In basketball they say about some players, “He/she is a good finisher.”  That means that when they get close to the basket with the ball, they can actually get the ball into the basket.  Many pro players, good ones, can’t do that.  Because finishing is hard; a lot harder than just getting really close.

But at least basketball players know when they’ve finished or not – they look at the scoreboard.  I’m not saying finishing a song is harder than scoring in the NBA, but it is hell of a lot more ambiguous.

For me, it’s almost always easier to start a new song than to to finish one that’s in process.  Although finishing something is a thrill, starting something is much more like FUN and feels (is?) a lot less like work.

The start of a song can be like being an artist at the sketchpad, trying things out in black and white, different subjects, different angles…  It’s more like Play.  But eventually the completed painting has to be much larger, in color and, worst of all, completely done down to the last dot of paint and corner of the canvas.   That sounds more like Work.

And to top it off, the artist/songwriter even has to decide what ‘finished’ means in this particular case.  We don’t get to consult the Famous Songwriters Handbook for the answer.  We have to decide.  Scary.

So… finishing a song… Scary, ambiguous work… Easy to avoid…  How then to finish?

First and always, A Deadline.  Internal, external (usually better).  A workshop, a session, a gig, a rehearsal, playing it for a friend… anything!  Without some kind of deadline, it’s easy for songs to slip into the time/space continuum… never to be heard from again…

Making It A Priority.  Now that I’ve recognized that finishing is a bigger issue for me than I thought it was, when I sit down to write I don’t just let myself noodle around on new ideas all the time (just some of the time).  I pull out my notebooks and look for abandoned songs.  Now I’ve made a list of them, so I go to the list.

As often as not I discover that my reason for abandoning the song was not always, as I explained it to myself at the time, the ‘Quality issue’… ‘this isn’t good enough for the time it’ll take’.  Actually, it was more often the ‘Laziness issue’… ‘this one seems like it’s not going to be easy and I don’t feel up to the time and mental labor of turning it into something I’m proud of”.

(By the way, I usually don’t go back much further than a few years – it feels too much like it was written by a different person from a different time… which it kind of was).

A corollary here for some writers is Don’t Keep Rewriting The Same Song(s) Indefinitely.  Songwriting is to some extent a numbers game  – you need to write more than a few to get any good at the craft, so sometimes you need to move on.  No one song is predictably ‘it’, ‘the answer’. (What’s the question, anyway?)

Ultimately I’ll be evaluated, and I’ll evaluate myself, on what I finish, not what I start or almost finish.  What I did, not what I intended to do.  So finishing really matters.

I’ve often thought, who will care if I finish this song or not?

For starters, Me.