mariakoropecky by Maria Koropecky, Storytelling Coach & Author
When do you know when you’ve finished a creative project and it’s ready to be packaged and sent to market?
I came across an interview with one of my favorite artists, Tori Amos, on YouTube where Rick Beato asked her about her creative process.
“How do you know when a record is finished?”
“That’s a really good question because, you know, you can really screw it up and the way you really screw it up, the stories I’ve heard over the last decades is that the band, the Artist or the producer, or all of them, do not know when to stop… I’ve heard both sides, so when a band hasn’t recorded enough and they’ve allowed that material to not develop, so they’ve set the bar too low and they didn’t push it far enough. That’s one scenario as we know but the heartbreaker for me, the one that gets me every time is, when I’ve heard, usually the mastering engineer or somebody like that, an engineer say to me “God, we had it. He or she created this most amazing work and then day after day they started to mess with it cuz they were looking for perfection and yet they had the magic, everybody was moved by it and then they’re cutting it up, adding more stuff, getting different takes, replacing this, tweaking here, tweaking there and then it’s gone and you can lose it. You can lose it in a mix and the thing is, what you can’t do is fix it in the mix…” Tori Amos
I’ve been wrestling with this question with my audio version of my book, “Closer to Indigo,” which has been recorded but is waiting in the hopper for revisions.
And this isn’t a question just for artists, it’s for daily life. When do you know…
• to stop eating before you’re past the point of feeling full?
• when to get off the train?
• to leave a relationship?
• to cash in your chips and walk away from a poker table?
• when it’s time to call it a day and go to sleep?
“You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” as the Kenny Rogers song goes.
To me, the answers come from experience, intuition and feelings. Trust that voice that comes from within that says, “This is your stop.” It’s subtle but if you’re paying attention, you’ll catch it and keep the magic and end on a high note.
And as we leave 2024 behind and enter 2025, I hope you just keep the highlights from the past and leave the rest on the cutting room floor, making room for a brand new start and fresh creative ideas to enter your life in the coming year!
Happy New Year! Maria
#storytelling #creativeprocess #ToriAmos
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Here’s the Tori Amos Interview with Rick Beato, Published October 15, 2024, South England
