I wanna make more 'Finished Pieces'

I'm going to be making an effort to post in this shiny new blog as often as I can. I left my previous blog so long that I don't really know how to start it back up, so it felt much easier to start again. I want to be writing about the things that interest me once again!

Going even further, I'm hoping that this blog is just one arm of creating more things that I can put out into the world. Specifically, I have a goal of making more Finished Pieces. I'm not aiming at any one kind of output. I'm a hobby collector, so whether it's writing, painting, drawing, producing software, crocheting, or some as of yet unknown hobby I'm happy. I really don't mind. I don't know where I'll go, but I really just want to be making more finished stuff.

The real reason I have a goal to create more finished pieces is that I want my system for producing things end-to-end to improve. I want to know better how to feed in raw material, to process it, and to turn it into things I can bring into the world on the other side. While I do want the quality of the things I make to improve, I believe that the best way of doing so is by working on the system.

By setting myself up to focus on quantity, I think it will be much easier to get to quality.

To make sure my goal of quantity is achievable, I've set myself some expectations about what I mean by 'finished'. Really, almost anything can be a finished piece. I don't have a strict set of requirements, but I definitely have some thoughts on how to tell if a given piece of work should count.

Key to my classification of finished piece is that I don't consider quality very important for the purpose of this goal. One reason for this is because I think in a lot of cases where feedback is present quantity leads to quality. I'd rather make lots of things that got gradually better in quality then pour myself into a single thing and then find out it wasn't very good.

Another reason for me to ignore quality is because I want to skip the perfectionism, please. Having an explicit expectation that quality isn't so important as quantity is useful for avoiding that particular trap (I was reminded of this recently by Will Byrd - I mentioned in my first and last post that I'd been watching his videos. He talks about this in Will Radio, Part II).

Another part of what makes a finished piece for me is the intent in making it. I originally hammered out that it had to be something that left my sketchbook, or left 'drafts' or my notebook but I wanted to get deeper than that. I don't think I have to share every single thing I make as a finished piece, but I had to intend it to become finished, and then I have to finish it.

Although I don't think I have to post something on the internet for it to be considered finished, I would like to put as much as I can in a public place. I don't need anyone else to actually look at it - I'm not basing my success on the number of views I get - but I do want to have the possibility that others will see it, if possible. Some stuff might feel very personal and uncomfortable being placed in public - but I could easily still consider that a finished piece. I can deal with that fear some other time, it isn't part of this project.

So, this blog is part of a broader project - but I think an important part! I'm excited to see how it fits in.