Is Your Writing Project Done? Surprising Ways to Tell
How do you know when you’re done with a writing project? There are moments in our writing life when something feels very concretely finished. You just know it’s over. Publishing is probably the most obvious example. If you have an essay or poem or short story published, even if you were finished editing that piece a long time ago, having it finally find a home signals this deeper level of completion and ushers in that sense of being able to live it’s life outside of you and move on to the next thing.
When I was in high school and college, I made my own poetry chapbooks. That had a sense of completion as well, because I was intentional about the order of the poems and each one had their place and they were bound in a book I printed at Kinkos. I felt finished and accomplished. But there are lots of examples when ideas return to you in different ways. It’s almost like something is finished for now, but then a few months (or maybe even years) later, you circle back to an idea or an experience, so the length of time you’re working on something is really elongated, and finishing can feel more elusive.
I occasionally have this experience where I’ll read back over something I wrote and go, Did I actually write that? I’ve asked myself this with a single poem and an entire book, and everything in between. It’s this detached a-ha moment, and it’s truly a moment of joy, actually, where I see that everything has clicked into place and feels whole and every sentence, every ides is where it’s supposed to be. And all of the work I put in in various forms has fused together so well that it almost feels like it wasn’t even my doing.
This isn’t meant to diminish my actual role in the process, either. I know cognitively that it was my work, of course, but that moment is always one of creative alchemy for me, and it might actually be the best guidepost for knowing when I’m done. I find it’s especially potent if there was a struggle at some point in the writing process where I just felt like I hit a wall or I wasn’t sure how I was going to make these disparate pieces come together. If I read something I wrote and wonder if I actually wrote it, then I know I’m probably finished.
Another question I usually ask myself before I send my work off in any capacity is this: Have I taken it as far as I can?
A lot of the work of writing is just us. Eventually we might have agents, editors, readers, workshop leaders—other people will touch our work in some way, but for me personally, I like to feel that I’ve done as much as I can with it. That usually means several rounds of edits, re-reading, letting something sit for a while before revisiting it. And in these moments, there usually is a sense of completion to a degree. Because if I’ve answered yes to that question of taking it as far as I can, then whatever I’m working on is in some state of completion for now.
It’s really a sort of phased experience, isn’t it?
I might think I’m done with an essay and feel really good about it. So it’s finished. Maybe it’s on draft four or five. It’s ready to go. So I send it out to some journals. If I’m lucky one of two things can happen: I receive some constructive feedback that suggests maybe I wasn’t actually done after all, and this feedback is useful in helping me think about part of it in a new way. Or, the essay is accepted. But even if that acceptance comes in, in a lot of cases there might still be some work to do alongside an editor. And then it’ll be finished when it’s published.
Same goes for book writing. I’ll go through all my drafts and get it ready to go. Then my agent takes a look and I might go back and make some adjustments. Then it goes to publishers and once a book is sold you start this collaborative process with an editor.
So that’s the first idea with finishing: How far have you taken it? Is whatever you’re working on ready for another set of eyes? This can give us a barometer as we work.
Another layer, or phase being of completion can sometimes be based on what’s coming next, or what you want to have come next in your own creative process. That nudging is always different for everyone in terms of how it shows up, but for me, with just about every book writing experience, I’ve gotten the idea for my next book while I was writing my current book. That’s been a trend I’ve seen the past decade, so I’ll often be in the middle of something and committed to finishing that when I’ll also start getting this fuzzy idea of where to go next.
One of the reasons this works for me is in my creative process, I tend to think about ideas for a really long time. There’s a lot of simmering that goes on, so having a half-baked idea in the background is actually part of my writing process, and eventually things start coming together when the time is right and I’ve started to trust that as part of my experience.
Maybe for you, it feels good to alternate between two ideas. Getting something to an almost-finished state, or you just need to let it sit, and then you move towards something else. That might be a supportive way to move you towards being able to answer yes to that question of whether or not you’ve taken it as far as you can.
