Two days ago I discussed alternative ways of successfully finishing independent projects. Today I’m going to question my basic foundations in this discussion about the value of finishing projects. Why can’t projects that don’t finish be valuable?
The basic answer is that they can, depending on how you are seeking value from them. So I need to constrain the question to be more specific to the conversation I’ve been pursuing. Can projects that are not finished be valuable within the context of learning how to finish projects and creating meaningful experiences for an audience? And if so, under what contexts is this the case?
Any project that makes progress will teach me about how to make progress in a project whether or not I finish, and any lessons learnt will help with at least some of the stages on the road to finishing a project. If I only master beginnings of projects, haven’t I still gotten better at the whole project? In one sense, yes, but at the same time if I only learn how to become good at beginnings within the context of not finishing projects, then I do not know if I’ve learnt the right lessons. I may have gotten so good at perfect beginnings that it becomes impossible for me to continue on from that point. Knowing whether or not the lessons learned are actually applicable to finishing a project only becomes possible within the context of actually finishing a project.
However, I still think that there is some learning going on with not finishing projects that helps with finishing them. For each of the projects I have not finished, I have learned two very important lessons. First, I have learnt a series of behaviours that do not allow me to finish, and secondly I have learned how vitality important it is to me that I actually finish projects. This second lesson may be key; if I didn’t learn to care about finishing projects I would be doomed to never finish them.
Before moving on to look at how unfinished projects can create meaning for an audience, I would like to take a second look at what learning how not to finish a project actually means. For each project I have not finished I will have developed a theory about why I have not finished, and for my next project I will try something opposed to that theory to see if I can hit on some method that actually works. Now, if I eventually do learn to reliably finish projects, then whichever theories I’ve developed that support the method used to finish my projects will appear to have been correct. However, this is not scientifically sound; whatever allowed me to finish may be something outside of my theories and I would have no way of knowing without rigorous testing. But having a method that works, I am unlikely to pursue this testing.
I suspect that this is why there are many creators who vehemently claim that some techniques do not work, even to the point of contradicting each other. They have each spent time trying to finish a work before their careers began and repeatedly failing. Each of the techniques they tried that did not give them the success they sought becomes blacklisted to them, even though these attempts were teaching them the skills they eventually used to finish. If they were to later go back and try these other techniques again, they may discover the techniques work better than they imagined they would. They have since learned whatever it is they needed beyond their explanatory theories of what the ‘correct’ way to create is.
As far as creating meaningful experiences for audiences, a project needs to be in a place where an audience can experience it in order for the audience to find meaning through it. If an audience can experience a project, isn’t it finished, at least in some way? Not necessarily. A work in progress can be viewed by an audience and not be finished. Further, a publicly viewable work in progress can forever be moved towards perfection. Continuously tweaking it without ever stepping back, deciding that it is good enough and adding a bit of polish is a very real possibility if there is already an audience and the audience is giving the creator what the creator desires (attention, reputation and/or money).
In fact, due to the internet, these styles of projects have become relatively common. Open source projects are continuously trying to reach perfection, and most are always in development or stalled. There are almost none that are ever finished. But even without open source, some projects embrace the paradigm of ‘release early, release often’ and fall into the same ‘trap’ of never being finished.
I say ‘trap’ with bunny ears because this does not seem to be a bad place to be, especially if your audience is happy to pay you. Working on a project that is always available to be interacted with but which you can constantly improve sounds like a wonderful thing, at least for as long as you are happy to have your life be about only one project. If you are in this sort of circumstance and you are able to maintain it, then it is likely that you will accrue a fan base who finds your modifications meaningful (hopefully positively so). Further, it is likely that as you fiddle with your project you will increase its complexity, and thus its depth, thus making it worthy of having dedicated fans. All in all, this sounds like a project that I wouldn’t mind creating, even though I know that to some extent it is just a way of avoiding the need to finish.
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