The Value of Finishing Something

A while back I had the opportunity to speak with James Christensen, the artist. He had taught art classes at the college level (I believe at BYU) and he mentioned something that I've found useful.

James Christensen liked to teach with water colors, and he found that water color painting was one of the best ways for his students to improve. Now I've seen some great watercolor paintings, but generally I don't think of watercolor as the ultimate artistic tool. It's what you give kids to paint with because it will wash out and it's not too expensive.

But his reasoning was insightful. Why is watercolor so great? Well one reason is that you can't fix watercolor (Bear in mind that I'm talking about actual paint, not digital). Once you draw a line and it dries, there's really no going back. When you're making a watercolor painting you are forced to keep going or start over. One corner of one painting would turn out well, maybe another corner in another one. Each painting would help hone their skills in one area or another. James then said that he would tell his students something like this, 

You've got to make a million pieces of trash before you make your first masterpiece.

There's a similar saying among writers.

You've got to write a million words before you're ready to be published.

This is why I find this anecdote useful as a writer. I have a friend who has some aspirations to write. I personally believe that he has great talent. But he told me recently that he'll often write something in a short snippet of time and then when he comes back to it he just rewrites it. This is not uncommon.

My suggestion for any writer who wants to really get better is to just write. Write something, and don't go back to fix it until you've finished the entire project. Don't let yourself. Imagine that you just put those words down in watercolor and you can't go back to fix them. 

I can imagine many arguments against this exercise, but here's what you gain:

1. You get the experience of writing through the entire shape of a story.
2. You're practicing writing.
3. You know what it takes to push through the difficult parts of writing.

There is great value in learning how to revise, but a perfect first paragraph is not as useful as a mediocre full story. Patton said it this way, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." The point is that if you're always planning and tweaking your idea, you'll never be doing - never actually get something finished. You'll be stuck with a really good first paragraph, but then you won't know how to write the rest. Experience completing a thing makes you a veteran. You may have things to learn, but at least you know that you can see it through.

So go finish something. Write a complete story (short or long). Write a dozen. You'll get better with each one. And then one day you'll look back at one of your pieces and you'll realize that it's actually worth revising.