yet the greatest artists are constantly venturing into new territory, risking failure and even ridicule.

How do you know when a piece in finished? For one thing, there’s no simple rule, obviously. It’s a judgment. If you seldom or never make the judgment, something is wrong. I think of completing a piece as a craft skill. Can you tell a brilliant opening from an average one? Can you tell a virtuoso sentence from an average one? Can you tell a resolved painting from a half-finished or abandoned one? Of course one’s savvy increases as the years of creative endeavor roll on. But never declaring a piece finished is exactly the same as never finishing a piece. If you “finish” it, you might fail. If it’s not done yet, it hasn’t failed yet either.

The process of finishing a work typically overlaps with its first reading or viewing, its first public exposure to your peers or to your first (probably small) audience. At this point you may receive some useful feedback. Even with no feedback, the act of presenting in itself helps you to see work from the outside, to get distance from it. This in turn helps you see where to make necessary tweaks. Completing works and putting them out in the world is part of the creative process. The moment you become aware of its potential or actual audience is the moment you see touches and fixes it requires that you hadn’t seen before. And once you’ve released it to the world, you’ve cleared room for new works. Time to celebrate. Time to cogitate the next piece.

And yes, there’s such a thing as finishing a piece twice or three times. Time passes and you see something more you can do. Poets have been known to revise a poem after publication. Is there such a thing as a novel that was finished the first time it was finished? Finishing is a process, sometimes a rather extended one.

Here’s what finishing is not. It’s not awaiting pats of approval from your workshop, teacher, mentor, agent, editor, or other power. The creator who waits for approval has suspended judgment and claims to have no way to judge.

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