When you're creating something - whether it's a painting, a play, or a song - how do you know when you're done? When is a work ready to meet the world, and when is it time to slay the muse?

In September a panel of artists, musicians and writers – Eli Kent, Chelsea Jade Metcalf, Courtney Meredith and Toby Morris - joined Steven Toussaint to talk about beginnings, ends, and when to put the pen down. Filmed live in front of an audience at Q Theatre.

Our speakers

Courtney Sina Meredith

Courtney Sina Meredith is currently writing her first book of short stories Tail of the Taniwha. Her play Rushing Dolls (2010) won a number of awards and was published by Playmarket in 2012, and selected by Silo Theatre for Working Titles 2015. She launched her first book of poetry, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick (Beatnik), at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair. Meredith describes her writing as an ‘ongoing discussion of contemporary urban life with an underlying Pacific politique’.

She was the Bleibtreu Berlin writer in residence 2011, a delegate to London for the British Council in 2012, a guest of the BBC to the House of Lords in 2014 and she has an upcoming residency in Sylt (Northern Germany) for 2016. Her poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, German, Dutch, French and Bahasa Indonesia. She is of Samoan, Mangaian and Irish descent.

In Rushing Dolls, Meredith killed an entire family of characters. Die, Darlings, die.

Eli Kent

Eli Kent is a writer and performer based in Auckland,. His play Rubber Turkey won him the Peter Harcourt Award for Outstanding New Playwright of the Year at the 2008 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. His play The Intricate Art of Actually Caring, in which he also acted, won “Best Theatre” in the NZ Fringe Festival 2009 and was performed at Downstage as part of the “Pick of the Fringe” season and at the Christchurch Arts Festival in July 2009. It was also nominated for five awards at the 2009 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, winning three, including Most Original Production.

Between 2010 and 2011 Eli worked on several productions with The PlayGround Collective, wrote a play for the Young and Hungry festival of new work, and received a Masters In Scriptwriting with distinction from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2012, Auckland Theatre Company commissioned and produced Eli’s play Black Confetti. In 2014 Eli co-wrote and co-directed a short film, School Night, which was shown as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival’s “NZ’s Best“ category.

In addition to his ongoing work with The PlayGround Collective, Eli is currently working on two more shows for Auckland Theatre Company, as well as developing several film and TV projects.

The Kill Screen was filmed on the set of Eli's play, All Your Wants and Needs Fulfilled Forever. It's a story that has been rewritten over and over, transformed every time.

Toby Morris

Toby Morris is an Auckland based illustrator, designer and cartoonist known for non-fiction, often autobiographical, comics like the book Don't Puke On Your Dad and the monthly opinion-piece comic The Pencilsword for The Wireless.

Toby is half of the Toby & Toby combo behind the weekly series That is the Question for Radio NZ. He also draws concert posters for bands like Beastwars, Liam Finn and the Phoenix Foundation. He grew up in Wellington and now lives in Auckland with his wife and two young sons.

He is learning, slowly, about where to draw the line between personal life and personal work.

Chelsea Jade Metcalf

Chelsea Jade is a songwriter trying to figure out the sexiest way to cry. An art school drop-out, Chelsea was the recipient of the Critic's Choice Prize at the VNZMAs in 2012 and attended the Red Bull Music Academy, Tokyo, in 2014. She is now embarking on a toplining career in Los Angeles where her work has already been rejected by Rihanna.

Her latest release is called 'Low Brow' and can be purchased on iTunes.

Steven Toussaint

Steven is the author of the poetry collection The Bellfounder (The Cultural Society, 2015) and the chapbook Fiddlehead (Compound Press, 2014). Steven is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the International Institute of Modern Letters, and his poems and critical writing have been published in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Rumour has it Steven has been tearing up his garden with a view to re-planting... from every flower's death, another bloom is born.