Finish things by finishing things

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Hi friends,

When people ask me how I got to the place I am today, I tell them that it’s because I finished things. I finished novels. I finished graphic novels. I finished comic books. I finished podcasts. I finished nearly everything I set my mind out to do.

Even when I didn’t like something, I still finished it. Why? Because it is in the finishing of something that learning happens. It’s not in the starting something. This is because it’s very easy to take something to 90 percent completion. You can begin a novel today and have it finished in a couple of weeks if you are only concerned about a first draft.

However, in writing, the true mastery is in the editing. It’s in discovering how everything fits together to make a cohesive story. Those synapses in your brain only fire once you have completed the first draft and started synthesizing all that gooey information into something that makes sense.

There’s a very good reason for this. Generally, the first draft of anything is garbage, whether it’s the sketches for a new piece of artwork or the first pass of this book.

This book truly was rubbish on my first pass. The sentences didn’t make sense, the flow wasn’t right, and whole chapters needed to be reworked from scratch. The only positive thing I could say about this book after the first draft was that at least it was on the page. It wasn’t publishable, but it was out of my head. Once it was on paper, I could mold it like a hunk of clay.

Let’s examine that clay metaphor more closely for a moment. Have you ever played with clay? It’s really hard to work with, at least for me. I’m so jealous when I watch masters take a piece of clay and effortlessly turn it into a beautiful piece of art.

At least, the clay ends up beautiful. In the beginning, though, it looks exactly like every other piece of clay. Even halfway through working, their sculpture looks like something I could do. Most of the time, their work looks like a hot mess even as it nears completion. Then, in one singular moment, the mastery kicks in and they make it something perfect that I could never accomplish in my wildest dreams.

That’s what I mean by finishing things. You don’t learn much from getting the sculpture halfway done. Anybody can do that. It’s not hard to create a sculpture form that looks vaguely okay and give up. It’s not hard to draw a sketch, or doodle in a sketch book. Most people are capable of that much. Real skills come into to play when developing that raw form into a finished product.

And your first finished product is going to be awful. Just face it now. But you will learn so much about technique that your next finished product will be better. With each successive finished project, you will only get better, and faster as well. While it might take you ten hours to finish a crappy art print today, next year—after finishing dozens of them—you might be able to crank out a masterpiece in only a couple of hours.

Each time you finish a project, you strengthen the connective tissue in your brain that helps you figure out the whys and hows of the craft; you learn what works and what doesn’t…and that’s when you start leveling up quickly.

As you continue to complete projects, not only does your skill level increase, but your reputation in the creative community grows. The more projects you finish, the more professional you will become. The mark of an amateur is only starting things. The mark of a professional is finishing them. By completing a project, you are seen as somebody who finishes things, and that is a rare quality. In finishing things, you start believing in yourself more as well.

-Russell

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