Done

Are We There Yet?

Hello Friends,

In scientific endeavors, like engineering, there are strict definitions for when something is done. A new feature or product function is complete after a list of specific criteria has been met. Usually, this involves a Quality Assurance (QA) process—someone who didn’t build the feature tests it.

For example, if I were to add a new “Subscribe to this newsletter” feature to my website, someone would QA it to make sure that it:

1. opened a new page that gives a text field for a user to enter an email address

2. provided a button to store the email address in my subscription database

3. confirm that the email was present and accurate in the database

4. confirm that the new subscriber would receive this newsletter

I would consider this subscribe feature to be done and ready to be released to my website for other people to use only if and when all those things were observed to work as expected.

This is standard practice and the ideal for product development.

For subjective disciplines, such as the arts—writing, painting, sculpture, etc.—there is no similar or clear definition of done (regardless of what our critics say).

It is not uncommon for artists to struggle with pieces for years, tinkering and poking, looking for that point or condition when the work feels complete. There is no objective definition of doneness in art development, like there is in product development. There is no list of criteria that exists that declares, “This story is complete.”

In the film Six Degrees of Separation, Flanders Kittredge (played by Donald Sutherland), an art dealer, asks his daughter’s second-grade art teacher why her student’s paintings are so much better than any other grades in the school. She replies, “Because I know when to take them away from them.” (paraphrased)

Because, as anyone who has at least dabbled in the arts knows, it’s almost impossible to know when your own work is done.

When asked, according to hearsay, how Michelangelo was able to make the David so beautiful, he reportedly said something like (probably in Italian), “I just chipped away everything that wasn’t David.”

Thanks! Really helpful with my damn next work of fiction. If I were to chip everything away, I’d return to the blank page.

But the important part here is that Michelangelo, and Kittredge’s daughter’s second-grade teacher, had a plan. They possessed a specific understanding of when a work would be finished, just like the four-step criteria above for a subscription button.

Even more importantly, they knew this going into the process of creating a work of art.

In writing, as with other subjective pursuits, the creator is often inspired to create.

While awesome and necessary, inspiration is a trap.

It too easily takes the production of a work out of the artist’s hands and positions it in some other source (a muse, God, a trauma). In those cases, a work will never be finished because the influence that inspires can remain with the artist.

I suggest that an artist should have a plan, a specific definition of done, as I do when I write software, based on concrete criteria.

A short story, for example, has literary elements such as plot, characters, dialog, setting. And, as I wrote in past newsletters, a work of fiction should have a mission—what’s its point? And an audience—who is it for?

From this, a creator can then judge if a piece is successful—does it serve the audience with the intended mission?

Whether a work of art is “good” or not is way too subjective to figure into the equation, and if you are waiting for your work to be “good enough” or “great,” you will never finish anything: exactly, because those measures are subjective.

The best you can realistically hope for is to satisfy your readers. And if you do that, you’ve done a great thing.

Now, I fully understand that we are all in this writing game for different reasons. I enjoy nothing more than getting lost in the writing process; the last thing I want to think about is a work’s doneness.

But this newsletter isn’t for those times. It’s for the times when the finishing is the struggle. For those times when you’ve said all you can say, and you just want to move on to the next project.

A little effort in defining your piece’s definition of done, making a plan, and feeling good about putting a work to bed, complete, goes a long way in reducing the stack of half-written stories or unfinished art projects gathering dust.

The world needs your stories, your thoughts, your genius. The only way we’re gonna get them is if you finish (and share, of course).

Happy writing and happy reading,

David