Finishing is Better

Daily Fuel has always been, in some way or another, about entrepreneurship. That’s just kind of what professional development is. You want to give people the courage to start, to take that first risk, to do that thing they’ve always dreamed of doing. And my status as a college student certainly helped feed into that. I’m quite literally starting my own life, so any of the (extremely limited) insights I’m supposedly able to offer fall into that category as well.

I love starting. I love developing a new project, bringing in new people, brainstorming ideas. I love the feeling of possibility, but more importantly, I love that feeling of “things are moving.” Even if I rarely get the results I want, I love the feeling of working towards them.

So while I’ve written more “starting blogs” than I can count, today I have a “finishing blog” for you. For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on a short film. I had the initial spark of the idea in the summer after my sophomore year. Then I went through writing, pitching, funding, shooting, and editing, and it’s finally premiering next Tuesday (expect some shameless self- promotion when the time comes). And I’ve spent the last couple of weeks putting the finishing touches on the thing. I’ve been focused on the minutia of editing, making sure that every detail is as good as it can be. The process is the complete opposite of the broad, blue-sky thinking that makes starting a project so fun.

But you know what? Finishing is better.

It’s like going from being a broad canvas painter to a jeweler. It might be fun to paint with extremely broad brush strokes at first, but nothing compares to fine-tuning a gem. Starting a project is looking for vision, but finishing is realizing that you had a vision. And those final steps are what separate you from the multitude of people who had a good idea but never worked to realize it. (Disclaimer: I’m in no way saying that my idea was good. We’re completely working in the theoretical here, people.)

Obviously both sides of a project matter, and a life without both is only half-lived. But while it’s hard to start something, finishing can be just as hard. But the reward is even better.

Guest Blogger: Christian Zilko Student and Screenwriter

If you don’t finish it, you may as well have not started it.

— Every Writing Teacher Ever