Completion is a sacred spot
I am lost at sea. The water is vast and unpredictable. Great currents carry me forward on some days, and on others my hands struggle against a gluelike resistance. I can’t see the shapes of the islands; they are mere mounds on the horizon. I’m so much farther than when I started, but I don’t know how much farther I have to swim.
This is what revision can feel like. You’re making progress, so much progress, but to what end? “To improve the work.” You know it can be better, so you make it better. And you make it better. And make it better. Will this ever end? Even if it’s picked up, circulated, celebrated, will you feel that you’ve reached your destination? What is your destination?
“Destination” was a concept I hadn’t yet learned when I started writing. All I had was inspiration. I fell in love with that inspiration and let its riptide carry me away. But inspiration alone only brings you to the vicinity of the final product. Often you wish you’d brought a map.
Outlining can help. But to get to your destination, you need more than endless improvement. You need a vision of what it looks like when it’s done.
I was treading water half a year into revisions on a novel when my godmother told me about the finial. In design and architecture, the finial is an ornament added to the top or end of a structure. A statue cresting a dome, a fleur-de-lis on the back of a chair. It provides an artistic flourish and, vitally, signifies the completion of the piece — a definitive cherry on top. It’s the artist’s way of saying, “it is done.” You don’t always need a finial, but you do need to arrive at that moment of completion.
There is always the problem, once having developed the system, of when do you call it off? The finial, the topper, the resolving of the problem. — Charles Eames
A draft is a great sea of words, and we can get lost in it. The sculpture can become hidden in the block of clay. Form can cloud destination. Some say the solution lies at the center of a Golden Circle — understanding the “why” behind the work. McKee says the solution lies in a “step-outline.” I think you just have to know where you’re headed. Toward your finial moment.
You don’t need to have the completed version figured out from the start — only the direction in which your inspiration has pointed you. That final version will coalesce the closer you swim, like a painting gradually sliding into focus. You may find that your outline was wrong about some things, that these islands look different so close. I’ve veered from outlines after getting to know the characters more — “No. She wouldn’t do that. Here’s what she’d do.” Always trust your compass more than your map.
Notes are like wind. They can usher you forward. They can also be confusing, even tempestuous, but you always gain clarity when you weather them — after a storm, the water is calm and you can see for miles. But where you swim is still up to you. Sometimes you make a wrong turn and have to reverse course; the journey is nonlinear. Sometimes you’ve got to rest somewhere and learn new skills; rest is still progress. You get closer each day.
Now you’re near land. The final version is nearby, but you’ve gotten too close to the material, and the way forward is clouded. This is the final stretch. The time in which you need full clarity about where you’re headed.
Lucky for you, the tool to gain that clarity is something you’ve always possessed: the inspiration that brought you here in the first place. It won’t fail you. All you need to do is breathe into that inspiration, let its needle swivel and point you forward. Stay connected to it. It will clear the fog, giving meaning and direction to the fact that you’re so close, bringing the painting into focus. Swim hard. Even in uncharted waters, X marks the spot. Wash onto the beach. Feel the sand beneath your feet.
At last, you know what the completed version looks like. But recognizing when you’ve reached that completed version is the final challenge, because when you’re standing there your compass will be spinning in circles. Small adjustments will seem to upset the balance of the entire framework. This means you’re here.
More notes may come, and you may struggle with how deep to dig. You might be disheartened to learn that this treasure isn’t a prize to be won, but a place at which to arrive. The source of the magnetism pulling on your compass.
I arrived at my novel’s moment of completion when I no longer doubted it. I let go of the different possibilities for what it could be and embraced the single convergence that it was. I was too exhausted to be ecstatic, but in the most incredible way. The manuscript felt comfortable and stable to me, like a home. It no longer needed me to breathe life into it. I had found its place in the earth and planted it there. More notes would surely come on the road to publication, but they would grow it upward, out of that earth. It was ready for a life of its own.
Your moment of completion isn’t something you discover — “Eureka! I’ve done it!” And it’s certainly not a regretful choice to abandon the material. (You can always return here.) It’s more a quiet awareness, an understanding that though all you’ve known on this journey is striving, and swimming, and striding, you couldn’t possibly desire to move from this sacred spot.
And then you fall in love with a new idea. Your compass swivels, the tide rises, and it sweeps you out to sea.
written listening to “Feeling Everything but Lost” by Andrew Prahlow
Speaking as a chronic tinkerer, the filial concept is a powerful tool for the writer. How do we reach our project’s filial? Perhaps defining it can make the road to completion more clear.
Obsessed with this