Finished - Part Two: Taking it Slow

 In case you missed the first part, we looked at the downside of going to the beach and celebrating, with a break for sex. It was basically the plotline of every HBO series since 1997. 

You may have realized that, unlike good sex, good feelings while writing are most noticeable at the breaks. Breaks exist for this purpose: to both celebrate and ensure you experience the joy you should. After all, finishing a first draft is a feeling that will be rivaled only by… the first edit… or by the second draft …and the next point of achievement and the next until the “finishes” wane in value. 

If we celebrate too often it quickly loses its meaning. Danielle Steel is a computer of course, but if it was a real person, I doubt she would bother to note the various drafts. The twitter feed would be amusing: “Wrote three books this morning. Feeling sluggish. #01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01101100 01101001 01100110 01110100 00001010”  

Gradually the satisfaction of “finishing” again and again blends together: a sort of Shepard tone of constantly rising emotions that never truly concludes. Naturally, this is your fault. Mine, too. It is our fault because we are the ones who create these stopping points. The reasons for a break become just are arbitrary as our rationale for when we deserve a snack or a new pair of shoes. There isn’t any particular criteria for being “finished:” You celebrate completion of the first chapter, the first draft, the first sex scene with a lizard person. You started with a pile of words. Now you claim that pile of words has been edited. Huzzah. 

It may be more valuable to examine and consider why you stopped. Was your work truly as good as it could be or did you just need another waymarker of progress as a pick-me-up? Come on, now: be honest! The first step is recognizing you have a problem …like self-centeredness. The next step is pretending that you are somehow immune to the effects due to a special condition called hubris. 

sense of accomplishment. You like the finished product for sure and may also like the process. You probably also like being “A writer.” It is a great way to saw: “I’m different” and “literate” at the same time. Although pride in literacy seems to be in decline there’s no shame in wanting to be different. We each have a sense of identity which needs to be fulfilled. It happens that identifying as a writer is more easily accomplished when we have some complete evidence to prove it. “If it pleases the court, I’d like to present 60,000 words about the human condition, a housecat, and a brown turtleneck as exhibits A, B, and C.” 

Apart from a sense of identity (or smugness) you also write out of necessity. You craft your texts and mentally edit conversations you had ten years ago. You can’t help it. Not writing feels like holding your breath, cheeks puffed, lips clamped tight. Those little spurts of air which escape your lips and nostrils when doing so are akin to those late-night tweets or overwrought e-mails to your ex. 

To me, completing an edit or reaching a word count has little to do with that need to write. It feels more like the irony of being different by following what others have done. “First you come up with an outline, then you write a draft, then you edit, then you share it with other learned individuals, then you re-edit, then you take up an interesting personality trait…”   

To me, writing is a need not a series of steps. It means achievement through growth and understanding, not steadily attaining artificial goals. I’m not convinced of writing a piece as being like climbing a mountain either. There’s no defined summit when you start playing with an idea. Also, you don’t arrive at your goal only to say “Oh hell, now I have to get back down.” 

To me writing is more like building. It’s doesn’t matter what you build, be it a birdhouse, a bookcase, or a lifesize sculpture of Hugh Jackman. When you build something, you engage in creating a product that you could probably buy somewhere else except created as you want, in a manner as well-crafted as your skill and patience allow. 

Like writing, you don’t build something just to finish. In fact, as you get close to the end, you try and slow down, add questionably necessary steps so you can appreciate what we are holding. You admire it at every opportunity, you turn it about, and move through the air while making little airplane noises (just like Hugh Jackman makes in real life.) 

Why do we manufacture these pauses, these “finishes?” Are we merely trying to slow down and appreciate the moment? Or are they to pause and enjoy that “good feeling” discussed in part one? 

If it is either to slow down and savor or to bask in our own satisfaction, maybe it is better to stop screaming “finished” every eight to 48 hours. Maybe we should instead try to purify the process and work ceaselessly until our editors (or psychiatrists) rip the paper out from under our pencils. 

If we are building something our attention should be on the task at hand, not on ourselves. Or does declaring ourselves “finished” serve a third purpose, useful to the process?