More Than What You Start
EPISODE 065: MORE THAN WHAT YOU START
There was a motivational poster in my school that admonished us to "Always finish what you start." It included a photograph of a sprinter about to cross the finish line. It shouldn't surprise you to hear I don't think the creative life is the same thing as the 100m dash, and that there is often great value in starting many things we don't finish, cutting our losses, and being willing to make a U-turn now and then. Let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
About a month ago I launched a new thing, something I have been working on Among the many pieces of advice that appear on the kind of cheesy motivational posters that lined the walls during my school years was one that implored anyone that would stop to read it to "Always Finish What You Start." If I recall correctly the words appeared in a severe font, all caps, and bolded, under a stock photograph of a sprinter heading for the finish line.
I can almost hear the theme-song to Chariots of Fire in my head as I think about it.
There is wisdom in not giving up, in finishing strong. But when I look at my creative life it doesn't have much in common with that sprinter about to break the tape. I don't want to pick a fight with the athletes in the crowd but there's a big difference between standing at a starting line from which you can see the finish line, and beginning a new creative project, the end of which is usually invisible and uncertain, and the path to which has yet to be surveyed and carved out. I'm not saying it's harder, but much different, and that the creative life probably has less to do with Chariots of Fire than with irons in the fire, and that probably needs an explanation. I'm David duChemin and this is episode 065 of A Beautiful Anarchy, let's talk about it.
Music / Intro
"Always finish what you start" is a sound-bite from a larger conversation about the value of perseverance, and of not quitting when things get hard, but like all aphorisms I feel myself wanting to raise my hand and say, "Well, Yeah, but...." I don't mean to be a trouble-maker. I never set out to be an iconoclast. But I can't be the only one who's been told not to bite off more than you can chew, only to shove the whole hot dog into my mouth just to prove I could. And so here I am again, hand raised from the back of the class, and I don't mean to be a pain in the ass but what if what you start proves itself unworthy of your time and energy once you're three weeks into it? What if it turns out to be too small or entirely wrong? What if you can never know that until you've put that initial time in? What if not knowing whether what you want to start can even be finished, leaves you paralyzed by the fear of leaving things undone, and so you begin nothing at all?
And I haven't even asked yet for clarification on timing: finish it when? Before I start something else? Before I die? And how long do I get before my pending efforts are considered an unfinished failure? I don't want to quibble, but the Basílica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona was started in 1882. The architect Gaudi, who assumed the project after the initial architect quit, died in 1926 when the basilica was only 1/4 completed. They're still working on it. Maybe it's not the perfect example, but I'm still curious: who gets to decide when something gets to be called done? Is there a statute of limitations on the things we make?
I like biting off more than I can chew, which is just a different way of saying "don't start what you can't finish" Biting off more than I can chew is the way I increase my chewing capacity. It's how I discover the limits of that capacity, too. And I like putting a lot of irons in the fire, which is yet another platitude used to warn us off doing so many things we can't finish them. "Don't put too many irons in the fire" is good advice in the real world of blacksmithing, or so I'm told. The expression goes back to the 1500s when blacksmithing was part of daily life and a better source of more readily-understood metaphors. Putting too many pieces of iron in the fire cools the fire and then none of the iron gets hot enough to be bashed into swords. So you might want to remember that when you're making your next cutlass or scimitar. But feel free to take liberties with the same advice where your creative life is concerned.
Creativity is not a step-by-step. The muse has whims of her own, and while focus and discipline are important, so is a willingness to be messy and take detours down paths that may never go anywhere-and the freedom to take those detours just to see where they lead without the pressure to always see them to the very end. There is no intrinsic value in finishing something just for the sake of finishing it and being able to say it's done. Shipping your work only matters when that work is worth shipping.
Creativity requires incubation. It needs time for ideas and half-baked efforts to combine, mature and, well, to bake more fully. Sometimes the difference between what is un-finished or abandoned and what is still a work-in-progress depends only on the day of the week on which you ask me how things are going. Sometimes you never can tell whether something you abandoned earlier, perhaps because you discovered you didn't have to skill or the insights to take it further, will be an iron you pull out of the forge again later once those skills or insights are gained.
There's a blacksmith out there right now who knows exactly what kind of liberties I'm taking with this metaphor, and to him I apologize, but I think there's value in having several irons in the fire at once. They all go in at different times, they all get heated to just the right temperature at different times, and sometimes I'm just done with bashing away at something specific and it needs to go back into the forge for a while, to get softened up again while I pound away at something else that's now a little more malleable for having been back in the fire.
To do further violence to this dodgy metaphor, what if different blacksmiths just work differently? Some work on one piece from start to finish. Some need to work at several pieces, all at different stages of completion. Real blacksmiths and real forges might not work this way, but I do. And sometimes what I'm making just doesn't work at all, or it gets wrecked because I've over-worked it and the iron needs to get melted back down again, that one piece remaining unfinished forever, so that I can make something new.
