The second issue examines process — specifically, the moment in any creative project where the work transitions from alive to finished, and what gets lost in that transition.
Against Refinement is not an argument for roughness. It’s an argument for noticing what the refinement process systematically removes, and whether those removals are always intentional.
Planned contents
I. The early deck problem — Why the version of the work that clients respond to in week two is almost always better than what gets delivered in week eight, and what that implies about the refinement process.
II. Friction as signal — On the value of productive resistance in creative work, and how overly smooth processes tend to produce overly smooth outputs.
III. Artifacts of thinking — A visual essay composed of work-in-progress material from three recent projects: the scraps, the wrong turns, and the things that were correct before they were overworked.
IV. When to stop — A practical framework, extracted from six years of delivery decisions, for identifying the moment at which further work is extraction rather than addition.
Against Refinement is in preparation for Spring 2025. Subscribers will receive notification when published.