I like the finality of finished things. Those with a definitive end. The end of a book. The end of a day. The end of a project. Perhaps that’s why canning still appeals to me, despite its enormous emotional effort required to begin: I know there is an absolute end to it.
I canned some tomatoes early this morning: immersed them in boiling water, blanching them for sixty seconds apiece, transferred them to a cool water bath, pricked their orange skins and peeled them back, still hot, to reveal a crimson core as juice and pulp trickled down my wrists like lava. I did a dozen other meticulous, tedious tasks to ensure their proper preservation, and at some point in the process, I inevitably wondered why I go to all this work. But in the end, there is always a deep satisfaction in seeing those jars lined up, all prettily in a row. It’s the satisfaction of finality, I’m concluding now. There’s no such thing as going back to add anything. The jars have been packed, boiled, sealed up. Finished.
At least until I open one up, some time down the road, to begin cooking with it!
I’ve been told that a piece of writing is never finished; it just hits a deadline. This thought has helped me come to terms with my struggle of submitting something that I know I’ll want to alter in some way as soon as I send it. At least, it alleviates the pressure I seem to exert on myself that my writing needs to be perfect for that precise, arbitrary moment. Because for me, a piece of writing does not stop living once it’s sent out into the void – it’s not like a sterilized, sealed jar at all. Rather, it continues to evolve and grow, like a tomato still on the vine, and I continue to water and prune, edit and omit, if only in my mind. Maybe this is the appeal — and frustration — of writing: it is never finished.
After composing an email, I will go to my “sent” folder to read it again . . . after it’s been proofread several times pre-sending. Of course, I know this is ridiculous but I continue to read my sent emails anyway: it always seems to me there is something I could have said better. Joan Didion began her essay “Goodbye to All That” by writing, “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” and that is true for me, especially as it concerns my writing.
For the past several months, I’ve been working on a writing piece that has consumed most of my creative energy and time. It’s why, despite my good intentions and firm resolve, there was only one, solitary post in August. My piece had a September 1st deadline, which I made, this past Saturday when I sent it in. Strangely, I’ve not gone back to re-read it. Yet. I’m sure I will – it seems inevitable that I will.
I’ve spent months composing this piece: re-writing, re-starting, re-structuring, and re-reading it dozens of times. It’s not like an ephemeral email, glanced over, rarely read a second time. If published, it will be much more lasting, and I suppose, will be preserved in print. But it’s not there right now. Though it seems finished to me because I sent it in, it’s stuck in the void of being considered for publication.
In a big way, I want it to be done already. I want it to be one of those jars of tomatoes, sealed up, stored. Done. While the goal of writing it was for publication, part of me wants it to never make it. Because publication, inevitably, will mean more revision, and I’m dreading what that would involve. Like beginning the canning process all over again. Opening up the jar and tampering with what’s already been (temporarily) sealed.
It’s the struggle between perfectionism and finality. I like the finality of finished things. But I also live and work with evolving, living, things, like writing — of which, as Joan Didion says, “it’s harder to see the end.”
This post itself is coming to an end – I feel it, though it has gone in a very different direction than what I started out with. Perhaps the art of finishing is discerning the fittingness of things: of knowing when it’s time to put it on the shelf . . . or take it off, and open it up.
Question: How do you know when a piece is “finished” in your writing process?
Finishing a text comes easier to me than finishing a silkcreening piece, a painting, a drawing or even a sewing project. There always seems to be an extra dab of paint, ink, crayon or pocket that is needed. Whereas my thought process in writing is less abstract. As I arrive to my conclusion, I feel that I’ve said what I had to say, period.
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Thanks for your comment, Mary-Lynne! When I was writing this post, I had in the back of my mind the comment another visual artist once made to me about her feeling like a piece of her artwork was not quite right, that something else needed to be added. I was absolutely blown away by that, because I thought it was absolutely beautiful and complete just as it was. Now, I am not a visual art. But I wonder if this similar feeling that you shared about your visual creative work comes with being an attentive artist . . . knowing your craft, and always seeing the potential in it. And maybe it extends to other mediums of artwork as well (in my case, the writing). Thanks so much for sharing your experience!
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Knowing when to quit is never easy. I have a novel that is technically done, but I still want to go back and edit, despite submitting to publishers.
Maybe our work is never really done.
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I know what you mean! I’ve had to restrain myself from continuing to edit a piece after I’ve sent it in to be considered (whether that’s for publication or just for workshop). For me, iI’ve had to realize I need someone else’s perspective on it as a guide that I need to continue to edit, or leave it as it is! 🙂 Thanks for your comment. And good luck with your novel! 🙂
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How do you know when a piece is “finished” in your writing process?
Lots of writers see their products as a prolongation of their thinking process while in fact it is a distillation of their thoughts and opinions at a certain point in time. The job is done the moment those ideas are clearly formulated, structured and well phrased. Keeping tinkering at a document, blurs the original snapshot of your thinking process. Usually opinions, thoughts and ideas have a tendency to evolve over time, and a writer should never be afraid of writing something that is in contradiction with earlier statements. Those were then and these are now. The dinosaurs are extinct because they couldn’t adapt to an ever changing world.
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I like the point you made about a piece representing the writer’s opinions and thoughts in certain point in time. That’s something I’ve had to remind myself, and struggled with, when I was finishing up a creative thesis. But my struggle was coming from a slightly different circumstance: I had already finished my pieces (so I thought), but had to go back to them AFTER that “moment in time” in which I had written them, to do some substantial editing. But I had changed since writing those pieces, and so had to reinsert myself into them as though I was still the same person. It was a strange situation NOT to bring in my present self to do those changes – I had to be very intentional about it, and there was still this conflict. The kinds of changes I’ve been pondering over lately were literary decisions . . . improving what I’ve written, not updating a perspective. But I wonder if what you say can be applied to this situation as well: write the best you can at the time, and if a later, literary self sees it as not very artistic, well, then that piece represents the artist in that moment. Thanks for your insight!
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If you keep looking over your shoulder, you don’t see what’s in front of you.
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Good point! 🙂
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I love your imagery in this piece, Heather.
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Thanks Emily!
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