How Can You Live Your Dream In A Small Way, Pt. 2: Questions for Creative Focus to Finish A Piece

Years ago now someone came to my house & saw a post-it stuck to the top of my latest composition that I’d labelled ‘Things I don’t like about my piece’. They laughed at me for being so hard on myself, but in my opinion I was just being systematic about polishing my piece up - if you know why it’s broke you can fix it!

Here are some of the questions I ask myself (& my students) at this point in the composition process to see how I feel about my work overall & create a list of tweaks I can then act on:

• What was my original vision for this, & have I fulfilled it? If so, how?

• Or… Did my vision for it change during the writing process? Am I fulfilling what it is now?

• Why does this piece work? Why does this piece not work?

• Are there any areas I’m uncomfortable with? Where are they & why are they uncomfortable? If I can identify these specific details, the fix might be quick my journey may end here.

• If it’s something I can’t clearly identify or fix, is it something I can learn to love? Or at the very least, learn to live with?

• … is this something I can ‘fix’ in a next piece, or as a response to it?

• Do I feel happy & comfortable sharing my piece & committing it to being on record?

I also like to play with the questions, replacing the ‘question’ words with other question words, so, ‘what was my original vision for this?’ might become ‘why was this my original vision?', ‘where does this fulfil my original vision'?’, ‘how does this fulfil my original vision?’ etc. The more specific & objective I can get, the better the list, & the better the list, the more chance I have of making something I’m happy with.