How to Know When a Creative Project is Finished

Sometimes, I like to imagine L. M. Montgomery holding her completed draft of Anne of Green Gables and thinking, Ah. Finished.

And then I wonder… was she really relieved?

It isn’t only Maud who lives like this in some sun-dappled room in my mind. I wonder about L. M. Alcott and Harper Lee and Oscar Wilde. I imagine that last look at Pride and Prejudice and Tuck Everlasting. How did Suzanne Collins feel when she finished Mockingjay, Markus Zusak when he finished The Book Thief?

How did they know their work was done?

One of my biggest hurdles within any creative project is this fear that no matter how many hours I put in and no matter how many tweaks I make, it will never be finished. And maybe that’s true. Maybe art just lives and lives and lives.

But at one point or another, we have to let it go. We have to let it walk on its own, see if it has legs. If we strike a chord, it might even grow wings.

So, in the spirit of collaboration and hope and trust, I reached out to some artistic friends to get their thoughts on finishing creative projects. A lot of us are in the same boat—it’s done, maybe it isn’t done, maybe it will never be done, it’s done—and there is magic in that. But a few of their answers were so different and so inspiring, I think you’ll want to read them for yourself.

Here we go.

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Basically, a design or animation is never truly “done.” You kind of get to a point where you run out of time and call it. Especially on client pieces, I give my everything up until the deadline.

For certain things—like digital portraits—there are special details I add to all of them and when I feel like the piece speaks to me and I can’t add any more embellishments, then it’s there.

But the magic of art, especially with personal pieces, is that you can always return to them and improve! I love to go back to drawings/animations from several years ago and build on them because you’ve grown so much since! There is nothing more encouraging than seeing your growth over the years.

Caroline D. | Motion Designer | Website

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[I know a project is finished] when I start making and unmaking edits. When I’m no longer iterating and I’m only procrastinating.

Randalyn H. | Creative Marketer | Website

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“Movies are never finished, they just escape.” – Unknown

While this is true for many creative disciplines with tight deadlines, it’s strongly exhibited in filmmaking. Whatever you plan, in whatever department (I’m usually in Art Department or Wardrobe myself), you get down to the wire and then try to double your speed, cranking out details people will likely never see until the moment “Camera speed… sound speed… Action!” gets called. Then you have to let go of any other plans and touches you hoped to add. Time’s up. It escaped. Anything you add now would mess up the continuity of the rest of the shots in that sequence. And besides, you’ve got to rush to get the next sequence set up, umm, three hours ago.

With novels, short stories, scenes, and screenplays, you could seriously keep polishing your words and plot, etc., etc., etc. until the cows come home (… what does that even mean?!), but at some point, you have to let it go before you kill it with good intentions. You have to train your “eye” to see when you’ve completed the picture, gotten it in optimum focus, framed it well, properly saturated the colors, and so on. And before you realize you’ve gone way past Done and added pieces from ten other puzzles to all the edges because you thought you needed to do more.

With a dance or theater production, all of the above applies to writing the show, but “Done” comes out a little different. You need to be able to see when the story is complete, just like a novel or script, but there just comes a point where it’s clear that you’ve done what you can; it needs to go on to the dancers or actors, with all the other components added for stage, to see how well your recipe has worked.

Bree M. | Filmmaker/Writer/Show Creator/Choreographer | Blog (where you can read the rest of Bree’s incredibly insightful post on this topic)

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Big thanks (and big hugs!) to all the beautiful and talented artists who shared their thoughts with me for this post. You all mean the world to me! Please check out their sites and appreciate the wonders of their artistic gifts. <3

Deep breath.

Yes.

This one is finished.

Photo by Carli Jeen on Unsplash