Another way to know when you’re done is by noticing how much headspace your idea is still taking up. When we’re working on something, it’s a lot of work for our brain. We go to bed thinking about it. We think about it when we’re driving around town. Ideas come to us at random times. Are you dreaming about it? Often when we’re really in the middle of a project, that’s what we spend most of our time thinking about so check in and see if you’re still doing that. If you’ve mentally moved on, or are thinking about it less, or in a different way, that might indicate that you’re either finished or getting really close to finishing.
To illustrate all this a bit more, a couple of examples come to mind. When I started my first food blog in 2008, there was so much enthusiasm and creative energy. I was finding my people online and finding my voice as a food writer, and that space provided a creative outlet after finishing graduate school and starting to work full-time. After about three years, that’s when I started getting this feeling of something being off. This coincided with a feeling of being a bit lost when it came to writing beyond food. Food had completely eclipsed poetry at this point, and I was wanting poetry back in my life in some way.
So this transition, ultimately, was marked by a QUESTION. What should I do next? For a little while, I really didn’t know. I had the question, this open-ended curiosity, but not the answer. I mulled over this for a long time, and then the idea for EAT THIS POEM came in a flash one afternoon. It was just this fully formed idea that popped into my head after I pulled down a book of poetry from the shelf that I hadn’t looked at since I was in college. And there was a poem with a reference to food, and I immediately thought about a recipe to pair with it.
When you’re thinking about finishing something, don’t be surprised if you feel a sense of wanting that completion or a desire for something else without knowing what to do yet. I think that’s a pretty normal part of the process. This makes me think about being between book projects, finishing one and waiting for another to start. Maybe it’s a newsletter shift you’re making. Maybe you’ve been writing one genre for a while but are noticing you’re gravitating towards another. It doesn’t have to be super overt either, just this subtle inner prodding.
Another example is my private Facebook group, which I hosted for five years. I actually remember the day I started it. Night, actually. For some reason I decided to send out the announcement to my newsletter subscribers in the evening, and then spent the next hour refreshing my app to see if people were requesting to join it. After that, I vowed never to launch anything right before my bedtime, but the energy was there. I was so excited to start this community, which felt very right at the time, and it was such a lovely space. Four years in, I started feeling like the natural life cycle was coming to a close, and I announced the transition two or three months before it finally happened. But before I got to that point, there was this space—this long pause—where I just sat with this new feeling, and actually another question of: What if? Really, a whole set of questions. What if I closed it? What does this mean? How does this change things for me, my community? What comes next?
I want to normalize the idea that our work almost always benefits from pausing. Sometimes we need weeks, months years, but even more of the micro pauses creates space for us to see something from a different perspective or have another insight come through.
So, how does one end a post about finishing?
On a podcast episode with food writer Ruth Reichel, she told a story from early in her career. At the time she was thirty-five and had always been a freelance writer. While living in San Francisco, she was offered a position as the restaurant critic for the LA Times, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Ruth happened to be good friends with another prominent food writer, MFK Fisher, and when Ruth told her about the job, Mary told her she needed to take it. Her advice was along the lines of… you're used to polishing every word like stone. You need the experience of having an editor give you a tight deadline and you might not write the most masterful work you've ever written, but it will be fine.
This idea of not being too precious and letting things go out there is one I wanted to leave you with. Ruth also said something about how books are never really finished. Her exact words were: “We can continue polishing sentences forever.”
A final question to consider: How much of the writing you're doing now, the keeping it close, is hindering you from moving on to the next thing?
Finishing can sometimes be scary or disorienting. You’ve likely given it an enormous amount of emotional labor.
When something is finished, it might mean something is true. It could mean someone will read it. It means you now need to relate to this part of your life differently. You need to tell a new story about what happened to yourself. None of these things are bad, but when we're habituated to the old narratives, change is always hard.
With this in mind, as you're rounding towards completion with something, consider how you're holding it.
Are you gripping it for dear life, in which case it might be hindering you.
Are you just scared to let it go, scared of what it might mean?
Or are you holding it loosely and trusting that it's time to let this story live outside of you?
Maybe we're never really done after all.
