Great works aren’t finished, They’re abandoned

It takes 2 people to finish a painting. One person to paint and the Second person to pull them away from painting and say it’s done .

As artists, sometimes we feel our painting, song or art endeavor is never finished and we constantly tweak things. If there’s no deadline then we have no one telling us something is finished. And when they say it’s finished, in our minds it is not so we have to abandon it.

We are chasing perfection and a lot of us won’t ever reach what “Perfect” is in our minds. But don’t let “perfection” get in the way of “good enough”. The more time we spend tweaking things, the less likely we’ll ever think something will be finished.

To get to “good enough”, I like to share my music with my peers and ask them to critique it. Sometimes fresh ears can hear things I can’t. After their critique, I’m able to either agree and change or disagree and leave things the way I like it. Once I go through a couple rounds of this, I release (abandon) the song.

Once I release something, it’s not mine anymore. I’ve delivered it to the world to find and take what they want from it. It’s hard letting go but it’s sometimes best to set it free and move on to the next thing. I believe that the more quantity of art I make, the quality will in turn get better over time.