Progressing on an artwork doesn’t necessarily result in it being finished; some efforts simply and organically get discarded, abandoned or forgotten. This doesn’t imply failure: a lot of value can be extracted from pursuing a process at all – to the point that some argue for the process to matter more than the results, and for the process to definitely matter more than how happy one might be with the result. After all, it’s usually easier to influence ourselves to get working, than to properly master our actions to lead to certain outcomes. While selling art usually requires finished pieces, the artistic process itself really only requires its own pursuit; this pursuit can easily live on unfinished experiments, which some artists see as more important than their results: the experience of creation.
Beginnings and endings are often misunderstood to be on opposing ends of a linear scale – the work on a piece started back then, and ended later on. Yet with creative processes, this isn’t entirely true; beginnings and endings should rather be seen as part of a circular topology, where your actions can feed back to any of your future actions. Even though this might not be true emotionally (you might be desperate and frustrated about what’s going on in the studio), on a structural level all your beginnings, progressions and and potential endings coexist peacefully. In sum, they define your work.
Check out the chapters about the challenges of finishing, and the benefits of finishing.