I’m working on a fable about a fish. I’ve rewritten the thing at least fifteen times now. At first I felt frustrated by this endless cycle of iteration. But then I remembered: This is how it goes. This is the process. The task is to keep iterating until that “feeling” is reflected back to me in the work. It’s that pestering creature in my head that made me start writing in the first place, the indescribable essence that I must strive to describe.
I find myself needing the iteration, whether it’s the music or the art or the writing I do here. Bit of a George Saunders disciple, who is aaaalllllll about the versioning and iteration. But at some point that time comes when you say, am I really making this any better? I think that’s the time to move on!
Definitely. I suppose that’s really the feeling we look for—that we’ve reached diminishing returns. It has “it”, but changing it further doesn’t add any more of it. I remember editing my book of fables and realizing some tiny issues I still wanted to solve, but any changes would make it potentially worse. Like a Jenga puzzle with no pieces left to pull, haha :)
I find myself needing the iteration, whether it’s the music or the art or the writing I do here. Bit of a George Saunders disciple, who is aaaalllllll about the versioning and iteration. But at some point that time comes when you say, am I really making this any better? I think that’s the time to move on!
Definitely. I suppose that’s really the feeling we look for—that we’ve reached diminishing returns. It has “it”, but changing it further doesn’t add any more of it. I remember editing my book of fables and realizing some tiny issues I still wanted to solve, but any changes would make it potentially worse. Like a Jenga puzzle with no pieces left to pull, haha :)