You know that feeling you get when you are in the middle of making something where you just look at your half-finished creation and think, “Wow. This is not working.”? Your urge is to cut your losses, move on, start over - any direction you can go so you don’t have to slog through that mess that’s in front of you. Your mind is weighing the value of your time against the value of the perceived direction of your creation - maybe it’s not worth the effort.
I’m here to tell you - don’t give up. That project has more value than you know.
Pushing through the uncomfortable “quitting” stage gives the art its own story. Every good story has adversity of some kind. Usually, the greater the difficulties in a story are, the more interesting the story is. In my own work when this happens it usually means that the idea is taking on a life of its own. It has made its way out of my soul and is becoming the thing that it was always meant to be. The work is gaining its breath. When I finish projects that have this stumbling block of despair over their outcome, more often than not, they end up becoming the art with the most life in it.
Now, on the flip side - I have pushed through a project and completed it, walked away and came back and still thought it was horrible. But even in that there was value. Perhaps even more value than when everything goes right in the finishing. When you push through and finish you are building faith in yourself. Your brain begins to believe you are a finisher. Finishing in spite of adversity in something relatively small means that you can be a finisher in something larger like getting your health in order, working through a tough spot in a relationship or completing school.
You can also feel a sense of accomplishment, no matter the outcome of your project because, by completing what you started, you can tie the project’s worth to its completion as well as the quality of the finished product. So then, that deep glow of satisfaction over a job completed can be felt with every project, not just the ones that turn out the way you imagined. Often, when I finish something and it hasn’t gone well even when I’ve pushed through wanting to quit I can still find things about it that I love. The texture that I made or the way I drew something…
There is usually something magical buried in the mess.
So, to sum it up, finishing is valuable because:
- You are training your brain to believe that you are a finisher.
- You give your work a story and get a sense of accomplishment from every project, not just the ones that go well.
- Imperfection is gold. You might just see something new and special, however small, that can inform your work moving forward.
The next thing you are tempted to give up on - give it its last few strokes of the brush, its last few notes. There’s a good chance that there’s something important behind the finished product.
Megan Hobby Kauffman
Artist, maker, and professional joy-bringer. From my North Carolina studio, Mayhen Press, I whip up colorful, story-filled designs that make everyday life a little brighter (and a lot more fun).