journos/writers/artists/creatives etc, how do you generally feel after youve completed a piece of work?

Option 2 for about 5 to 10 minutes, then option 1... then on to option 3 - "well, actually, no one really gives a damn about either me or the stuff I make, so why bother either way."

other

Tired.

more likely to feel good about it (whether i think it's great or just am glad to have completed something), but eh i already voted

loathe my entire existence

feel like this 24 hrs tbh

that's interesting, whiney, because unlike you my hatred of everything stems from a high self-regard

Tired.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, July 28, 2009 2:58 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^often combined with being too wired to actually sleep esp if it's 5am and i've been looking forward to bed for 3 hours

Relieved.

i usually feel some mixture of relief at having completed it combined w/ a sense of disappointment in myself for not doing better and then i refuse to read it for months and then ill come across it a year later and think hey this turned out pretty well

if ilx post = piece of work then a)

I usually don't feel any kind of remorse for not doing better w/ something unless I come back to it months/years later and have enough distance from it to be more objective. Usually at the time I'm like "Hey, I did my best, looks good enough to me."

does anyone think that if you think its good soon after its done then maybe its not done that well?

I don't think there's any consistent guidepost along those lines, since as this thread proves people have wildly divergant feelings that probably have little or no correlation to the actual quality of the product.

huh, what max said to the t

argh, this thread has just reminded me that I have remasters I did over the weekend to listen to.

We shall see in realtime how my reaction to creative things holds up over a few days.

i chose 2 haha but it is more likely a 3

like "not bad, kiddo"

"i'm lucky to be so talented, hot damn!"

i usually tip my shades and drive off in my ferrari iirc

Exhilarated, and that's very healthy. The self-deception that sleep or drinks will inevitably quash is very good to bask in for a little while.

usually relief that its finished and now I can move onto something else

Exhilarated, and that's very healthy. The self-deception that sleep or drinks will inevitably quash is very good to bask in for a little while.

― Heric E. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, July 28, 2009 11:59 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait, drinks are for CREATING self-deception!!

Don't drink and self-deceive.

concerning my design work: Option one for usually not more than a few hours; then option two for a day or two; then it gets filed with the everything else in the Not Bad, But Try to Improve on it Next Time folder.

in the words of Dorothy Parker, "I hate writing, I love haven written."
I still sometimes get stuck in the masturbatory mode of reading and re-reading a paragraph to see how it sits on the page; try to avoid that.
not that i write that much anyway.

also whiney: does a thug need a hug?

i usually feel some mixture of relief at having completed it combined w/ a sense of disappointment in myself for not doing better and then i refuse to read it for months and then ill come across it a year later and think hey this turned out pretty well

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Will never send it off unless I think it's meets a minimum standard so I never actually hate myself or the piece. But it's rare that it hasn't been a bit of a battle so yeah, typically I'm just relieved that I've been able to get rid of the damn thing.

As others it's only some time after, when I'm reading it almost as a piece of work written by someone else, that I'm able to consider that it might actually be pretty decent. Feels fairly healthy that way tbh, as there's no danger of complacency or cockiness setting in.

Exactly what max said except half the time instead of going "hey this turned out pretty well" at the Year Later stage I see the massive glaring problem with what I've produced that I couldn't figure out on the day I wrote it and simply loooong for a time machine.

"reading and re-reading a paragraph"

staring and staring then changing minutely/perhaps unnecessarily is worse.

Guys, the other night I was reading Handbook of Good English by Edward D. Johnson (a fave) and I found relief that I'm not alone in my feelings:

Revision can be excessive and destructive. It is all too easy to revise while in the wrong mood – the mood of despair and self-doubt that so commonly descends after making love, after giving birth, after creating anything.

...after dinner, a shower, waking up...

taking a massive dump

</velveteenbingo>

If I have post-partum depression someday, seriously, that chapter on revision will help me a lot.

other ie both

i usually think "fuckit, done!", marvel that i turned another a 3000-word interview transcript into 350 words, wait a few minutes, and get back to work.

i really need to start writing features for magazines, etc again. and the poetry completion (vs scrawled lines aplenty) has gotta make a comeback. so busy tho!

yeah -- my general sense of elation after finishing something has as much to do with getting a piece of work out of the way, and having a paycheck on the way for it, as it does with satisfaction with how well I did

okay that username, massive lols

the ka-ching effect xp

in truth, i am almost always happy by the time i get to the end of a piece just because i know it's about to make its way into the world and possibly even be read and maybe even inspire someone to care abt whatever it is the article is on

i put "other" because it really varies. sometimes a, sometimes b, often just glad to have something off my plate. it depends on the nature of the work, of course. something i care about that i think i've done reasonably well, i can feel pretty good about. something i don't care about that i'm just doing for some cash, i have no pride of authorship, i'm just pushing words out the door. i actually put the most care and thought into things i do for free, which i guess makes sense since in those cases the only reward is the product itself.

the most recent big thing i wrote, a 5,000-word feature, i was so tired of it by the time i finished and got the ok from the editor that i didn't even want to look at it for weeks afterward. then one night i sat down and read it all the way through and was fairly happy with it, so that was good.

possibly even be read and maybe even inspire someone to care abt whatever it is the article is on

yeah one thing i've been able to maintain through 20 years of writing stuff for public consumption is a default assumption that nobody's ever going to read or care about it. so that whenever somebody does, it's a nice surprise. (i mean, i don't use that as an excuse to do sloppy work: "nobody'll ever read this, who cares." just that i try to keep my expectations very low. if i invested too much in caring about how widely or enthusiastically things were read, it would be nerve-racking.)

"other"

After finishing an album, generally the sequence of feelings is this:

0 to 10 mins after completion: mild euphoria that it's complete combined with self doubt that it isn't anywhere as good as it could have been.
10 mins to two weeks: self doubt lingers.
two weeks to ~one year: "hey this isn't bad at all really"
one year to two years: "meh, of course I could do this in my sleep now"
two years onwards: "who was the naive tone deaf rhythm free loony who did this?"

i feel brilliant

echoing a lot said upthread - first, a feeling of relief that it is done; second, analysis of what was wrong with it, what I could have done/do to improve upon it; third, reviewing it multiple times to see if the audience would catch the mistakes, be as critical; fourth, thinking it was pretty good and better than what I'm currently working on.

1 - 10 hrs = yay, I accomplished something, I am skilled and competent and manly
16 hrs = wait, this part's not quite right, and this might be misunderstood, and maybe the problem is the whole concept doesn't work, I need to start this over entirely

(repeat several times w/ changes)

48 hrs = I am tired and this is what I have and it is done
96 hrs = oh crap crap why'd I send that out, it's not right at all, this is embarrassing
1 wk = I have an idea for a new thing that will be way better in every way and prove I can do this
6 mos = that last thing? whatever, who cares about that crap, the thing I am working on now is so much better
18 mos = this new thing is flawed, I miss the last thing and the way it was like X
3 yrs = man, I am getting dumber, this old thing I did was so much more creative than anything I come up with these days!

where's the 'I never feel like anything's properly completed' option

i usually tip my shades and drive off in my ferrari iirc

qed except usually ballin str8 lambos & jetskis

lame-bo more like
bugatti 4 evah, beeeiyotche

theres one thing i did about 4 years ago that ive felt bad about ever since cos it wasnt as good as i wanted it to be (had to knock it out in a net cafe in france in about 2 hours!) but i read it yesterday after YEARS of it popping into my head every so often and it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be (despite some smug fuck telling me shortly after it came out at the time that i got some things wrong).

thanks, thread.

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Happiness, followed by twitchy doubt and finally a sort of mild resignation.

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