Week 15 of the Oblique Strategies Series
This is part of a series, running through 2016, in which your faithful fool randomly selects one of Eno and Schmidt’s “Oblique Strategies” and analyzes and interprets it. For background on the series and the strategies, please read the series introduction.
Creative work encounters roadblocks at all different stages. Sometimes — at least for me — I’ll be off to the races with a good idea from the get-go, and rage on for several sessions with passion and confidence. I’ll make progress, I’ll keep momentum, and then I reach what I believe to be the penultimate stage. It’s that stage where I’ve got the essence of that thing I was trying to make, but it’s still rough — not ready to see the light of day. It’s not “finished”.
Next comes the polishing, the refinement, the pursuit of the perfect. The pursuit that never ends — or at least ends merely with resignation — rarely with satisfaction. It ends that way because we creatives always end up asking ourselves a question, but doing so in the wrong way:
Is it finished?
Asking this question alone is not really a strategy. Rather, asking it in a certain way is — the right way, and knowing how to go about answering it.
Ask the Same Question Differently
You can ask yourself is it finished? in two different ways. You can ask if there’s more you can add or tweak. If there’s more you need to do. If there is a way this work can be more like what it’s supposedly meant to be. Asked this way, the answer will almost always be “yes”. You can then go on tweaking until you’ve driven yourself utterly crazy, and you’ve made so many cuts and pastes that you’ve got a veritable Frankenstein’s monster on your hands.
You can also ask yourself if it’s finished, knowing that the answer is no — it will always be no. A work is never finished. You as the creator are really only tossing out an expression, a feeling. The best creative work expresses an important truth in a provocative or evocative way. It is the start of a deep and hopefully enriching conversation. The audience then continues it. It becomes theirs, not yours.
An Exercise in Paradox
I think asking this question is it finished? is an exercise in paradox. What I mean by that is this: if you answer yes, you are wrong — it is not finished. You are finished with it, but as a work of art, it is not finished. In a way, it is just beginning its life. If you answer no, then you are correct — it is never really finished — but you are then asking yourself the wrong question. You should be asking have I done my part? Am I ready to let others receive and interact with this work? Am I ready with letting this work now be theirs to connect with, rather than mine?
Your work is just the beginning of a long conversation. You start it — hopefully with a bang — and the audience runs with it. That’s why the best creative work is the kind that people keep talking about for decades. Most of that talk is debate — debate about what exactly the work is telling us, how we should interact with it, feel about it. It’s not all gushing about how amazing it is (though there is surely some of that).
Sometimes, the truth that we express in our work is too complex, too difficult to receive, and takes time to capture hearts and minds. That is okay, better it be that way than the alternative. Better your work take some time to ferment in the collective consciousness than immediately be recognized and relegated to the background — the storage area of simpler things.
You Are More than This Piece of Work
Here’s another variation on the question, which you can ask by excluding two words. Rather than ask are you finished with it? — as in are you finished with this piece, change the scope of the question.
What is the underlying idea, the underlying emotion — the message of this piece? Are you finished with that? Are you done tackling that emotion, that bit of truth? Have you said your last word on it? More to the point of getting un-stuck in your work, would it be so bad to just let this piece go? Would it be so bad to just put it out there, see what happens, and be ready to work again on the underlying concept — in another work?
I do this all of the time. So do many people who publish things on the internet. We write essays, commentaries, analyses, stories. We develop them as much as we can at one time, and we release them into the wild of the world — knowing that we’re not done with that particular idea. I would submit that those who do this end up more successful than those who don’t.
Shitty, Good, Great
In other words: don’t be afraid to put out some shitty work, so long as it’s shitty but honest. Enough shitty but honest work — when pursued with good intentions — will give way to better work. Better work gives way to good work, which gives way to great work. Before you know it, you’ve done truly great work. All this by being okay with the paradox of “finished”.
And by the way, even after you’ve done great work, it’s not finished. In fact, the more you do work, and more work you do, the more you will make your peace with the fact that it’s not finished — it’s never finished. If you still doubt this, consider the most immediate example of creative effort — yourself. You are never finished. You’re different now (hopefully better) than you were yesterday, and you will be different tomorrow. You are in progress, just as your work is.
I will close with this thought: if to you finished means no more work to be done — then you’re missing the point. That thought is antithetical to what it means to do creative work. Finished is merely a step along the way. You finish your part of a work, but as I said, it’s never finished. You are never finished — not until you’re dead or you give up. I would hope that if you’re reading this you haven’t yet resigned to either.
Godspeed.
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Originally published at Your Fool Laureate.