What if creativity doesn't work to a 1:1 ratio? What if the ratio of things started to things completed needs to be much higher? What if it takes 100 sketches and false starts to get to a final masterpiece? What if it takes many shitty screenplays in various stages of complete to get to the one that finally works and gets green-lighted? And what if some of the many ideas sitting there right now, some of them started and then put back on the shelf or into the forge, just need a little more time before you see the real potential in them? What if the artist or craftsman you are now has grown beyond the work that was started by the younger artist you were when you began it? Are you bound to finish that work, even at the expense of what calls the loudest to you now from your more mature and experienced imagination and skill?
So many questions, so few answers. Here's another one: what if the pressure and obligation to complete something in which our heart is no longer fully present results in poorer creative work than simply listening to that heart in the first place and being willing to explore a detour, or cut our losses completely? What if hitting pause on a project now and then while we get refreshed elsewhere for a while–even if that comes with the risk that it wasn't pause we hit but the stop button–what if that willingness leads us to our best work, and it's our stubborn insistence on finishing everything we start that prevents us from doing the work we are most ready for now?
There will always be days when the work isn't going well. There will always be times when we're distracted and our heart isn't in it and something–anything–else seems like a better, more appealing option. There will always be days when you just need to push through. It's more than likely that these days are frequent when you're up to your neck in the messy middle of a project and your big challenge is just finding the will or the energy to keep at it. I am not suggesting we cut and run every time it gets hard. If I did that I'd never finish anything. But I am willing to look at my process, and life itself, as anything but a straight line. And there are times when the best direction is not forward, but a U-turn.
I'm also pretty sure that refusing to quit is a sword that cuts both ways and is a matter of perspective. You can refuse to quit a current project, refuse to cut your losses. But I wonder if sticking to it can also be a way of quitting, a way of giving up on the possibilities other projects might offer. The person that refuses to leave a failed business or marriage because she learned to always finish what she started and refuses to quit; is it possible she has already quit believing that she deserves more, and has given up on a different future?
A refusal to quit is sometimes the surest sign of a heart full of courage and a mind that sees bigger possibilities around the corner. But it can also be a sign of fear, specifically the fear of change, and an unwillingness to admit to accumulating losses, and make a change for the better. A refusal to quit can be a refusal to admit we were wrong. The belief that we should never give up, often because we've already invested so much–whether that's time, money, or energy– is called the sunk-cost fallacy. It's why we don't stop reading a book even though we're long past the point when we've decided it's not for us. I mean, we've already spent so much time reading it, right? It's why we don't walk out of a movie once we've decided we hate it. After all, we spent $20 on it. And so we pour good money after bad, we not only lose or waste the time spent up to this point but also the time we insist on spending to finish what we started. We swallow past folly and chase it down with a shot future unhappiness just to see it through. We waste time, money, emotional energy, and the chance to learn something and move in a different direction.
I'm less concerned about how many things I finish than I am about how many things I start; how many times I explore something new or take a risk on something different and unfamiliar, with the willingness to be wrong, or to follow the muse when she says "hey, what happens if you do this or that?" Sometimes they work out, or it leads somewhere interesting. Sometimes their only purpose is to teach me something new or find me new materials, and it's clear the point was never to go all the way down the road on which I found those. Sometimes, too, it's just the timing that's unclear and I really don't know if this thing I'm working on is going to get finished and ship or go back into the forge. What is sure is that what I finish is almost never the same thing as what I start.
I'm all-in on not getting distracted. I'm with you on perseverance and the need to double-down on efforts when things get hard, because that's often the only way a thing that is started will become a thing that is finished. But that does not mean every thing that is started must be completed, nor that finishing always has more value than attempting, exploring, learning, failing, or reserving judgement on exactly what it is until some later time. The creative process is not valuable only inasmuch as it results in a finished product. Process is valuable all on its own, and it is wonderful when it leads somewhere and becomes something more than the sum of its parts, but to focus only on that final thing, only on finishing what we started, might just be the best way to blind ourselves to the possibility of making something that is much more than what we started. Put as many irons in the fire as you need to, see what catches, be willing to throw a piece back in when it’s not working. It’s more important to finish what you love than everything you start.
Thank you so much for joining me. What a privilege it is to make this for you and to be part of your creative life. If this podcast makes a difference for you, I'd be so grateful if you would share it with others. And if this podcast is new to you, you'll find it takes a short break every 4 weeks when I send out a new issue of On The Make, which is like a written episode of this podcast, sent to your inbox every fourth Sunday morning. If you're not already getting it but you'd like to, just go to StartUglyBook.com, scroll to the bottom, and let me know where to send it. Once a month I'll draw the name of one listener to whom I'll send a signed copy of A Beautiful Anarchy, the book that started all this, as a thanks for listening. Our times together each week are a little too one sided to be a real conversation, but if you ever want to change that, you can get me anytime at talkback@aBeautifulAnarchy.com. Thank you again for being here. We'll talk soon. In the mean time, go make something beautiful.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0